I made my first hot sauce over the weekend—it’s a pineapple habanero hot sauce with peppers from my garden. I literally have no experience and kind of used a recipe I found online and then got creative with it by adding the pineapple.
My question: I was hoping for this to be cholula/tabasco level spicy where you can douse your food in it for a flavorful but more mild heat. It is more of a use-very-sparingly-for-your-own-safety level of spice. The flavor is good, but how do I tone down the spice? I know I need to add things to it, and I’ll probably end up with a lot of hot sauce, which isn’t a problem.
The recipe I used/elaborated on was basically habaneros, a little oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pineapple, and honey. I removed the seeds from the habaneros before cooking.
by SourdoughBiscuits
41 Comments
the problem i’ve found when using fresh peppers its hard to gauge how spicy it will be. i use the exact recipe for my salsa and it will vary from a 5 to a 10 on spice level
More vinegar. More water. More sugar or other fruit/veg. Can cool it down a bit, but sometimes that makes it less spicy and other times more spicy lol.
You wanted mild heat but decided to make a habanero sauce?! I’m confused
Sugar can help balance the heat. I like agave nectar
Habaneros are spicy. My first time making hot sauce I used too many habaneros and it was straight fire. Hotter than most reaper sauces I’ve had.
How many peppers did you use? For a batch that small you probably only need half a pepper if you want it to be Tabasco level.
Bell peppers
I have cut hot sauce heat down by adding sweet peppers to the mix, you can get bags of little yellow, orange, and reds at most grocery stores. They will add bulk without heat.
Make a second batch the same size but use only bell peppers or pablanos. Something mild and sweet. Then blend the two.
Next batch add more pineapple and/or less habanero. You can also add some brown sugar to cut the heat a bit, but it’s better to use fresh ingredients whenever possible.
This need tomatoes and tomotillos
Lots of good suggestions here, another idea is to add carrots to the sauce.
Just suck it up. You’ll adapt. 🔥
Embrace the spicy 🥵
Just a heads up. Tabasco peppers (in Tabasco) and arbol & piquin (in Cholula) are nowhere near as hot as habaneros. There are condiment types of hot sauces, and then there are HOT sauces.
Fermented carrots, sautéd onions, and or roasted bell/poblano peppers are my favorite way to reduce heat and add quantity. The fermentation and cooking is to add flavor and reduce the chunkiness of blending raw ingredients.
How long do you plan on keeping it? I mix a lot of my hot sauces with sour cream (before serving). You could do it as you go so it keeps longer.
Add habanadas
You can cook the peppers a bit, like sauté in a pan, or pickle them a bit before putting in the sauce. This will knock the heat down quite a bit.
Add more of everything besides the peppers. That’s what I do when salsa turns out too hot. Or too oniony or garlicy, more of everything besides what it has too much of.
If you don’t want to change the flavor profile much then just adding more pineapple and vinegar (and probably salt to keep the salt balance) would be the simple solution (“the solution to pollution is dilution”).
Carrots can also work, they will add some sweetness too. But the flavor will also change a bit.
Just cutting with vinegar, water, and salt would be the way to make it more like a Tabasco or Louisiana type sauce. They start with pretty hot peppers but the vinegar dilutes them down to a milder heat.
Add a base pepper like bell peppers, Hungarian wax, poblano, or Anaheim.
Puréed Carrots 🥕
That looks and sounds like some drink-it-all-and-regret-life-2-hours-later sauce. Looks divine!!!
But yes like someone said, puréed carrots is a good start.
Yogurt
If you want a throw that shit on everything level of spice, use something like 1/2 or 1/4 the amount you used this time. If you look at the ingredients list on a lot of the milder habanero hot sauces, you’ll see that it can be pretty far down the list, past stuff like pineapple or onions sometimes.
I find that the fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice knocks the heat down considerably. Like to the point where I’ve kidna ruined a whole batch of super spicy saucy because I squeezed a whole lime into it.
Add a bit more honey and vinegar until it gets to the point you like, i personally find Tabasco vinegary… This is coming from a “carries the end suace in his poccet and uses it daily” person though
Sugar is the easiest way to reduce heat.
Lots of fun ideas, but they will definitely change your flavor profile.
Carrots add a LOT of sweetness. That’s the biggest complaint in yellowbird habanero.
Other peppers, especially the non spicy ones like green peppers, will change it to a more salsa-like flavor.
Add more of everything but the hots until it’s the flavor you like. You want more onion flavor? Add more onion. Want less onion flavor? Just skip the onion as you’re diluting it. Just keep going down that way and you’ll maintain a similar flavor without the heat
Try a bit of carrot and a yellow bell pepper. The carrot adds a lot of sugar, which will decrease heat; the yellow bell pepper will add a little sugar and help dilute but tends to be a mild flavor so it gets subsumed by the other flavors of the sauce
Sugar is your friend either in the form of fruits / veggies with high content or pure sugar
Use a less spicy pepper than habañero.
Habaneros are very spicy. You need to dillute the sauce. Add more pineapple and vinegar to add bulk to the sauce so the habanero is a smaller portion of it.
Next time pick a less spicy pepper or use something else to add bulk to the sauce like carrot or onion, etc.
CARROTS
I’ve found cooking it (in a very well ventilated area of course) can reduce the spice heat. Also use premero peppers next time, they’re related to habaneros but about 1/3 the heat so the flavor won’t change.
Vinegar
Coconut milk.
My cousin used to make sauce with habanero. For most tastes it would work for 1 pepper per 4 jars. Add more pineapple until it splits?
increase volume
maybe a mix of less hot peppers blended in
Celery and a little vinegar
Garlic