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Chilli sauce – make your own hot sauce!

How do you make homemade hot sauce?

Try to realise the hottest sauce yourself! That's how it works for all chilli hobby gardeners: once the plants have done chillies, the question then arises at harvest time: What do I do with all these chilies? Answer: Why not hot sauce!

Of course there are countless varieties of sauces with different flavours and degrees of pungency then you can buy. But it is also fun to create your own sauces. For the Pepperworld team, this means that some creations are occasionally turned into commercial products which, after approval by food chemists and laboratory tests, go into series production and even win various prizes in US competitions.

Industrial and homemade hot sauce production

Before we dedicate ourselves to homemade hot sauces, a brief look at industrial production. Of course there are no general instructions for the production of hot sauce; the range of sauces is correspondingly very diverse. Manufacturers experiment a lot, and experiences are exchanged at trade fairs and other occasions. But sometimes recipes and processes remain a family secret that is passed on from generation to generation.

Basically, one can distinguish between two manufacturing processes: the hot sauce is produced either by storing and processing a chilli/salt vinegar mixture, or the other by cooking all the ingredients.

It is also ok if you don't want to go that far; recognition or revenge are enough. And we have the perfect hot sauce recipes for this. If it does get a little more professional, it could look like this, here a selection of the more than 200 sauces in the Pepperworld Hot Shop.

Method #1: The "Cold" hot sauce preparation

There are several variations on the first method - some producers salt the chillies and then puree them; others put the whole pods in a salt vinegar brine.

Some sauce makers use oak barrels for storage; others claim that the difference between wooden barrels and plastic containers is not noticeable (the same discussion is known from wine). Some think that the raw mixture must mature for at least three years; others say one month would be enough.

In his Hot Sauce Bible, which is unfortunately now out of print, the "Pope of peppers" Dave DeWitt (food historian and writer) describes how the famous red TABASCO® Red Pepper Sauce is made: After harvesting, the whole tabasco chillies are crushed in a hammer mill. Then salt is added - about 8 pounds per 100 pounds of chillies. The spicy pulp is then placed in Kentucky white oak barrels, which are closed with a wooden lid.



The lids have fine holes so that the gases produced during fermentation can escape. Each 400-pound barrel then matures for three years, with carbon dioxide escaping during the first two years. After the third year, the barrels are opened and the contents checked for aroma, colour and moisture. If it meets McIlhenny's high standards (McIlhenny is the founder of the Tabasco Sauce), the mash is mixed with natural white vinegar in a ratio of 1:2. For a month, the mixture is stirred every hour for five minutes. Finally, the vinegar-chili-puree mix is sieved, filtered and filled into the trademarked world-famous bottle.

Method #2:The “heat” hot sauce preparation

In the second method, all ingredients are cooked instead processing them cold. The high temperature treatment serves two purposes: Firstly, additional ingredients such as fruit are cooked so that they can be finely pureed. Secondly, possible germs are killed off. The mix of chillies, fruits, spices, etc. are placed in a large cauldron together with vinegar. Typical industrial boilers have a capacity of 200 to 1000 litres. To prevent the ingredients from overheating or even burning, the stainless steel boilers are double-walled and are heated indirectly with steam, which is generated electrically or with gas.

For your own production, a large boiling pot is enough. It protects above all against splashes during pureeing.

The ingredients can boil for several hours. For smaller quantities, such as homemade chilli sauces, 20-30 minutes are sufficient. The coarser ingredients, such as chillies, are pureed with an automatic blender after soft cooking, or with a hand-held blender (see picture). The temperature but also the pH value is continuously measured and corrected by adding vinegar if necessary.

If the sauce has the desired consistency, it is pumped from the kettle into a filler and bottled hot. Depending on the degree of automation, this process is carried out manually or on a conveyor belt with automatic fillers, which can typically fill up to eight bottles simultaneously. The bottles are then sealed with shrink sleeves and labelled. For in-house production, simply fill the sauce with a ladle into preserving jars with screw cap or swing stopper and store.




So much for our little look behind the scenes of industrial and in-house production. But for your own small production you neither have to store your chillies in wooden barrels for three years, nor do you need to invest in a double-walled stainless steel boiler. The following recipes show how it works. Some of these recipes were kindly provided to us by Dave DeWitt from his book mentioned above.



TIP: If you are missing chillies for the Hot Sauce, have a look in our shop!

Homemade chilli sauce – Tips

Here are a few tips for the preparation and use of the hot sauces brand DIY

  • It is best to wear rubber gloves when cutting the hot chillies.
  • Hot chilli fumes can result, when cooking the sauce; therefore, you should ensure good ventilation (extractor hood, open window)
  • Protect eyes from splashes (we speak from experience!), prepare hot chillies with protective gloves.
  • Sterilize bottles or jars and their closures in boiling hot water.
  • In order for the sauces to be durable, their pH value should be below 4.6 (better still: below 4.2). If you want to ensure this, you can check this with an inexpensive pH meter or with litmus paper (pharmacy). By using the cooking method, allow the sample to cool to room temperature beforehand.
  • Professionals check the pH value with a pH meter that is calibrated with the help of buffer solutions (usually pH 4.0 and 7.0). Litmus paper is also enough for domestic use, which indicates pH values by shades of colour
  • Never put used cutlery in the saucepans or sauce bottle at the table! - Always store opened sauces in the refrigerator (this also applies to industrially produced sauces and salsas).
  • Otherwise for all those who want to make their own chili sauce now: Have fun experimenting! Feel free to send us your best results!

Hot sauce recipes

Tried and tested hot sauce recipes in our recipe database:

  • Louisiana-Style Hot Sauce (recipe)
  • Hot Gourmet Ketchup (recipe)
  • Caribbean hot pepper sauce "Sun-of-a Beach" (recipe)
  • Chipotle sauce (recipe)
  • Sriracha-style hot sauce (recipe)
  • Sweet-hot chili sauce like Thai (recipe)
  • LC Cay Thai Hot Sauce - also "Sweet & Spicy" (recipe) New!
  • Chipotle Tomato Hot Sauce - with Chipotle smoked in a ball grill (recipe) New!

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