I wanted to make my first hot sauce and I love habanero so I pulled this recipe from online. The bottle is the finished product of what I made. It's so dang vinegary and I don't know why. Is this recipe crap or am I missing something?
Edit: On a side note, is there any way to save this sauce or should I just scrap it?
by DHubbage
7 Comments
I’d say that’s a lot of vinegar to everything else. I’d also always use apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar rather than straight distilled vinegar as it’s a less astringent flavour
Check the pH. I’m pretty sure you’re going to find your well below 3.8.
That recipe is 57% distilled vinegar, that’s why it tastes strongly of vinegar. 10% is plenty (1% truly is in most cases, but I wouldn’t recommend that unless you have a good pH meter to check), and distilled vinegar sucks for hot sauce. It’s a bad recipe.
You can try and save it by adding more of your solid ingredients. Try doubling and go from there. While I don’t use it personally, sugar can help soften the vinegar flavor too.
Being able ro measure pH is great if you think you’ll be making sauces somewhat frequently. You want below 4.6 to prevent c. botulinum growth and build in a margin of error. I shoot for below 4 for my sauces.
Way too much vinegar
Color looks like baloney juice.
I made almost this exact same hot sauce but as others noted, cut the vinegar with water and used apple cider vinegar instead. I followed this exactly. Turned out great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgWDiQ9vC2E&t=32