very hot peppers

1. Pepper sauce for peas & greens.

2. Chopped/processed as part of a wet rub for grilled pork or London Broil.

That purple pepper is fonky looking. How big is it — bell pepper sized?

I don't think it's quite that big. Tell me more about this pepper sauce.

"Pepper Sauce" is a bit of a misnomer. Basically, heat vinegar to near boiling*, pour into bottle jammed full of hot peppers, let steep for a week or more before using. Result: spicy-hot vinegar for pouring to taste over blackeyed peas or cooked greens (collard, mustard, turnip). It's kind of a poverty-economy version of hot chow-chow, now that I think of it. If it seeps out from under the peas and soaks into the cornbread, so much the better.

My parents used to have a bush that made thousands of little bright red peppers no bigger than a jellybean, too hot to eat but made GREAT pepper sauce. Most often made with cayenne peppers.

*OPEN A WINDOW FOR THIS ONE

When you say "vinegar", what kind do you mean?

make jerk pork - those scotch bonnets (or habaneros if you prefer) are perfect for it.

Okay, I just got off the phone with the pepper sauce experts (ie parents). Wash and stem the peppers but don't cut them, then pack the bottle as tight with them as you can get. Fill with cider vinegar, then put the bottle in a pan of water and bring it to a simmer. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then take the bottle out, cap it loosely and let it cool. The level of vinegar will have gone down 2-3 inches as the peppers cooked then cooled, also as the vinegar has soaked into the hollow centers. Add more vinegar up to the neck, add a couple of drops of olive oil, cap it tightly and let it sit a month — voila, pepper sauce. Apparently the olive oil is an impenetrable membrane and makes the sauce a lot hotter when you finally use it.

much obliged, that sounds better than boiling vinegar.

I made some the boiling-vinegar way last year... if you survive the process, you get pepper sauce and deodorize the kitchen at the same time. Now I know why it wasn't as hot as it should have been — I never knew about the olive oil trick.