Easy Hot Pepper Sauce {Pepper Vinegar}
This Hot Pepper Sauce is a classic Southern recipe. It’s a delicious pepper vinegar that you can put on just about anything to give it a little extra boost of flavor!
Hot Pepper Sauce is one of my favorite southern recipes. It’s so easy to make. Just add a bunch of hot peppers to a jar of vinegar and then let everything marinate for a month or 2. When it’s ready you have a spicy vinegar that you can add to all sorts of things.
My grandma used to always have a jar in her pantry and we’d put it on everything. My favorite is a splash of pepper vinegar on my collard greens.
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What is Pepper Sauce Made of?
- Hot Peppers – The peppers are the key. You want something spicy. Traditionally it would be small little hot peppers like tabasco peppers and that is definitely what I recommend if you have them. They don’t sell them in stores in my area and I don’t have a garden so I use jalapenos or, in the case of my most recent batch, Fresno chili peppers. Serrano peppers, habaneros, Thai chili peppers….any of these can work you just want them to be spicy and to fit in a jar.
- Vinegar – Plain white vinegar is all you need for this recipe. I am sure other types of vinegar would work as well but I’ve never tried it.
- Salt – Every recipe needs a little salt. The salt helps to pull the flavor from the peppers into the vinegar.
You can play around with adding other whole, dried spices such as peppercorns if you’d like to add a different flavor to the mix.
How to Make It
Fill the Jars – Stuff your peppers into your jars making sure to pack them in.
Boil It – First you combine the vinegar and salt and bring it to a boil.
Pour It – Pour the hot liquid over the peppers in the jar, filling the jar to the top before screwing on the lid.
Wait – Now you wait. Place the container in a cool dark place for 2 months to let the flavors come together.
For this recipe I used 2 wide mouth pint jars. Wide mouth mason jars make getting all of those peppers in there so much easier!
Since we aren’t actually canning this sauce you don’t have to use a mason jar. You can use any glass jar that can be tightly sealed.
Not exactly. Hot pepper sauce is peppers marinated in vinegar for a few months until the vinegar takes on that spicy flavor making it a pepper vinegar. Hot sauce uses the same ingredients but often has a few other spices added and then everything is blended together into a liquid. It has a stronger pepper flavor and much less vinegar.
Yes! When your vinegar starts to run low you can top off your jar with a little more white vinegar. The peppers will begin to lose their potency over time but you can keep a jar going for a year or more this way without losing that spicy flavor!
How to Store It
The vinegar is very acidic and because we use so much of it in this recipe you don’t have to store this dish in the refrigerator. Just make sure it has a lid the tightly fastens to keep it sealed and store it in a cool, dark place like your pantry. It will last indefinitely this way.
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Hot Pepper Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup White vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
- 30 small Hot peppers (or 20 large peppers)
Instructions
- In a small saucepan combine the vinegar and salt. Bring to a boil over medium high heat.
- Divide your peppers between two wide mouth pint jars. Pack them in so the jar is filled (do not break apart the peppers). See note 1.
- Pour the heated vinegar over the peppers filling the jars to the top.
- Tightly fasten the lid in place and store jars in a cool, dark place for 2 months.
- After two months you can use the pepper sauce. Keep it stored in a cool, dark place such as your pantry and when it gets low top it off with more vinegar (no need to boil the vinegar again).
Notes
- You do not have to use a wide mouth pint jar. You can use any glass container that can be tightly sealed and that your peppers can fit into.
Nutrition
I have been trying to remember my mother’s and Grandmother’s recipe for pepper sauce and this is the closest I have found. Thanks
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You comment made my day 🙂
This recipe was soooo timely and easy. Planted 4 hot banana pepper plants that have proven prolific.Can’t use them fast enough. Can’t wait to cook with this hot vinegar sauce this fall and winter
I saw that you can add vinegar to the pepper sauce as needed, but can you add more peppers? My garden tends to produce in waves. I’ll collect maybe 5 peppers at a time but those peppers will go bad before more are ready to be picked from the garden. I was thinking about making pepper sauce and adding the peppers to the jar as they ripen. Will this cause issues with the sauce?
I haven’t done it but I think it would be totally fine. Just make sure you clean them well before adding them.
*** Prevent Burns – NEVER pour boiling or extremely hot liquid into glass containers not meant for the purpose of canning and preserving!
My sister poured boiling water into a glass pitcher to make iced tea. The glass shattered causing third degree burns to her abdomen and thighs. Particularly bad was where the hot water heated the zipper and button on her jeans.
****Using only heat resistant glass made for the purpose of canning/pickling/preserving is extremely important to avoid serious injury****
Do they need to be refrigerated after opening?
Hi Lis, no you don’t have to refrigerate the hot pepper sauce after opening. I do suggest storing in a cool dark place like a pantry. It should last up to 3 months at room temp. To make it last longer you can store in the refrigerator for up to 6 months.