BBQ Habanero Scotch Bonnet Ghost Chili Hot Sauce Recipe

Here’s an easy how-to for creating, and bottling, a great homemade hot sauce made from fresh habaneros, scotch bonnets, and ghost chilis!

Thanks to buddy Randy for growing a bumper crop of chilis this season.

Now it’s my job to turn them into sauce!

What a bunch of beauties.

See the two wrinkly looking orange ones in the top left corner of the picture – home grown ghost chilis!

I found a nice looking recipe on the gardenweb website.  I’ve adapted the ingrediants slightly as follows:

• 3 scotch bonnets whole
• 4 habaneros whole
• 1 ghost chili whole
• 1 roasted red pepper whole (from a jar)
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 1 medium onion (roughly chopped)
• 1 medium carrot (roughly chopped)
• 6-8 cloves garlic
• 1/8 tsp cumin
• 1/8 tsp corriander
• 2 tblsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt (natural – no additives)

Step 1 – Prepare the Canning Materials

I used the smallest mason jars I had available.  I think the smallest one (shown in picture at end) is probably the best size.

Canning materials need to be cleaned and sterilized before work can begin.

Canning materials cleaned.

Fill all of the jars with boiling water and place the sealing lids in a shallow dish so they can be submerged with boiling water as well.

Sterilizing the jars and lids.

Step 2 – Roast the Chilis, Onions, and Garlic

Now the fun part!  Make little foil trays for the peppers, onions, and garlic cloves.

Onions ready to be cooked.

Chili roll call.

Chili roll call:

• 4 Habaneros – left
• 3 Scotch Bonnets – right
• 1 (dastardly) Ghost Chili – front and centre

Spritzing the veggies with olive oil.

Using an olive oil spritzer I lightly coat everything.

Bring on the fire!

I got the BBQ good and hot and then turned it down to medium high heat.  Both trays went on the top rack.

All set to roast on the top rack.

Nicely roasted chilis.

After 6 minutes the nicely roasted peppers were removed from the BBQ.

Garlic toasted. Onions, not quite.

The garlic was done but the onions needed a little more time.  I took the garlic off and let the onions cook for another 2 minutes.

Everything nicely flame-b-queued.

The onions after a few extra minutes.

Step 3 – Mix and Blend

In this step we’ll put all the ingredients together and blend.

Remove the stem from the chilis.

I added a roasted red pepper.

Sea salt, cumin, and corriander.

Everything but 1 cup of vinegar.

Let 'er rip.

Mmmm... whipped chilis.

Step 4 – Cook

The original recipe I was following didn’t involve cooking the mash.  I thought though that bringing to a boil for 5 minutes would make it safer to can.

Straining the mash.

Push the mash through a strainer.

Boil boil toil and trouble.

I brought the strained mixture up to boiling for 5 minutes.

Scoop off the foamy stuff.

Step 5 – Can

Now comes the time to put the sauce in jars.

Carefully (unlike me) pour into jars.

Take a sealing lid from the dish they were sterilized in.

The final product!

So, you can see the yield of the recipe above.  Would have been nice to have more of the smaller jars like the one on the left.

What’s the plan for the half-filled jar???  I’m taking that little baby to work tomorrow and I’ll get everyone who tries it to post a comment below.