Reverse-engineering a hot sauce recipe

April 1, 2022 11:00 AM

I was gifted some homemade hot sauce. The person who made it is unavailable for questions. I'd like to have some idea of how he made it.

The only thing I know about the sauce is that it's made with hot peppers and sweet potatoes, though I'm sure that there are other ingredients. I'm mainly interested in having some idea of how the person achieved the wonderful consistency. The sauce is thick and velvety smooth (no chunks at all). Also, there was no separation, even after the sauce sat in my 'fridge for a month. It has roughly the consistency of thick pea soup. This very short Youtube video shows you the consistency, as I pick up some sauce with a spoon and let it drip back into the bowl.

I've made hot sauces before, and they're usually disappointing, at least in terms of their texture. They're runny and chunky – and they separate easily into a liquid layer that floats above the solids.

Any ideas on how this sauce was prepared? I'd love to duplicate this effect at home.

posted by alex1965 to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

At least in my house, the difference between chunky/watery and smooth and creamy is "a little bit of cornstarch and a professional-grade blender." Cheap blenders or cuisinarts produce the results you describe, but a Vitamix blender is a different beast that produces that "oh, this is how restaurants do that" consistency.
posted by mhoye at 11:28 AM on April 1, 2022

That looks/sounds like xanthan gum, to me. There might be something else going on, but if you haven't tried using that (and blending it smooth, possibly using a food mill or fine mesh strainer to help), I'd start there.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:29 AM on April 1, 2022

I have a bottle of small-batch commercial hot sauce made from sweet potato, and it doesn't have any stabilizers in it - it's sweet potatoes, onion, and vinegar as the first three ingredients. I agree that it's probably the commercial-grade blending machine keeping this intact. (Sweet potato starch does exist in Asian markets and could be used as a same-ingredient stabilizer if you wanted to!)
posted by cobaltnine at 3:24 PM on April 1, 2022

Xanthan or guar.

It's possible to get a sauce that doesn't separate if you're willing to put it on a stir plate for several days, but if you see a homemade hot sauce that doesn't separate, it's probably a stabiliser. I've found even vitamixed sauces will eventually separate in the bottle. (It's solved with all of two seconds of shaking, so not sure why it's an issue for so many people.)
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 5:30 PM on April 1, 2022

For really really fine texture you're looking at running sauces through screens. Tamis are one type of screen used for this. I'm guessing the starches in the potato also act as a stabilizer. It's also likely as others have said that xanthum or guar gum were used, in small amounts they stabilize and add body, in large amounts they can get kind of slimy. If you've ever had a diet vinaigrette salad dressing that was kind of slimy it was because they used those additives to make up for the lack of oil as an emulsifier.
posted by Ferreous at 11:07 AM on April 2, 2022