Mermaid Kitchen: Peri Peri Sauce

I love hot sauce. Hot sauce is life. In particular, I love peri peri sauce. We get through a lot in our household and it is not the cheapest item. Between that and an empty bottle of Kraken rum, I had an epiphany. Make. My. Own.

The finished thing.

It did not take long to find a suitable recipe online, from Whisk Affair, for me to try! It even teased that it would taste just like Nandos, which is the best way to hook me in. I have actually wanted to make a hot sauce for some time now, but always assumed the ingredients would be hard to come by and too complicated to make. But that was really not the case.

INGREDIENTS

• 250g Red or orange pepper(s)
• 100g Red onion
• 50g Chilis - the recipe recommends African chillis, I just got what Morrisons had
• 10-12 cloves of Garlic
• 1 tbsp Paprika
• 1 tbsp Red chilli powder
• 1 tbsp Dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp Black pepper powder
• 1/2 cup White vinegar
• 2 tsp Salt
• 1/4 Olive oil
• 3 tbsp Lemon juice - the recipe also called for lemon zest, but I left that out

METHOD

1. Chop the pepper(s), chilis, and onion into chunks small enough for a food processor.
2. Whizz them and the garlic through a food processor. Hand food processors work too, that is what we used.
3. Blitz together with the spices and liquids in a blender. I used my smoothie maker and fear the bottle will now forever taste of garlic!
4. Cook over a medium heat for 15 minutes.
5. Leave it to cool.
6. Decant into a bottle.

So how did it go?

Well, I am a doofus and forgot to put the chilis in. I had to add them in after the whole thing had been cooked because that's when I realised they were still in the fridge! It only took a minute to whizz and blitz them up; hopefully the chili flavours infused while the sauce was cooling. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Other than that, it went great. Our little hand food processor is really effective and it does not take anywhere near as much effort as I thought it would to use it. And my Breville blender got things not lumpy for the first time in its life! Seriously, I have to chew my smoothies. But this came out as smooth as the pictures from the original recipe, which was an indicator I was doing something right!

It was difficult decanting it into the Kraken bottle, however. I would recommend going for something with a wider top. My Kraken bottle was too beautiful to not use and I'd committed to putting my peri peri in there! It took some careful funnelling and poking to get it all in. We got there in the end, with plenty of over-spills to lick up.

How does it taste?

Amazing. But not like Nandos. Don't get me wrong, it is delicious. I could eat it for days. And probably will. And will run out rather quickly. (It is supposed to only have a 15 shelf life, so I'm supposed to eat it quickly?) But it is not like Nandos. It's a lot thicker and lacks that processed, sugary edge theirs have. But if I wanted that, I would keep buying the stuff. Plus, this stuff definitely tastes better than the off-brand peri peri sauces you can buy.

It is really fresh and the garlic comes through very nicely. (You would have thought so, with 12 cloves in it!) I was worried with all the vinegar in it, it would just taste like vinegar but it really doesn't. It has a warming spice to it which is not over bearing, which just cries out for adapting the recipe to try make it spicier! (Though I will note that I did get a chili flake caught on my left tonsil when trying it and the left half of my face went numb!)

Will I make it again?

Oh yes, definitely. It was super easy to make, the most time consuming part was waiting for it to cool down. I already have some ideas on varying it, like adding more chilis/chilli powder. I also might try it with the lemon zest next time. I omitted it because I thought it would be a waste of a lemon to use three tablespoons of juice and a bit of lemon zest. But if I made a lemon drizzle cake around the same time, then the fresh lemon would not be wasted.

I do, however, want to try more recipes to see if I can achieve a more hot sauce-esque consistency. That way I might be able to create my own hot sauce - how cool would that be?!

Will you be making some peri peri sauce? Know any other good hot sauce recipes? Let me know!

Listening to: Lego Movie 2 Soundtrack