Making Chilli Sauce

Craig harvested the entire chilli crop a few weeks ago and went in search of a tobasco sauce recipe.

He found 

"Louisiana-style Hot Sauce"

at The Joy of Cooking site.

It's basically chopped chillies with 2% of weight salt into a big jar and covered with a sweet Riesling. The mixture was left to ferment (very actively!) and regularly stirred. After several weeks it was ready to process through the food mill leaving behind the seeds and skins.

This resulting liquor is mixed at a suggested rate of 50/50 with a vinegar of your choice and bottled.

We mixed and tasted apple cider vinegar, malt vinegar, plain white vinegar and white wine vinegar.

My favourite was the white wine vinegar. The malt vinegar gave it a caramelly sort of flavour and Craig quite liked that. In hind sight going through the cupboard a little more thoroughly I was sorry we didn't try mixing the raspberry vinegar with the chilli.

In the end we made up batches with malt, white wine and apple cider vinegar. I think this could be a winner for Christmas gifts with a little more development and smarter labelling. We yielded almost 4lt of sauce and pretty happy with the result. The Riesling gives quite a unique flavour.