My mom planted some pepper plants in her garden. When she planted them, she was told they were bell peppers, which she likes. Turns out, they weren’t. So now she has about a dozen lovely-looking habaneros, for which she has no use at all.
Now, I do like my food somewhat spicy, certainly spicier than she does. But I also know my limits, and know that habs are well beyond them. The spiciest dish I make is chili, and the way I like my chili, a single one of these habs would probably be enough for six or seven full batches. So that’s obviously a non-starter.
But then I thought, maybe I could make a homemade hot sauce from them. That way, I could use it a few drops at a time to add a reasonable amount of heat to all sorts of dishes.
So, does anyone have any suggestions for hot sauce recipes? Or any alternate suggestions?
An African hot pepper sauce, which would normally be made with Scotch Bonnets, comes to mind. Use a tiny bit on eggs, meat dishes, beans, fried sweet potatoes (my favorite), and basically anything savory.
While their heat demands careful handling, they have a fruity flavor which pairs well in fresh salsas with ingredients like mango or pineapple, which can be served with fish, chicken, pork, etc. - a google search will turn up plenty of recipes.
The are moderately to very hot but usually not insane. I have an unusually high heat tolerance and I will eat them raw without any hesitation but most people can appreciate some amount of them. I recommend dicing them very finely and cooking less than one pepper as a start. They go well in any dish that can use some heat but start small and chop them finely enough so that you don’t risk getting big pieces in a single bite.
They do have a nice flavor and contribute heat to a dish very effectively but it is very quantity specific. The large supermarket where I shop only has them some of them time but I buy all of them when they have them available because they can last fairly well for multiple weeks. The cashiers that I know are always a little mystified because they don’t even have a produce code in their system for them and several of them have claimed I am the only person that ever buys them. When they don’t have them, I buy jalapenos and poblanos as a substitute but I don’t like their flavor as much and they aren’t nearly as hot.
Be careful though. I just bought a big bag yesterday and decided to make my own personal dinner out of 7 chopped habaneros, a bag of kale, a chopped sweet potato and garlic all stir fired together. It was excellent but extremely spicy even for me. More spicy than I realized as it turns out. I woke up this morning to take a pee and I might as well have been pissing pure fire. I had to meditate before I could even get dressed because the deep burn was still there and was throughout most of the day. It is mostly gone now but be careful if you aren’t used to eating them because they are a few steps above the other common hot peppers.
If you like vinegar-based hot sauces, you can use a habanero or two in Puerto Rican pique. It really is basically just a spiced vinegar, not so much a chile pepper sauce. I also add a little bit of oregano to that recipe. Personally, I use habs most often in jerk paste (traditionally, Scotch bonnets are used, but they’re very similar peppers.)
They really do fall under “insane” for the vast majority of people, though, in my experience. I’ve grown ghost peppers and Trinidad scorpions, and, really, some of my hottest habaneros I’ve had rank right up there with those.
Get rid of the ribs, too. I wish it really removed that much heat, though, as I love habaneros but even with the seeds and ribs removed, my family can’t eat them, so I save habaneros for “bachelor’s nights” when the wife and kid are out of town. (I personally don’t bother with gloves, as my skin doesn’t seem to be sensitive to them, but if you wear contacts, be very very careful and wash the hell out of your hands and get scrubbed good under your fingernails after mincing them or, better yet, do wear gloves. I’ve learned the hard way…)
I smoke habaneros every year, so I’ve had to de-seed and de-membrane them. The best way I’ve found is to use a paring knife to cut around the “crown”, and then you can carefully pull the pepper by the stem while holding onto the body. The membranes and seeds will stick to the crown, and you’ll just be left with the flesh of the pepper.
What’s your technique for smoking and how do you store them? That is, do you hot smoke them and then dry them, or do they dry out while you’re smoking them, or do you not dry them and use them some other way? I always end up with way too many peppers at the end of the season and am looking for new ways to use them beyond dehydrating them, saucing them, or freezing them. I’m set up to hot smoke, but not cold smoke (without jury rigging something up.)
My first experience with habaneros was with a batch of homemade chili. I was concerned, because I had heard tales of how hot they were. I poked holes in a few of the habaneros with a toothpick, and floated them in the chili as it cooked. When the chili was done, I removed them. Maybe you could try that without getting the full dose.
Again, I know my limits. The fact that the peppers will last a few weeks fresh does me no good, because there is no way I could use them that quickly. One of those big batches of chili I mentioned will feed me for a week, and that’s just a fraction of one pepper. I need some way to preserve them for a year or more, to have a realistic chance of using them. even sven, will that African sauce last that long? It might be what I’m looking for.
Meanwhile, the flavor of the pepper itself is likely to be irrelevant, or close to it. With the level of dilution that I’m going to need, only a trace of the flavor is going to remain.
And I think that the peppers I have are actually Scotch bonnets, rather than habaneros, though the two terms seem to be used pretty much interchangeably: They’re only about as long as they are wide, and with a very wrinkly shape.
I hot smoke them. All I do is put 'em upside down on a baking sheet (after coring them) and toss them in the Big Green Egg for about 6-8 hours or so. Then I grind them up in a coffee grinder. It makes a really spicy smoky powder that I end up putting on just about everything.
this is a myth, the seeds aren’t the source of heat. The ribs/membranes they grow from are, and if the seeds seem hot it’s because some of the capsaicin-laden fluid has contacted them. usually the seeds are discarded because they tend to be bitter-tasting depending on the specific chile.
It’s also worth mentioning that, spiciness notwithstanding, habaneros are bitter, and will add an undesirable flavor to a dish if it’s not balanced out, which is why you usually see it paired with mango or peach when it’s the main pepper in a salsa. Serrano peppers work well to balance out the flavor if you’re using them in something you don’t want to taste sweet, like a curry.
I personally like to use one or two, seeds and all, for a little extra heat in my chili (which also has a bunch of green peppers for flavor).
And as mentioned before, once you start working with them, do not touch your eyes, nose, lips, or delicate personal regions before thoroughly washing your hands, your knife, your cutting surface, and anything else the cut peppers came into contact with. In fact, you should probably wash them twice.
(I personally don’t bother with gloves, as my skin doesn’t seem to be sensitive to them, but if you wear contacts, be very very careful and wash the hell out of your hands and get scrubbed good under your fingernails after mincing them or, better yet, do wear gloves. I’ve learned the hard way…)