Clear Pepper Sauce

Dialing the heat

The 225 g of cayenne or tabasco above is the middle of the road. The pepper you steep sets both the heat and the character, and because this is steeped rather than blended, a pepper's flavour comes through more clearly than it would in a puree.

Keep the total weight at 225 g whatever you choose, so the brine stays in balance.

Milder, still bright

• Fresno or red jalapeno, all of it. Fruity and gentle, closer to a table sauce than a weapon.
• Half fresno, half cayenne. A cleaner middle ground than cayenne alone.
• Any of the above with the seeds and ribs removed. Most of the heat is in the ribs, so this cuts it substantially while keeping the flavour.

The standard

• Red cayenne, seeds in. Straightforward heat, not much else, which is what you want when it is going into something.
• Tabasco peppers, seeds in. Slightly fruitier and a little hotter.
• Red serrano. Grassier and sharper.

Hotter, still clean

• Two parts cayenne to one part red habanero. The habanero brings a floral, apricot note; a third of the batch is enough for it to dominate if you are not careful.
• Half cayenne, half Thai bird. Sharper, faster heat, no fruit.

Very hot

• Three parts cayenne to one part ghost or scorpion. That is a quarter of the batch, and it is plenty. Wear gloves, work in a ventilated kitchen, and be careful about what you breathe near the pan.
• Do not go past a quarter. Past that the sauce stops being something you can dose by the drop and starts being something you dose by the toothpick.

A note on colour. Keep the peppers red, or at least all the same colour. Green peppers give a sauce with a tint that shows up in a cream sauce, which defeats the point of a clear one.

Adjusting after the fact

Heat is easier to add than to remove.

• Too hot: cut the finished sauce with more of the vinegar-water-salt brine, made fresh and cooled. It dilutes evenly because there is nothing suspended in it.
• Not hot enough: a longer steep helps a little, more alcohol helps more, and capsicum oleoresin (with 0.1% polysorbate 80) helps most.

Using it

Start with a few drops. It is much hotter than a blended sauce, because the alcohol pulls capsaicin out of the seeds and nothing dilutes it afterwards.

To boost a sauce without changing its colour

A few drops into a cream sauce, a vinaigrette, a pan sauce or a soup. The liquid is clear, so the sauce stays the colour it was.

As an injection base

Cut 1 part sauce to 3 parts stock. Per cup, add 14 g salt, and 7 g sodium tripolyphosphate if the cook includes a long hold. Rest 24 hours, filter cold again, and use a single open-tip needle.

As a spritz

Steep in straight apple cider vinegar instead of the vinegar and water, and skip the salt. Start at 1 part sauce to 8 parts ACV. Wait until the bark has set before spritzing anything.

If it is short on heat

Dose capsicum oleoresin after straining, with 0.1% polysorbate 80 to keep it dispersed. Adding heat after the fact is easier than steeping longer.