How To Make Homemade Hot Sauce
First things first, put on a pair of disposable kitchen gloves. If you dont wear gloves when chopping peppers, you will get pepper oils in all your finger joints and wrinkles and fingernails. And you will regret it as soon as you go to rub your eyes or, worse, go to the bathroom.
So once you’ve got your gloves on, it’s time to chop up and weigh the peppers.
Use a kitchen scale to weigh the chopped peppers in a large bowl. You should have about 10 ounces.
Remove the seeds and ribs for a more mild hot sauce. Leave the seeds and ribs in the peppers if you want a hotter sauce.
Jimmy usually does a mix of both some peppers with seeds, some peppers without. This gives a nice moderate heat with plenty of pure fresh pepper flavor.
If you’re leaving the seeds and ribs in the peppers, you can just chop them into rings instead of slicing them in half lengthwise first.
When you add the shallots and garlic to the kitchen scale with the chopped peppers, you should have about 15 ounces total of peppers, shallots, garlic, and peppercorns. If you have less than 15 ounces combined, add more peppers, shallots, or garlic until the scale reads 15 ounces.
Stir all of the ingredients together in a small sauce pot.
Bring to a boil, then cover the pot and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Be careful when you remove the lid that vinegar steam is pretty potent! It will definitely clear out your sinuses and make your eyes water.
Create A Scalable Recipe
If you want to start a sauce business, you probably already have a delicious recipe your friends and family rave about. The question is, can you scale your recipe? In other words, can you produce your sauce in bulk year-round with affordable ingredients while maintaining a consistent flavor? Ask yourself the following questions to determine if your sauce recipe is fit for retail.
- How long does it take to make a single sauce recipe? If creating a small batch of your sauce is time-consuming, then it isnt the best recipe for mass production.
- Are the sauce ingredients expensive? You need to sell your products at prices customers will pay, but you also need to turn a profit. Expensive ingredients make this challenging.
- Are the ingredients available year-round? You may have a delicious seasonal sauce, but if its ingredients arent available year-round, it cant serve as the backbone of your business.
Use our recipe converter to figure out how to make your sauce in bulk.
Keep Sauce In A Plastic Container
You can store your hot sauce in plastic containers such Tupperware or other name brands. The acidity of the hot sauce should not dissolve the plastic but if you are planning on using plastic containers to distribute and sell your sauce you will want follow certain procedures to sanitize and seal your bottles.
I will often use small travel size plastic containers if I have several varieties of sauces that I am working on. These are very inexpensive, available at most stores and dont take up much storage space. As I have said before I dont need to permanently store, sterilize or sanitize a plastic container for a sauce if I dont care for the recipe.
A lot of sauces from small independent manufacturers have a unique bottle shape to them. If you have a select blend of peppers, spices and vinegar type you may want to seek out a unique bottle type to make your sauce stand out even more, if you are setting yourself up for a profitable business.
Also Check: What Can I Use Instead Of Soy Sauce
How To Sterilize Bottles And Jars For Canning
wikiHow is a wiki, similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 16 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time.wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, 92% of readers who voted found the article helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 302,378 times.Learn more
Fruit, vegetable, and meat preserves keep for a long time if properly prepared and canned. Its important to sterilize the jars and bottles before canning so that the food doesnt get contaminated with bacteria. See Step 1 to learn how to get your equipment ready by sterilizing it according to USDA standards.
Use Scissors And A Hairdryer
20% OFF OF 2″ alt=”OLD BAY HOT SAUCE 10oz BOTTLE >20% OFF OF 2″> Using scissors and a hairdryer to shrink-wrap hot sauce bottles is very similar to the above method and may be preferred if you dont have an impulse heat sealer and a heat gun. Here are the steps:
If you still struggle with the shrink-wrapping process, heres a very helpful video to watch:
Also Check: 1 Million Scoville Hot Sauce
How Do You Seal Hot Sauce Jars
The bottles are sterilized in a hot water bath for approximately 10 minutes after they have been boiled. Remove them from the water, drain out any extra water that has collected within them, and use a tiny stainless steel funnel to fill the bottles with the hot sauce/vinegar mixture . I use caps that have been sterilized. Thats all there is to it.
Dont Miss: Chick Fil A Honey Bbq
Breaking Into The Homemade Hot Sauce Business
Many hot sauces begin as a homemade concoction, which grows into a legend among friends and family and eventually develops into a business that one hopes is lucrative. Maybe you run a restaurant, have a sauce that your customers crave, and decide to take the plunge and bottle it, to sell at the restaurant or to a wider audience. Or maybe you are a hot sauce collector, have tasted hundreds of sauces, and think you could make one thats better. Perhaps youre a computer programmer by day and an amateur sauce maker by night, you have been dreaming up culinary concoctions and think youve stumbled upon a great formula. Whatever your pathway to getting sauced, the first step is to come up with a recipe. There are several aspects to consider.
As you develop recipes, think about cost. I once came up with an awesome recipe for ginger-fig chutney, which I still adore I make it every fall to give away as gifts. People love it. However, the price of the ingredients made the chutney prohibitive to bring to market. Plus, I could get fresh figs only in the fall. When tested using ground ginger, it wasnt good, and dried figs didnt work either. So the recipe died on the vine. If you make a sauce at home, say, with fresh artichokes, consider that youll want fresh artichokes when you bottle it, too.
Don’t Miss: Tgi Jack Daniels Sauce Buy
Simple Craft Hot Sauce Glass Bottles
Dimensions :Weight:Material:Care & Cleaning:Warranty:TCINUPCOrigin
The above item details were provided by the Target Plus Partner. Target does not represent or warrant that this information is accurate or complete. On occasion, manufacturers may modify their items and update their labels.
We recommend that you do not rely solely on the information presented. If you have a specific question about this item, you may consult the item’s label, contact the manufacturer directly or call Target Guest Services at 1-800-591-3869.
How To Make Green Hot Sauce
Green Hot Sauce is made just like Red Hot Sauce, you just use jalapeños instead of fresnos. The green sauce is a little more mild than the red. To make green sauce:
You May Like: Where To Buy Raos Sauce
Recommended Reading: Empty Hot Sauce Bottles Walmart
Did You Make This Recipe
Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on
Cuisine:Category:
This recipe was originally published on May 16, 2017. The amounts have been adjusted in this updated recipe to make it easier to work with smaller amounts of peppers. The original amounts were:
- 1 1/4 lbs cherry bomb peppers, or your choice of fresh chiles, tops removed
- 6 garlic cloves
Use Mason Jars To Store Your Hot Sauce
Mason jars are easy to pour into and can be used in the future for storing other foods as well. I use these for a variety of things in my kitchen. Get a four pack of the 16 oz. size from Amazonhere. Also, if you are limited in space, they are stackable as well.
These jars are clear glass so you can see the mixture consistency and color, which is great if you are fermenting peppers like the picture on the left. This is my go-to container when I am making a new recipe or experimenting with different flavors. The final product will always go into a woozy bottle, especially if I am testing it out at a friends get together.
Read Also: Hot Ones Hot Sauce Chipotle
Decide How Youre Going To Sell Your Sauce
If youre just starting your sauce business, you may assume you can produce your sauce in your home kitchen. While this may be the best strategy while you test your product and grow your brand, it limits where you can sell your sauce. Cottage food laws regulate whether entrepreneurs can produce low-risk foods for sale from their homes. Cottage food laws vary from state to state. They apply to micro businesses with low revenues. Below, we outline the typical ways cottage food businesses can and cannot sell their products. Check with your state and local guidelines to adhere to the cottage food laws in your area.
Determine The Best Price For Your Sauce
With the first five steps of starting a sauce business in place, you can generate a profitable price point. To price your sauce, you need to find out what your competitors are charging. If youre planning to sell a specialty salsa, go into gourmet and natural food stores in your area and look at the prices of competing salsa brands.
If youre interested in mass-producing a product, your co-packer will give you a manufacturing price. With that number in mind, go into retail stores and see if the stated manufacturing price allows you to charge a competitive amount and still earn a profit. If not, you may need to adjust your recipe and use less expensive ingredients. After you browse the aisles, research your competitors sales figures to make sure people are paying their asking price.
Read Also: Can I Eat Tomato Sauce On Keto
Gather Ingredients & Supplies
Now that youve figured out what type of peppers you want to use, its time to make the hot sauce! Start by gathering all of your equipment and ingredients. While gloves are not essential to making Hot Sauce, they will save your hands, and you wont be afraid to touch your face after. I use disposable nitrate gloves all the time in the kitchen, and they are one of my favorite kitchen tools. I use them to handle poultry, mix meatballs, or in this case, touch hot peppers!
Also be sure to have a well ventilated space when youre making hot sauce. The spice from the peppers can definitely become overwhelming, so be sure to turn on the fan in your kitchen, and crack a window.
If youre giving the Hot Sauce away as gifts, start by sterilizing the bottles that you plan to use.
Flip Cap Beer Bottles
Lastly, you can take a page from the home brewers out there and opt for a flip cap beer bottle. These flip caps not only look cool, they also contain a seal to help keep in freshness. As these bottles are a little more expensive, opt for them if youre mainly making hot sauce for home use and you want something with a little extra style sitting on your kitchen counter or dining table.
UPDATE NOTICE: This post was updated on September 5, 2019 to include new content. It was originally published on April 10, 2014.
Learn the scale. Get our ebook for free!
Read Also: Hot Sauce Software For Hotels
How Do I Bottle And Sell My Home
A homemade hot sauce should should be on the acidic side of the pH scale with a pH of about 3.4. If it is on the alkaline side of the scale it will need to be poured into the bottles at a temperature between 140 and 180 degrees and then turned upside down until it is cooled. This is the hot fill and hold method used for filling glass woozy bottles.
Bottling a hot sauce for sale will take more than simply pouring it into 5-ounce woozy bottles and screwing the cap down tight. The product needs to stay fresh in the bottle for months as it is distributed through your shipping channels that you will set up.
In addition, there could be serious health risks associated with the improper bottling techniques that could lead to Ebola or Salmonella poisoning. This blog post examines the proper methods of bottling your homemade hot sauce and explores the option of mass producing and selling hot sauce out of your home.
How To Bottle And Sell Your Own Bbq Sauce
Besides the general steps for how to start a sauce company, there are special considerations for how to bottle and sell your own BBQ sauce. Depending on the types of BBQ sauce youre selling, youll need to choose between the hot and cold packing methods. Hot packing is ideal for acidic sauces, so if youre selling a vinegar or tomato-based BBQ sauce, this is the packing method for you. If you specialize in Alabama white sauce or Carolina Gold sauce, consider the cold packing method.
BBQ sauce companies can market their products directly to barbecue restaurants. While a BBQ joint may have spectacular smoked meat, that doesnt mean they have a premium sauce to serve it with. Contact local BBQ restaurants and pitch your sauce to them. Becoming the signature barbecue sauce of a local restaurant provides a steady stream of revenue because they will purchase your sauce in bulk. The restaurant may even allow you to sell bottles of your barbecue sauce in their store.
Recommended Reading: Is Garlic Sauce Keto Friendly
Where Cant I Sell My Cottage Food Products
If there are no cottage food laws in your area or you find them too restrictive, use a commissary kitchen to prepare your sauce. Commissary kitchens are rentable commercial kitchens. They allow small businesses to prepare their goods in an FDA-approved kitchen without investing in an expensive facility. If you prepare your sauces in a commissary kitchen, you can sell them in every forum.
Dont Miss: Costco Raos
Food Safety Controls Of Hot Sauce
When making a hot sauce, the pH must be less than 4.6. Although hot sauces may not necessarily be water-bath canned, they are typically bottled and most likely will have an anaerobic environment that would be conducive to the growth of clostridium botulinum. Therefore, the pH of the hot sauce must be less than 4.6 and an acid, such as vinegar, should be added to ensure that the pH is below 4.6, as clostridium botulinum cannot grow in a pH less than 4.6. Additionally, hot sauces should be brought to a boil. The University of California Davis has noted the following of clostridium bacteria:
Do botulism bacteria die at boiling?The bacterium Clostridium botulinum has two forms. The active form is also known as a vegetative form, and the dormant form is called the spore form. The vegetative cells are much easier to destroy. Destruction is usually measured by a combination of time and temperature the hotter the temperature, the shorter the time required to kill a given number of bacteria. There are many types of C. botulinum, and they can vary in their heat sensitivity. But if all particles of food have reached boiling temperature , then it would be reasonable to assume the vegetative cells of C. botulinum have been destroyed. The spores, however, would survive.
Dont Miss: Texas Pete Hot Sauce Recipe
Don’t Miss: Beer With Tomato Juice And Hot Sauce
Point Gross Cost Calculation System
To figure out how much you should sell your product for, you need to calculate the total cost of producing it. Add together the following three things to calculate your gross production cost:
Food Service Establishment Permit
A Food Service Establishment Permit is available through the county per the state you live in and will be needed if you are processing sauce in your home kitchen. This is not easy information to find and I would recommend emailing the department in your county. This reminds me a lot like working in construction. You can have a full team of architects, engineers, construction managers and developers all providing their input but if you dont please the local inspector, you are done.
The permit that I applied for in New York State is only a few pages long and there isnt a cost for first time applicants. No license is received until physical inspections of the preparation area have been completed, and have passed their inspection requirements.
If you are not selling food out of your state, you are not subject to the FDA regulations and you may not have to register as a facility. However, if you are expanding sales outside of your state or if you plan on selling your hot sauce online you must register as a facility.
Read Also: Melinda’s Pizza Hot Sauce
