hot sauce, round 2

Two pickle jars full of chili peppers (stems cut off) and cloves of garlic. This time I used skinny red peppers and beautiful orange Scotch bonnets from the Asian supermarket.

Pour white vinegar into the jars to cover the chilis.

Close the jars, put aside until you're ready to make the hot sauce.

Put the chilis in the blender with a cut up mango and enough of the vinegar so it'll blend easy.

Put the rest of the vinegar in, so that it's a thin (ish) paste.

Force the chili mixture through a strainer to strain out the bits of skin and seeds. You don't have to do this, but the hot sauce will be much hotter and won't flow as well with the seeds in it.

Cook the goop at a very low heat until it loses much of the vinegar taste. Here is where I add some rum, some brown sugar, whatever you'd like.

When you test this stuff, make sure you dab it on the middle or back of your tongue, not the tip. The tip of your tongue is more sensitive and you can lose taste buds that way.

Bottle it up. You may need to dilute with hot water - I did with this batch and the last one.

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