Everywhere we went in the British Virgin Islands to eat, there was a nondescript recycled jar or bottle on the table filled with a homemade hot sauce unique to the eatery. The Husband rediscovered his love for heat and he mentioned on the way home he'd like to try and get some hot sauce at home. We looked at Nino's but they didn't have anything that looked right so I decided to look up some recipes. I found one that kinda had the right look to it and had the name "The Ultimate Pepper Sauce Recipe" so I decided to give it a whirl.
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| Bitter Melon |
I even found some unusual ingredients at Nino's - a bitter melon and green papaya. I cut open the bitter melon and tried it and... it was bitter. I'm not sure why anyone would choose to add that to a recipe! I decided to not add very much, but it was pretty to look at once it was cut. I tried the green papaya and it was not sweet, it tasted like a cucumber or something, so I was starting to get concerned that this sauce was going to be way too hot with nothing much to balance it out.
The recipe called for 15-20 scotch bonnets but all I could locate were habaneros so I should've known this was a bad idea. It also called for cilantro and juice of lime, garlic, and an entire lemon so I thought there was some hope for it to have some great flavors! It sure smelled delicious cutting up all these ingredients.
Once everything was prepped (I used rubber gloves and wore my sunglasses to avoid any pepper oils getting into my eyes), all I did was throw it into the cuisinart and blended. I had to try it to adjust for seasonings and BOY it was hot. This was not like the hot sauces we had in the BVI, this was overkill. Needless to say, I now have two jars of Too Hot Caribbean Hot Sauce sitting on the counter which will probably be there for a while. The Husband did like it but he just physically cannot consume too much of it.
Some of our favorite hot sauces we tried in the BVI were at the Clubhouse Restaurant at the Bitter End Yacht Club (served with our breakfast buffet) on Virgin Gorda and Foxy's Bar (served with lunch) on Jost Van Dyke. If anyone has any kind of similar recipe to those, let me know!!
Too Hot Caribbean Hot Sauce
15-20 hot peppers (scotch bonnet or habanero)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups vinegar
10 leaves of Shado Beni or 1 cup cilantro
6 cloves of garlic
1 small bitter melon (caraili)
1 lemon or 2 ripe limes
Juice of 4 limes
8 pimento peppers – optional
1 carrot – optional (helps to balance heat from peppers)
Prep ingredients and blend in processor.
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