This recipe is adapted from Modernist Cuisine at Home’s Buffalo Hot Sauce recipe. Yields 250 grams (~9 fl oz).

Habenero Hot Sauce and Mash

Ingredients:

200 g canola oil

80 g white onion thinly sliced

80g garlic thinly sliced (really shoot for 160g total between the garlic and onion, oftentimes I get lazy and will end up 30g garlic 150g onion or so)

2-3 large egg yolks (50g)

35 g vinegar or 15 g lemon juice (to taste with the salt)

2 habanero peppers sliced

15 g paprika powder

15 g red cayenne pepper powder

Kosher salt to taste. 10g is a good starting point.

Think of this recipe as three components that can be modified. First we’ll be creating a flavored oil with our pungent ingredients. Then we add an emulsifying agent, egg yolks, and finish off with some acids and salt.

1. Combine oil, onion, garlic, paprika, cayenne, and habanero into a pan and heat to a slow simmer for 30 minutes. You don’t want to burn the ingredients but extract the flavors.
2. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a small bowl. Push down to get as much oil out and reserve the mash — it goes great with tacos and potatoes like chipotle peppers in adobo. Let cool 15 minutes or go real slow with adding to the egg so you don’t end up cooking the eggs accidently
3. In another bowl place your egg yolks and blend in the flavored oil you extracted in step 2.
4. Mix in lemon juice or vinegar
5. Salt and add acid from (4) to taste

I like to store this sauce in a squeeze bottle like this and serve chilled with tacos, meats, and potatoes. It even goes good on popcorn.

To adapt this recipe you can think of it as 3 separate components as I mentioned earlier. Hot sauces like Franks Red Hot use water and tomatoes for the base and vinegar for the acid. Cholula uses arbol and pequin peppers but a similar base to Franks — recipe here. So feel free to try different bases, different levels of heat, and different acids to get that perfect flavor your after. I love white vinegar in mine.