Really hot food porn!

OK, there's been a lot of food porn lately. That doesn't make this a food blog, it just makes me busy in the kitchen. Fear not, I plan to keep up with Temp Town. Just not right now, since Temp Town is really dull at the moment. Although I think I have something coming. But that is for later.

Right now, we have hot sauce food porn. Because we have reach the end of the harvest, we have been bringing in the marginal tomatoes (to beat the freeze) and all of the peppers. Naturally, this means I have a lot to do on the food-preservation front. In addition to jarring tomatoes, I have to deal with the peppers. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and make hot sauce, which uses peppers and tomatoes. So here we go.

 To start with, you will need lots of peppers and lots of tomatoes:

As it turns out, because of the end of harvest thing -- where I used a bunch of tomatoes for the chicken parmesan food pr0n Saturday night and a bunch are still mostly green -- I had to go to the jars. Still, you will need about 8 cups of diced tomatoes (the recipe says it is acceptable to use canned diced tomatoes), 1-1/2 cups of seeded peppers, 4 cups of white vinegar, 2 tsp of canning salt, and 2 tsp of pickling spices bound up in a cheesecloth packet.

First, seed your peppers. Wear gloves, or risk pepper dick. Trust me, you don't want that to happen:

Take those peppers, and dice the hell out of them:

Add them to your diced tomatoes, the vinegar and the spice bag. Bring it to a boil, then reduce and simmer for about 10 minutes:

The recipe I used wanted me to shove that shit through a food mill to filter out the nasty chunks, like stems and stuff, but I don't have a food mill, so I did a little food processor action on the mix:

After food mill or processor, you should simmer that stuff for about 20 minutes. Once shit is done, ladle it into canning jars. I used pint jars because I had them. The recipe calls for 1/2 pint jars, which I think is better.

Put the jars in a large pot -- a canning pot would be good here, people -- and cover the jars with water. I also had three quarts of tomatoes to can, so my water was deeper. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, bring that to a boil and jar at a full boil for about 10 minutes. Let the jars cool, and test for seal -- press your thumb -- or any other finger, I don't fucking care -- against the lid. If it has some give to it and makes that cricket-like popping sound, you need to try again with the water bath because the seal didn't take. I strongly recommend getting some literature or instruction on canning for this. Still, this shit is pretty basic, so you should be able to hang with it.

You need to let your hot sauce sit for at least a week after you can it so that the flavors can meld. After that, I am told it is good for about a year. On the other hand, I have read stuff that shows some canned products are good 100 years later and that here is  freaky-deaky group of folks who look for really old canned shit. What the fuck to I know. I hope the hot sauce burns your lips.