A couple years ago for christmas I decided to make some hot sauce for the hubby.
I figured it would be a hoot, but it turned out to be much more! I made it a couple times, first the wrong way, i put the vinegar in with the jalapenos, and then the normal way.
It’s definitely hot and a dab will do ya! I would put some into a vat of bland salsa and woohoo – delicious!
After that the hubby and decided giving this yummy as a gift to others would be fun as well. We like to try and make gifts vs buying crap or gift cards and this would be good for a couple people on our list. But… neither of us had ever canned and our families had never canned, so it was all new territory… But we survived, our marriage survived and all of our cans stayed sealed!
[buymeapie-recipe id=’26’]If you want to save some of this for later, it’s time to get your canning supplies ready!
We found this site and used some of their information to do our process!
- Setup your workspace – we used 2 of our big pots for boiling the jars, and a medium one for the lids. One in the center front is for the hot sauce!
2. For canning the lids and jars need to be hot – hence all the pots! Get them boiling! The lids needs to just be at a simmer as to not hurt the seal (not a rolling boil, just little bubbles) Jars should be covered by 2 inches of water. Suggested on the site was having more jars than necessary. I like that idea!
3. Place a towel where your finished product will go
4. Have tools – there are things that they sell for canning – like a funnel, jar grabbers, and a thing to know what an inch is from the top. Bah – we don’t need that stuff! So we went with our BBQ tongs, no funnel – i picked the best spoon, an extending magnet (to grab the lids from the scalding water) and we had a tape measure… Which ever way you lean, have them clean and at the ready!
5. Once everything is at the ready – make the hot sauce
Pro tip – plastic gloves. Keep your from rubbing your eye or touching anything on your body after all that 20+ jalapenos worth of oil have touched you… I promise, just get some. Wear them.
6. Take jar out of the boiling water (using those handy tongs), place on that fancy prepared towel. Fill your jars to 1/4 inch headspace (that means a 1/4 inch from the top)
7. CLEAN THE RIMS – this make sure your seal is good. Use a damp towel to wipe each one down, just do them all, don’t guess.
8. Using your fancy magnet tool, take a lid from the hot water, dry it off and place it on top of your jar
9. Screw on the band. Hold the lid in place with one finger in the center, and use the other hand to screw on the band.
10 Repeat steps 6-9 for each of the jars in one of your pots.
11. Place jars back into the water. Bring it to a boil. Once boiling set a time for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let them sit for another 5 minutes.
12. Remove the jars again from the water and place them on that fancy towel. Leave space between them to cool. DO NOT MOVE THEM AGAIN. As they cool you will hear them seal – they make a cool popping sound and you feel all gooie inside knowing you did it!
13. After 12 but before 24 hours – test the seals. Confirm there is a divit in the middle, take off the band and GENTLY attempt to lift the lid. If you can’t lift it and there is a divit in the center, you were successful!
Lots of steps, but once you understand them it’s pretty straight forward! Definitely tricky to get the feel for it, but worst case you re-do the whole process (omg – did i just say that?) or pass them out to your neighbors to use now!
Verdict:
Workd pretty well and i’m kind of into trying to can other things. Yup – another hobby i didn’t need.
