The Hot Stuff

Anaheim peppers is one of our most prolific producing peppers.  The only ones that might come close would be shishitos or bananas.  Anaheim peppers aren't as hot as a jalapeno, but aren't as sweet as a bell pepper.  I'd classify them as a mild pepper.  They're really nice-sized and they are shiny, almost waxy.  Our normal thing to do with these is to cut them in half, seed them and put them in our handy chopper and chop them into small cubes.  We then freeze them and use them in cooking most dishes.  We have a large bag in the freezer just waiting to spice up any dish.

We've given a lot of them away at church as well as to family and friends.  What else can we do with these delicious peppers?

We go through a lot of hot pepper sauce and use different sauces on different dishes.  I like the vinegary hot sauces like Tabasco on red beans and rice or over peas and rice.  I like hot sauces like Crystal or Cholula on Mexican food dishes or to pour liberally over french fries like you would do with ketchup.

With our abundance of Anaheims, I figured we'd make a batch of Anaheim Pepper hot sauce.  I cubed up 2 pounds of Anaheim peppers, seeded.  Then I diced up 2 medium onions and minced 8 cloves of garlic.  All this was added to a big pot along with 2 cups white vinegar and 2 cups water.  Two teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoons of cumin and a teaspoon of dried habanero pepper were thrown in for added spice.

This concoction was brought quickly to a boil and then simmered for 20 minutes.

The pepper mixture was removed from the heat and allowed to cool for just five or ten minutes.  Then it was ladled into a blender and blended until smooth.

For occasions such as pepper sauce making, we save empty bottles of pepper sauce to re-use with our homemade concoction.  I used a funnel to pour into the bottles.

These can be stored in the ice box for 3 months or so, but I doubt they'll last for that long.  We used the one on the far right in the half pint jar as a salsa verde for dipping tortilla chips into and almost finished it off.  We're pleased with the way it turned out.  With the first freeze approaching, we'll pull all the remaining peppers and make more hot sauce.  That will keep us away from the hot sauce aisle in the grocery store for a while.  Store-bought hot sauce is a little pricey!