Hot Sauce #2 - Sweet Arson

As it turns out it was a rainy day and I thought the fresh habaneros either needed to be used or frozen so I made another sauce today as well.

The week previously I had excavated a patch of sweet potatoes and ended up with a reasonable haul (the largest in the photo is 2.4kg) ... and I had the idea of using the sweet potato as the base for this sauce. And this time I thought i'd try a warming mix of herbs to compliment it. I'm really quite pleased with this one - it has quite an interesting and pleasant flavour and will leave your lips burning from even quite a small amount.

Ingredients

450g	Roasted sweet potato (2-3 average tubers).
12	Cayesan Chillies, roasted.
12	Habaneros, roasted.
150ml	Grapeseed oil.
1	Diced onion.
	Dry Spices
2 tsp	Coriander seed.
1 tsp	Cardomon seed.
1 tsp	Black peppercorns.
1 tsp	Whole allspice.
2	Cloves.
1 tsp	Fennel seed.
	Liquids
2 cups	Malt vinegar.
1 1/2 cup	Water.
1 tsp	Citric Acid.
1 tsp	Salt
1 tsp	MSG

Method

Place the sweet potato whole and un-peeled into a roasting tray and roast until done - about an hour. Place the chillies on another tray and roast until they start to collapse - about 20 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the oven and let them cool to a suitable temperature for handling and peel the skins off (perhaps sweating them under foil will help).

Meanwhile, place the oil and onion in a medium sized saucepan and cook slowly on low heat - so they become translucent but do not brown.

Take the dry seeds and toast lightly in a dry pan for a few minutes. Use a medium heat and constantly move them so they do not burn. Transfer the seeds to a mortar and pestle and pound to a fine dust.

Add the dry spices to the onions and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the roasted chillies and sweet potato and mash them together.

Add all of the liquid before it starts to burn, together with the remaining ingredients and simmer for at least 30 minutes on a very low heat.

Use a stick blender to thoroughly blend everything into as fine a liquid as it's capable of (i'm using a Tiffany hand-me-down and it struggles but works).

Bottle.

Results

This tastes really nice so far. Very subtle, slightly sweet and nutty flavour with a lip-burning kick to follow up which seems to multiply with every subsequent taste.

I didn't think it was going to end up hot enough after adding the liquid I needed to make it thin enough, so I threw in another half-dozen chopped habaneros when it was nearly done, cooked them for a while and re-blended. This might be the last hot sauce I make for a while too, so I wanted to make sure it counted!

I'd probably rate this 7.5 out of 10 for heat.



Update So 6 months on, this is definitely my favourite sauce. I think it could use a bit more heat but the flavour goes with lots of things - i sometimes use it instead of butter on sandwiches, for dipping chips (it gets hot!), or to add a pleasant kick to pasta, steak, or a snag. Please comment if you give it a go ...