Passing A Passion For Food And Cooking Onto Children

Insight into Choosing the Right Chillies for Hot Sauce

There is no denying that every good hot sauce starts with quality pepper. If you are a cooking enthusiast and would love to try out your culinary skills in making hot sauce, then the best place to start from is your local fresh vegetable and fruits grocery. At your local store, you will find a wide variety of chilli peppers from across the world. The variety is what makes it difficult for newbie cooks that are planning to make their hot sauce at home. That said, you should not feel overwhelmed because, with little research, you can still make your first batch of hot sauce. This article highlights factors you must consider when buying chilli for hot sauce. 

Use Fresh Chili Pepper -- Chili pepper suppliers understand that some customers love whole fresh chilli peppers while other clients want pepper that is already ground into finer particles. Whichever option you take, make sure that a supplier offers fresh chilli pepper. However, it can be challenging to tell how fresh ground chilli is because it must be dried first before grinding. Therefore, if you are not careful, you might end up buying ground chilli that has sat on the shelf for several weeks. Instead, try opting for fresh crushed chilli. That way, you don't have to do the work of grinding it yourself, but you can be sure that it is fresh. Make sure that your supplier has fresh chilli if you want quality hot sauce—the fresher the chilli, the more potent the hot sauce is. 

Heat Range -- It is common knowledge that any chilli, regardless of the type, is spicy and hot. However, there are different levels of hot that you can get from the different kinds of chilli pepper that are available at your local grocery store. The level of heat that a particular type of pepper packs is measured using the Scoville Scale. For example, mild chilli types, such as pepperoncini, measure between 100–500 Scoville heat units (SHU). When buying chillies, you have to consider how spicy and hot you want your sauce. For mild hot sauce, choose chilli that ranks lower on the Scoville Scale and vice-versa for a hotter sauce.

Skin Firmness -- One way that you can tell whether chilli is fresh is by inspecting the skin for imperfections. More often than not, you will see the skin marred with brownish cuts. It might turn you off, but it is a normal occurrence and doesn't affect the chilli's flavour. However, you need to be careful with how firm the skin is. Ideally, you want to avoid skin that appears and feels soft and mushy as this might indicate the presence of mould. Firm, fresh skin gives the chilli a little bit of weight, which is ideal for hot sauce.

For more information on the best way to buy chilli, contact a food supplier near you.