Smoky Hot Sauce

We have been working on our hot sauce recipe for three years now, taking good notes along the way.  It started out with a mixture of internet recipes and we have tweaked it each year to suit our (mostly Aaron's) liking.  This was the first year we smoked the peppers, and we have a winner!

This can be done with any mixture of hot peppers.  We did several batches because we had so many peppers.  The first batch was all jalapenos and it's very good with just jalapenos.  One of the batches after we used all sorts of peppers, including a few ghost peppers.  I'm not sure what all the others are, as they were grown by a friend, but the majority were serranos that I grew from seed.

First Aaron smoked them with some onions in a Little Chief smoker that he scored at an estate sale in Hood River for $5.  

The peppers after smoking.

After smoking them, he broiled them on both sides until blackened.  I will warn you that this gives off caustic fumes and is not pleasant to be around.

Aaron then cut off the stems and we ran them through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins.

Then all ingredients were combined in the Cuisinart (I have no picture of this step), then put into glass jars with extra head space and into the freezer.  We made about 3 gallons this year, which is good because with the smokiness, even I am eating it.

Here is the recipe written out.  Be sure to clean out your oven after broiling the peppers - they crack and pop all over.  I thought the fumes while they were roasting was bad, it was nothing compared to the seeds and pepper bits burning when the oven was turned on this morning...

Place peppers and quartered onions in Little Chief with 2 full consecutive trays of alder wood chips.  We let them sit in the smoker for about an hour after the last tray burned out.  Do not pack the smoker too full - the first photo is too full, these peppers didn't get as smoky as the first batch.

Place smoked peppers on cookie sheets and broil on low until skin begins to blacken.  Cut off the stems and put the peppers in a food mill to remove seeds and skins.

Put this in the Cuisinart:
1 cup pepper pulp (1 pound of peppers yields roughly 1 cup)
3/4 of a smoked onion
5 cloves of garlic
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup carrot juice
1/8 cup lime juice
1 cup water

Freeze or use within 3 weeks, it actually starts to ferment rather quickly.  This taste doesn't bother me, but Aaron doesn't care for it.