Old Mexican Family Secret Hot Sauce

This is the recipe that my wife's Mexican family has been making for many many years. Actually my mother-in-law is a pretty well known cook/caterer in El Paso,TX- Anthony, N.M. and I have seen lines, phone calls, random people showing up looking for her sauces, tamales, and masa.

What I call a hot sauce and my wife refers to as a salsa, is a incredible roasted Jalapeño / Lime style hot sauce. It is very diverse sauce because its simple with great ingredients. We use it on Chicken, Steak, Fish, our Taco nights.. I even mix a little into our burger meat (We put this $*!% on everything). I have a Filipino neighbor who thinks this is the best sauce he has ever dipped his fresh caught fried fish into. This is a sauce that when you make, make a lot, there will be requests for more. Be prepared to hear a lot of "Oh my gosh..."

* on a side not. Don't be afraid of the Jalapeños, with the cilantro, garlic and lime juice they blend well together and adds just a great amount of heat.. lets say medium-hot wing heat. Now adding the Habaneros (3) your moving to a hotter side.. like hot and just beyond. My mexican wife and her family refer to that as "the white boy hot". I hear that a lot when we visit and my mother-in-law cooks. I will notice some things being cooked separately sometimes, like i have a allergy or special nutritional needs.. lol.

So like a lot of great foods, it starts with simple fresh ingredients.

I will give you specifics on actually exact quantities but really at the end of the day please change towards your tastes. I will give you some guidelines so if your a newbie you will get a better idea of what your walking into (heat) wise.

List of Ingredients:

10-12 Jalapeños peppers

10-12 Cloves of Garlic (peeled)

1-3 Habanero peppers

1 Bushel of Cilantro

Salt- teaspoon

Pepper- 2 teaspoon

Olive oil- tablespoon

Roasting the Jalapeño, Habanero and garlic

In Bowl: Combine Olive Oil and Jalapeño and toss to coat.

Transfer Jalapeños to Aluminum lined broil pan and roast under broil until dark

Same bowl toss Habanero and Garlic and roast. (I roast after jalapeño, same pan)

*More Detail on this process below:

What we want to do is roast the Jalapeño, Habanero and Garlic.

*Use a light amount of Olive oil and toss and use a tong to place Jalapeño onto the broil pan, do not Dump peppers and oil onto pan. The additional oil could catch fire, i have done it before. Not a bid deal, but you will find yourself looking in the oven saying "uh oh". I just slide the pan down to the lower rack in the oven and blow it out.

Take a Bowl and add your olive oil (the tablespoon) and put into a bowl and add your Jalapeños and toss to "lightly" coat the all Jalapeños and transfer to a foil lined pan (something that can get heat.. like a broiler pan). You could also use a cast iron skillet, but try to stay away from a cookie non-stick pan, it might damage it.

In your oven you want to put the rack up to the highest position and turn your oven to Broil. We want to roast the Jalapeños and get that great dark roasted look. They almost look burnt, but that is what we are going for.

When I roast mine, I tend to close the oven for a few minutes to really build up the heat and get the roasting going, but most ovens will shut off the broil if it gets to hot (when you broil your suppose to leave the door open, but I close it and check and rotate the jalapeños every 2 minutes or so, and opening the door will allow heat to escape and the broil function switches back on)

Once the Jalapeños are finishing up, roasted and dark on all sides (4-5 rotations) you then add the Garlic and Habaneros. They cook very quickly and can easily burn if not attended to. So same process as the Jalapeños, toss the Habaneros and Garlic in the left over oil and transfer to the same pan as used and roast. Check and flip every minute (about 5 in total)

Prep and Process the peppers

- Remove / Cut off the very tops of the Jalapeños and Habaneros

Put in to food processor or chop up and add to bowl

Add garlic to Food processor or chop up and add to bowl

Add a pinch of salt and 5-6 turns of pepper (or a tablespoon or 2)

Cut off the bushel of cilantro. I usually cut just below the lowest leaves on the bundle. Rinse off / Wash and squeeze out any additional water.

Add cilantro or chop up and add to bowl.

Give the food processor a 5 second blast, scrape down sides and then an additional 3 sec. More or less depending on how you like it.

If using a bowl and not a food processor simply chop up all the ingredients and mix together.

Now transfer your mix to a container you can keep in the fridge.

Finishing

Take your container with the "pulp or mix" you just made and top off with fresh lime juice.

*Details below

Ok, so now your mix is in a container you will keep in the fridge. Yes as you can see we like to use the Chinese soup containers. Now we are going to add the limes.

I usually will add 7-9 limes worth of juice. You will see making this a few times how you use your sauce. I like more lime juice and just a small bit of the "pulp" where my wife spoons this stuff onto everything.

We used to use a mason jar with a lid from a parmesan cheese container (green one that one side opens for a spoon to go in and the other side has the 3 holes) it worked well but leaked at the threads so we just use this now.

**Best part of this hot sauce, when it starts getting low on lime juice you can simply squeeze more lime juice into it as needed.

Your done.

Keep this in the fridge. Use it on all kinds of stuff. I love a good steak, never been a steak sauce guy, but this stuff is killer on a ribeye, vegetable and beans.

*Also the Jalapeños aren't terribly hot, but adjust heat with the habaneros. 3 is pushing it for me, where as my wife calls that the "white boy version". So add or remove as necessary. You could always roast them and add later to make a little hotter. And top off with lime if it gets low or you feel like you tend to go heavier on the lime juice part when using.