Roasty Datil Hot Sauce
by Chef Justus
From the summer of 2020, one of my favorite recipes. I had really gotten into growing peppers in 2019 and 2020, so my backyard was littered with all these traffic-cone-orange Home Depot buckets, filled with stupidly expensive dirt and a bunch of rare heirloom pepper plants. But off to the side I had a wonderfully prolific Datil, which is a local heirloom pepper. It’s similar in taste to a habanero, but superior. Anyways, the growing season was going really well and I ended up with just about a quarter million datils. In the wake of this abundance, my good friend Witt and I set out on a mission to create the world’s best hot sauce… Surprisingly, it only took two tries. The first iteration had no cooking, only fresh ingredients. It was decent, but it was lacking soul; it didn’t have that jarring punch of flavor we were looking for. So on try number two we roasted/fried the garlic and onions, blended everything together, and voilá… Gourmet Hot Sauce Perfection. Hope y’all enjoy.
- Justus
Roasty Datil Hot Sauce
Recipe
What you'll need:
- 7-8 Datil Peppers (or about 5 large habaneros, 30g-40g)
- 1/4 White Onion
- 15 cloves Garlic
- 3 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1/4 cup White Vinegar
- Small handful of Cilantro
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
What you gotta do:
- Cut the onion into silvers and chop up the garlic.
- Over a medium-low flame, heat up 3tbsp of olive oil in a pan.
- Once the oil is hot, add the onions and garlic and fry. Adjust heat as needed.
- Once the garlic is a dark golden brown and the onions have begun to toast and put on some color, remove from heat. This took about six and a half minutes for my single batch. Let cool for a couple minutes. Meanwhile, wash and remove stems from the datils and the cilantro.
- Add all the ingredients (peppers, garlic, onion, vinegar, cilantro, salt, black pepper, and the remaining oil from the pan) into a blender and blend until smooth. Note: If you are worried about the peppers being too spicy, you can add one at a time until the heat level suits your taste. But keep in mind, using less will also obviously reduce the amount of pepper flavor in the sauce.
- I leave mine at this stage, but if the vinegar is too pungent for your taste, add the sauce back to the pan and simmer for a couple minutes. The acidity of the vinegar will fade the longer you cook it.
- Let it refrigerate overnight to let the flavors develop. Or just dig in.