It’s a day in the kitchen with Plant Matter Kitchen and we’re making our very own hot sauce!
A PMK SPECIAL
From its raw ingredients to the finished product, our PMK hot sauce really is something special. Its ingredients are natural, organic, locally-sourced, and the perfect balance between sweet and spicy. The variations are endless and its usages are left to the culinary imagination.
If you love hot sauce as much as we do, then watch our video tutorial, read our blog, and get cooking!
But first, you’ll need to round up the perfect ingredients:
- One organic, sweet onion
- German garlic
- White vinegar
- Table salt
- Organic cane sugar
- Water
- Green Jalapeños
THE PROCESS
1) Gather your ingredients in one place.
2) Chop the peppers into four then slice them vertically — if your skin is sensitive to capsaicin (the pepper’s chemical compound), then ensure you wear protective gloves before the cutting begins.
3) Remove and discard of those small but oh-so-spicy seeds.
4) Continue chopping the peppers.
5) Chop the onion into half, then slice it into smaller pieces, and eventually into a small dice.
6) Chop up a couple cloves of garlic and add to the mix.
7) Add the onions, peppers, and garlic into a saucepan.
8) Add the water, sugar, and salt.
9) Cook for 20 minutes.
10) Once all the ingredients have had a chance to cook, pour the mix into the blender and add vinegar — the longer you blend the mixture, the smoother the texture will become. Did you know: vinegar is this recipe’s life preserver, the stabilizing agent that makes it unnecessary to be refrigerated? It provides the sauce with acidity, as well as maintains its shelf life.
11) Transfer the mixture into mason jars.
12) Let the sauce cool in the jars for 30 minutes.
13) Add the lids, and let sit for 2 days in a cool place to allow the ingredients to harmonize before using.
PEPPERS OF ALL SCOVILLE RANGES
Changing the pepper changes the hot sauce.
Our signature PMK hot sauce is made with Green Jalapeños which sit at 5,000 on the infamous Scoville Scale. If you prefer a different pepper variety, our Green Jalapeños can easy be replaced with these four options:
Red Jalapeños — also at a 5,000 level, these peppers are similar to their green counterparts, they’re just red because they’re left on the vine to mature for a longer period of time (the green ones are picked earlier on in the ripening process). In the process of maturation, they develop more capsaicin, which makes them hotter than green jalapeños. Fun Fact: Red Jalapeños are the base ingredient of the famous Sriracha Hot Sauce!
Thai Chilis — very short, yet very hot, Thai chilis are used in an array of coloured curries. The Thai Bird’s Eye Chilies, for example, are the hottest of the chilies and — when observed from the stem — they look like a bird’s eye. They’re 20x hotter than the jalapeño pepper, rating between 50,000 and 100,000 Scoville units. Yikes!
Habanero Peppers — another that ranks among the hottest in the world, this pepper variety creates a rainbow of its own: orange, red, purple, yellow, brown, and white. They’re named after La Habana in Cuba, grow on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, as well as in Central and South America, and range from 100,000 to 350,000 on the Scoville Scale. The best way to test the kick of the habanero spice is to cook with it, and gage how it flavours the recipe! They’re often confused with Scotch Bonnet peppers, the signature pepper that adds the kick to jerk seasoning.
Ghost Peppers — formally known as Naga Bhut Jolokia pepper, this pepper has been classified as the spiciest in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, ranking at over 1,000,000 on the Scoville Scale! Grown in the northeastern Indian states of Nagaland and Assam, these peppers were virtually unknown to the rest of the country until its surpassing Scoville rating of one million was identified by the Indian Defence Test Laboratory. No wonder this pepper has become the celebrity pepper of today!
Remember: if you decide to substitute PMK’s staple green jalapeño pepper, be sure to maintain all the other essential ingredients in the recipe.
Peppers aren’t the only ingredient you can substitute in this recipe…
DIFFERENT PALATES, DIFFERENT INGREDIENTS
Got a sweet tooth? Not a problem — just add more sugar to the blend! Or try substituting the sweet onion with another sweet variety. Also, try substituting the white vinegar with apple cider vinegar.
Prefer a more heat? Simply annex the sugar from the blend.
The more spice the better? Try adding more seeds to the blend, while keeping the same amount of peppers.
Prefer the tangy hit of citrus? Add some lime, and you’ll be good to go!
Like the idea of hot sauce, but not the “hotness” of it? Add green tomatoes to the blend — they’ll not only calm to level of sizzle, they’ll also make the sauce look beautiful.
IT’S ABOUT AESTHETICS, TOO
Making, serving, and enjoying hot sauce isn’t only about taste — it’s about aesthetics, too.
While some of the best comfort meals out there are not so satisfactory to the eye, we know that some of the most delicious meals are also the most beautiful looking — because of their ingredients, of course!
So, here’s a tip to always remember: the colour of the peppers and their accompanying ingredients make all the difference in the colour of the hot sauce.
For example, adding green tomatoes is preferable over red ones, as the red ones — when mixed with the green — will turn the sauce a brownish colour, whereas the green ones will enhance the bright, refreshing green colour:
Moreover, while carrots are an excellent additive for sweetness, they’re not so great aesthetically, as orange + green = brown, which is not so appealing to the eye.
A TOPPING FOR EVERYTHING!
Our special hot sauce can be put on anything: vegetable stir fry, soup, enchiladas, veggie burgers, Mac N’ Cheese, pasta, wraps… you name it! Plant Matter Kitchen guests love adding it to a variety of our breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner meals.
Try making a batch of your own, or come into the kitchen today to try some of our signature PMK hot sauce on any meal of your choice!
Bhut Jolokia, Colour, Food Aesthetics, Habanero, Hot Sauce, Jalapeño, PMK Cooking, PMK Recipes, Salty, Sweet, Thai Chili
