Hottest Peppers For Sauces
Did you know that the hottest pepper in the world has to be handled with gloves and full Personal Protective Equipment? If you touch it with bare hands, your hand becomes numb for days. However, some of the hottest peppers in the world are rarely used to make sauces. It’s kind of difficult to make sauces with peppers that could cause blindness. Yikes!
The pepper you use to make sauce depends on your heat tolerance and the flavor profile you want to achieve as well as the pepper color. With making hot sauce, its recommended that you stay within one color family. You can mix and match different types of peppers but to end up with red hot sauce, stick to that color family. Some of the best peppers for sauces include:
Jalapenos
This medium sized pepper originated in Mexico and its now grown worldwide. It’s known for a popular flavor and mild spice or heat level. It is a hot one but not too hot. It’s best when it becomes red as it gets a sweet touch compared to the green one.
Chili Pepper
It’s one of the most popular peppers for hot sauces. It’s a classic for hot sauces and is one of the spiciest peppers. It comes in different varieties of sizes, spiciness, and colors. Mature peppers are spicier and hotter than the ripe ones.
Habanero Pepper
These are about ten times hotter than the chilies and Jalapenos. This makes them great for hot fermented sauce. The pepper loses a bit of hotness during the preparation of hot sauce but it develops a fruity, floral, sweet flavor. The green ones have a milder taste compared to the orange ones.
Serrano Pepper
It looks similar to jalapenos but is a better option for hot sauce as its spicier. When you choose a serrano pepper, go for the mature peppers that have wrinkled lines. These are hotter and spicier. It has a white pith inside which has most of the heat so it’s possible to regulate the sauce’s spiciness using it.
Manzano Pepper
Manzano is an orange pepper that is less spicy and less hot than the habanero and serrano. It has sweet citrusy notes and ranges at the same level of hotness with the jalapenos. They have an apple shape but unlike other peppers, they contain black seeds which can be used as additional spice for your sauce. The manzano pepper is for people who like milder hot sauce with an insanely rich flavor.
Above are just some of the hottest peppers you can use for your hot sauce. The fermentation process or the pepper making process might lower the heat level on some of these sauces but they remain very hot and spicy with a touch of sweet flavor.
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