Tabasco Sucks

Today I spent like 45 minutes cramming hot peppers into little bottles to preserve them. I already had a bunch of prig ki nus in lime juice, and after I went to the Container Store and bought three squeeze bottles, I was ready to attack some other varieties.

First I worked on a bunch of Tobago seasoning peppers. I'm very impressed by these things. They're about as hot as cayenne peppers, which means you can eat them like cherry tomatoes if you're brave. And they have the nice, fruity chinense-pepper flavor you expect from habaneros. I seeded them, put them in a food processor, and ground them up with lime juice and a clove of garlic. I also added a Clementine (seedless tangerine) and some turbinado sugar. I plan to add salt eventually.

After that I sliced some Jamaican hot chocolate peppers into big chunks and simply soaked them in lime juice.

For the third bottle, I used yellow habaneros. These are wonderful. They're very fruity and painfully hot. Everything a habanero should be. I pureed them with garlic, lime juice, a Clementine, sugar, and garlic. I'm a little afraid to go near the bottle.

I fixed myself another quick utilitarian dinner (Foreman grill dolphin plus canned collards), and I squirted some of the Tobago pepper sauce on it. It's excellent. Much better than any sauce I've bought, and I've bought some good ones.

You might want to try this yourself. Use whatever moderately hot, sweet pepper you can find. Or you could combine habaneros with sweet red peppers, to get a good balance of flavor and heat.