Make Your Own Hot Sauce!

Photo courtesy of Todd Renner

I love hot sauces, but I know people who are so passionate about them that they treat them as collectibles. I think they're mostly focusing on the labels.

Now marketing is all well and good, but you and I? We love the flavor, right? And that means a sauce that has a kick but isn't going to knock you on your keister. After all, if your mouth is scalded, you're thousands of taste buds away from enjoying your food.

While I admit to having some favorite ready-made hot sauces, I have a few I enjoy making because a) it's a great way to control the flavor you want and b) it's so easy! Years ago, I learned how to make a dynamite hot sauce from some friends during tamale-making season. This is Consuelo's Hot Sauce and I love it! Yes, it's hot but in moderation it can create the most wonderful mouth tingle and chile flavor. I enjoy incorporating it into salsas or adding to soups or drizzling on fish. Then Lorri Allen taught me her thick sriracha-style sauce and it's always in my refrigerator. The tangy heat that comes from the combination of chiles and vinegar, with a garlic finish just makes me swoon in happiness.

Recently I interviewed Chef Todd Renner of Tender Greens in downtown San Diego. The interview was for a piece I wrote for my Edible San Diego blog, Close to the Source, on their new breakfast menu. But Renner started telling me about his passion for condiments, especially hot sauces. He's working on a signature line of them that Tender Greens will sell.

And, then he invited me to come back to learn how to make them.

Renner loves canning and preserving. He also loves mixing savory and sweet. After all, he was trained as a pastry chef. So, his ideas for new sauces basically come from that background--he has all sorts of various flavor combos in his head.

What was fascinating to me as he talked me through the process is just how versatile it is--and the very reason why you should make your own sauces. We made a classic thin Louisiana-style red hot sauce--ready to pour on everything from scrambled eggs to a shrimp taco. Then we made his Mango Habanero Sauce. The mango flavor pops, for reasons you'll understand in a moment. But that mango? It could easily become pineapple or coconut or banana. Renner even suggested adding spinach or beets. You don't even need to use habanero chiles. Jalapeños or serranos will do just as well. And you can switch up the vinegars. Renner is not a rigid traditionalist. As he says, "It makes it exciting!"

At first glance, the quantity of ingredients called for in both these recipes will seem pretty high. But it all cooks down to a reasonable amount--meaning if you like canning, you can have a couple of jars for yourself and some to give to people you really like to enjoy.

A couple of tips from Renner:

• To get the smoothest consistency, be sure to blend the mixtures while they're still hot--just be careful since steam will create enough pressure to blow the blender lid off. Make sure the lid is on firmly and use a folded towel while holding the lid to protect your hands.

• If you want to change the yield but don't want to do the math when it comes to the liquids, Renner says the idea is simply to cover the ingredients with the vinegar in the pot. 

Classic Red Hot Sauce
from Todd Renner
(printable recipe)

This sauce is hugely versatile. Really, it can be your go to for just about anything you'd add hot sauce to. Renner enjoys it on fish--as do I.

Yield: 4 pints

1 pounds Fresno red chiles, destemmed
5 ounces or 30 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 gallon distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup salt to start

Place all ingredients into a pot. Simmer 30 minutes until tender. Blend until smooth. It will be loose. Strain through a chinois.

Taste and add more salt or vinegar if necessary. Fill bottles or jars.

I recently made my favorite spicy coleslaw for a party. Instead of using Tobasco sauce, I used this Classic Red Hot Sauce and it was sublime.

For the Mango Habanero Sauce, Renner you'll fine that the recipe calls for dried, not raw, mango. He uses dried mango for two reasons--it doesn't add water so you just get pure concentrated flavor and you also get a consistent flavor. You can pick up dried mango--or other dried fruits--at most markets. Renner likes to get his from Trader Joe's.

Mango Habanero Sauce
from Todd Renner
(printable recipe)

I love the pure mango sweetness blended with the heat of the chiles and sourness of the vinegar. It's bright and tropical. And the color? Like the setting sun. Not sure about what to use this sauce for? Renner suggests grilled chicken tacos, jerk-style pork, and ribs. Make sure you apply it as a finishing sauce. It'll just burn up on a grill or under a broiler.

Yield: 5 pints

1 pound dried mango
7 ounces or 26 habanero chiles
4 ounces shallots( 2 or 3 shallots)
1/2 gallon unseasoned rice vinegar
Zest of 3 oranges

1/4 cup salt to start

Combine the first four ingredients in a pot and simmer 30 minutes until tender. Add the zest and salt.

Blend until smooth. Taste and adjust the salt and vinegar if necessary. Fill bottles or jars.

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Pork Porterhouse Chop with Garlic Sage Compound Butter

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a delicious unnamed pork part I enjoyed from Cook Family Butcher Shop. I've since written a post on the new shop for my Close to the Source blog on Edible San Diego. The butchers there kindly gave me a few cuts of meat to take home and try, including a thick porterhouse chop--something I've never had.

These chops are huge; mine was over a pound in weight, including richly marbled meat and a thick outer cap of fat all united by a T-bone. That's something you don't usually find in your typical supermarket meat department, which touts pork as "the other white meat," meaning lean to the point of no flavor. I'll send you to my Close to the Source post for more about the shop and the Cook Pigs Ranch philosophy of raising pigs to extract the most flavor from them in a humane way.

Right now, I just want to take you through the process of cooking a cut of meat you may not be familiar with. And the process is extremely easy. All I did was grill it on my stove top (no way was I going out on a rainy night to use my outdoor grill). It begins with a 24-hour brining. I used a simple brine inspired by Chef Anne Burrell that includes kosher salt, fresh sage leaves, crushed garlic, sugar, and a bay leaf mixed in a quart of water. Stir it up, add the chop, cover, and refrigerate.

At some point between brining and cooking you can make a simple compound butter to add even more richness to the dish. Because my brine included sage leaves from my garden, I stuck with the flavor profile and made a compound butter with minced sage leaves, diced red onion, garlic, and sea salt. All you need to do is leave the a stick of butter out until it's room temperature, slice off about a tablespoon and melt that in a small saucepan.

 

 

Add the sage, red onion, garlic, and sea salt, and saute gently until it's just cooked through, about five minutes. Remove from the heat and place the mixture in a small bowl. Let cool for 15 to 20 minutes. Then slice the rest of the butter, add the slices to the bowl, and thoroughly mix all the ingredients with a fork. Pull out a piece of wax paper or plastic wrap and place the butter mixture on it. Shape into a small log about an inch thick. Then fold the paper or wrap over the log and roll it a bit until it's evenly shaped. Then fold up the rest around the log and refrigerate it at least an hour so that it's firm (you can also make it a couple of days before). Remove it from the refrigerator before you begin cooking the chop.

When you plan to cook the chop, remove it from the brine and pat it down to remove the excess moisture. I also trimmed off much of the fat cap since it would only create even more of a smoky oil splattering mess than I already expected from stove-top grilling. Slather the chop in olive oil and, as Burrell suggests, sprinkle the meat with crushed red pepper flakes. Heat a cast iron skillet and when it's good and hot, place the chop in the skillet and cover with a splatter guard.

 
Cook for four to five minutes on each side until the internal temperature is about 145° and then hold the chop vertically with a pair of tongs to grill the edge of fat. That'll take about a minute. Remove from the skillet and let it rest. You should have a chop cooked medium rare.

For this meal I decided to include farro, leftovers from a batch I had made the day before, and some beautiful spicy red mustard that I got from Coral Tree Farm in Encinitas. I broke up the mustard leaves and quickly sauteed them in the skillet in which I'd cooked the chop. One less pan to cook and extra flavor for the mustard! 

Now, you're almost ready to eat. Cut the meat off the bone and slice it. (Save the bone to gnaw on secretly later.) Place the slices on the cooked mustard and top with a couple of slices of the compound butter. Serve with warm farro.

Happy New Year!



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Name that Pig Part!

I've been spending some time with the butchers at Cook Family Butcher Shop in Kearny Mesa for a story I'll be posting in early January on my Close to the Source blog on Edible San Diego. It's a very cool place, owned by Cook Pigs Ranch in Julian that I hope you'll visit and buy from.

But, there's one cut that I recommend that as of now still has no name. While I was watching owner and plant manager Nick Bartsch, head butcher Travis Stockstill, and their crew transform halves of pigs into more familiar roasts, hams, loins, and chops, there grew a pile of longish strips of meat and fat--perhaps one to two inches wide and four or more inches long--that grew increasingly appealing to me. This was the strip that sits between the long bones of tomahawk chops. To get that handle just right, they have to cut out the connecting meat between the bones and, well, I couldn't see that going to waste.

As it happens, Nick couldn't either. He had taken a pile of them home and was marinating them in a blend of Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce. I think he was in day four when we were chatting about it.

I was ridiculously enthusiastic about this and he sent me home with about half a dozen to try. I figured it would be simple enough to enjoy them cut up into bite-sized pieces and stir fried with vegetables. But what I really wanted to do was marinate them for a few days and then run them under the broiler to see if they'd crispen up.

So, I piggybacked on Nick's idea and created a marinade of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, sesame oil, minced garlic, and red pepper flakes. I marinated the strips of meat for three days.

Then under the heat they went for about five minutes total. They had a lovely gloss to them and curled up, almost like grilled octopus. Next time I'll try weaving them on skewers.

Regardless, they were delicious. It turns out they didn't get especially crispy. The texture was on the chewier side--not tough, but a mouth satisfying resistance with every bite. And, they had the most incredible sweet salty garlicky flavor, warmed by the sesame oil. 

So, I'd like to suggest you ask for them, but they have no name. We joked around at the time with some ideas, like  boneless ribs (not exactly accurate).

Do you have a good idea for a name for this obscure pig part? Give me your suggestions and I'll pass them on to Nick and Travis.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas!


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