We love all things spicy. REALLY spicy. I was pissed when Sriracha changed their formula and became milder. That shit was the bomb and now I have to slather it on my food just to get some heat. We go through Tapatio like it’s going out of style. It’s only taken about a month for me to go through half a large bottle of it at work. Only I use it for maybe 4 meals per week. We have hot sauce on eggs, pizza, soup, and salad. I put cayenne in hot chocolate and flourless chocolate cake. Yes, we LOVE spicy.

We’ve been fairly unsuccessful growing hot peppers. The summers just don’t get warm enough. Our jalapenos arrive sweet. But Esperanza gave me a tip this year and it worked like a charm. She told me her grandfather’s secret of getting hot peppers. Plant a habanero with your other hot peppers and they’ll pass their magic onto them. Hot diggity dog, we got hot peppers – and lots of them.

We’ve been using them as needed in dishes, but I wanted to make sure to preserve some other than just pickling them. I searched for a great hot pepper sauce recipe. I thought I had found one. It didn’t say anything about it being a hot and sweet sauce but I should have known that it would be as I dumped an equal amount of sugar into the vinegar. I ended up cooking it down so far that it turned into more of a hot pepper jam than a sauce. While it’s really tasty, it wasn’t really what I wanted.

I wanted a vinegary concoction that had great flavor but wasn’t sweet. I looked quite a bit and never really found any that I liked. Another problem I was having was that I had a TON of peppers and most hot sauce recipes didn’t really convert well as they were based on volume measurements rather than weight measurements.

I decided to wing it and I’m really glad I did. This came out fantastic while also being incredibly hot. You can, of course, mix in sweet peppers so it’s not as hot. I used some sweet peppers like Red Marconi and mild peppers such as Anaheims, but I mostly used fish, Fresno, habanero, serrano, Thai Dragon, Kung Pao, and Aci Sivri varieties.

The secret to a really good hot sauce, and actually any good condiment or pickle is to always add a touch of sweetness. Not so much that it would be considered sweet, but just enough to cut the acid. This was one thing I found missing in most of the recipes I came across. While you can use regular sugar, I like the deepness of brown sugar for this sauce.

Ingredients: 
1 lb peppers – mix of hot and sweet depending on the amount of heat you want
1 c cider vinegar
1 Tbs salt
1 Tbs brown sugar
5 cloves of garlic – pressed

1. With gloves on, cut off stems of peppers and run through food processor until the juices begin to release. Put puree into a heavy stock pot.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and over medium high heat, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Using a stick blender, puree even further until there are no more lumps.
4. Fill hot, sterile, 8 oz jars leaving a 1/2″ head space.
5. Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

I probably chose the two most difficult fruits to find commercially to combine into one jelly. Rose hips are available, but they are generally dried, and difficult to remove the seeds from. But if you’re lucky enough to have a quince tree and rugosa roses this is a fantastic way to combine them into a deliciously bright jelly.

I was excited this year when my rugosa roses started producing hips. The bright orange and red balls that show up after the flower petals fall off are renowned for their high Vitamin C content and are popular for teas. They are also good as a stand alone for jellies, but because the fruit has little naturally occurring pectin in them, you have to add commercial pectin. Rose hip jelly also requires gallons of hips to make a relatively small amount of jelly. Being that this was our first year of getting hips from our two rugosa roses, I knew that I wouldn’t have enough to make a full on jelly.

As it turns out our quince tree went gang busters this year and it’s only in it’s second year. Quince also has a lot of natural pectin in it and since the fruit is generally more woody than other pome fruits, cooking it is usually required.

It became apparent that these two fruits would be a lovely combination. All I had to do was wait for the quince to ripen. In the meantime I picked the rose hips while they ripened and froze them. I found that freezing them made them a lot easier to clean when it was time to make the jelly. You want to make sure to remove the tannic seeds from the rose hips or the jelly will become bitter. With the frozen hips you simply thaw them, tear off the sepals (petal like structures) and squeeze out the seeds. The fresh hips proved a little more difficult and I ended up with seeds everywhere.

What you will need:
 5 lbs Quince fruit, peeled, quartered, cored and sliced
1 lb fresh rose hips, seeds removed
Water
Sugar
2 Tbs lemon juice

1. Put the quince and rose hips together in a large pot. Add water until you can see it just under the top layer of fruit. Bring to a boil.
2. Boil fruit, uncovered, until it is soft. Strain liquid into a new pot. Save fruit for other uses if you want.
3. For each cup of liquid add 3/4 cup of sugar. Add lemon juice and bring to a boil. Watch it carefully so that it doesn’t boil over.
4. To check consistency: put some ice in a bowl. Scoop up a small amount of liquid with a spoon and place the spoon on the ice to get it to cool quickly. Turn spoon sideways. If the liquid has jelled onto the spoon and doesn’t appear syrupy then it is done and ready to can.
5. Ladle hot jelly into sterilized jars. Put on sterile lids and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Preserves were the first thing I learned how to can. We got gobs and gobs of various fruits every year – from nectarines to strawberries to figs to persimmons and everything in between. They sit in our freezer taking up space.

Then we decided that preserves would make awesome gifts for people. I haven’t bought a gift for Xmas for anyone for 3 years now and my bank account loves me for it.

I make preserves differently than most people. I don’t add pectin. Why not? Because I don’t want to spend the money not only on the pectin but also on the additional sugar it requires. Because frutose (the sugar in fruit) tastes sweeter than sucrose (table sugar) these preserves are actually slightly sweeter tasting because there is less sugar in the recipe to “cut” the fructose.

My general rule of thumb is 2 parts fruit to 1 part sugar by volume. For every pound of fruit I also add a tablespoon of lemon juice to up the acidity and increase the natural pectin. Sometimes you will need to vary the ratio depending on the fruit. Usually the length of time I boil it can help work out any issues though.

I add the fruit to a thick bottomed pot and then pour the sugar over it. I turn the heat up to medium-high and stir until the fruit and sugar liquefy. It will boil and foam up. Just keep stirring. When the foam goes down only keep it on the heat for awhile longer. I usually keep a serving spoon nearby and take samples of the mixture while cooking it to determine if it’s thick enough. It should still be runny, but the consistency of maple syrup at room temp.

Immediately ladle into sterilized jars, wipe the rim clean and then screw on the lid. It’s recommended to put through a boiling water bath for 10 min. or so.