Bird’s Eye Sauce

About a year ago, I read and bookmarked this post from @FranksFarmstead

https://www.reddit.com/r/hotsauce/s/jsmZRcGiDO

and promptly saw that my grocery store did not carry Birds Eye chilis and so I filed it away for later. I always peruse the peppers at any stores I go to and never had any luck – closest thing was green Thai chiles. And then the other week we went to H-Mart and what do I see but big trays of exactly what I’m looking for (as well as some red finger peppers that looked interesting). I grabbed what I thought was plenty, took them home, and quickly attempted the recipe. I didn’t have quite as much as the linked recipe, but hot sauce I usually pretty forgiving in my very limited and amateur experience so I went for it.

483 g bird’s eye ~117 g red finger chilis 2 bulbs garlic 1 onion 5 cups vinegar 1 tsp Thai chile powder 1 tsp paprika 1.3 tbsp salt

I didn’t want to strain the sauce (because my new mighty vitamix is surely powerful enough to liquify anything) so I upped the ratio of vinegar a bit. I thought a bit of paprika would add color, and I also bought some Thai chile powder at h mart so I threw a teence of that in as well.

Veggies under the broiler for about 8 minutes, boiled in the vinegar with everything else for 10 minutes, into the blender until everything was smooth.

🥵

The flavor really popped about two days after making it. It is hot – it is hot to start and it also sneaks up on you. I don’t eat Carolina reapers for for fun or anything but I have a pretty solid tolerance and this for sure accomplishes the goal of making me sweat a bit. Consistency is closer to sriracha but that’s about what I expected. I’m enjoying this on eggs every morning.

Anyways, thanks to FranksFarmstead for the inspiration – I may try again and strain it next time to get something closer to what you made.