Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce

We typically do not get overwhelmed by a raw ingredient but this one just blew our mind away!!

Special thanks to a great cook, colleague and a dear friend for giving "N" deadly red hot chillies known as Ghost peppers globally and Bhut Jolokia locally. They have been recorded as "the hottest pepper in the world" by Guinness book - 400 times hotter than the Tobasco sauce. Now the question is what can you do with such a nasty ingredient. We did not really have a clear answer but wanted to try making a hot sauce that can be further used as an ingredients in other recipes.

This one is for the spirit of experimentation and to massage one's curiosity! The result was on expected lines. We got a really really hot, hot sauce but just a touch of it is enough to spice up a dish. The question is...

Are you game to try?

If not, you can still use this recipe to make hot sauce using regular chillies found in market but reduce the use of sugar to half.

Ingredients

8 – 12 Ghost Peppers (not found easily, but can be sourced from north-eastern Indian)

6-7 cloves of Garlic – Minced

½ inch piece of Ginger - grated

2 medium onion – chopped

2 tomatoes – chopped

2 carrots - chopped

2 tsp Brown Sugar
½ cup rice vinegar (yes, this much is needed to bring out the flavours of the chillies)

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Salt

Method - This was tricky. You are not supposed to touch the chillies with bare hands and should use gloves. Also you must keep the fumes away from eyes while cooking. We had to be really careful

1. Roast the peppers in oven for 10 - 12 mins at 200 degrees.

2. While the peppers are roasting, in a pan, heat oil and sauté onion and garlic.

3. Add chopped carrots, tomatoes and add ½ cup water

4. Let it cook for 10 mins on slow. Cover it with Lid

5. Add brown sugar and salt.

6. Now, in a food processor, gring chillies (chop of their stem and take out the seeds to reduce some heat) and all the ingredients of the pan after cooling them down.

7. Now strain the mix through strainer to get fine mixture. The strainer needs to be really fine to ensure you do not get any pulp.

8. Add water and vinegar to strained mix and cook it till you get desired consistency. Be careful to net let any fumes enter your eyes.

9. Cool it down and store in a container.

10. Allow flavours to develop in 2 – 5 days.