Hot Cherry Bomb Pepper Hot Sauce

Hot cherry peppers are among my favorite peppers. Every couple of years I grow at least 6 plants in my garden; we enjoy them grilled, I can a big batch of my pickled hot cherry peppers, and I make at least one jar of this super easy hot sauce with some of them.

I have a lot of fun playing around with homemade hot sauces and have posted recipes for a few of them over the years, including my most popular one, my Hungarian Pepper Hot Sauce that I make with the black Hungarian peppers that I grow.

The thing with making your own hot sauce is playing around with them to find the heat level that you want along with having great flavor so don’t be afraid to play with your own.

Hot Cherry Bomb Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe

Ingredients

Makes a little more than a 1/2 pint

• About 1 1/2 lbs. hot red cherry peppers (add less of these and more sweet for a milder hot sauce)
• 1/4 lb. sweet peppers – I used a mixture of the small sweet yellow and orange peppers that I grow
• 5 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 cups white vinegar

Directions

• Place all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat to a healthy simmer and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour.
• As peppers start to soften during the cooking process, smash the peppers open and stir them around occasionally.
• Hot cherry peppers are thick-skinned so make sure they’re completely soft before removing from the heat
• Remove from heat and let cool (to speed up the cooling process, you can fill your sink with a few inches of cold water, toss in a dozen ice cubes, then set the pan inside the ice water).
• Once cool, use a ladle to transfer the peppers and liquid to a food processor (or blender) and puree for a few minutes until fully smooth and blended.
• Place a fine-mesh sieve over a glass or stainless bowl (this will stain plasticware) and pour the mixture in, straining and pushing the liquid through the sieve with a spatula or flat spoon.
• Pour the strained hot sauce into a glass bottle or jar and refrigerate until ready to use.

This is hot, hot, hot – definitely not for the timid and, as it is with making any hot sauce, tear-inducing as it cooks. But it’s got that wonderful hot cherry pepper flavor which we love.

I hope you’ll give this or one of my other hot sauces a try and remember – don’t be afraid to play with your food; feel free to change it up and make it your own.

Enjoy!