It's Time To Make Serrano Pepper Hot SauceSalsa Picante Makes A Great Holiday Gift!

Turn those garden Serrano peppers into hot sauce.

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Fall Brings Peppers
Fall in Northern California is generally the time to pull out your summer crops and plant broccoli, kale, beets, lettuce, garlic, and other winter crops. The one plant that is still in the ground, however, and that's always late to produce is our pepper crop. 

But now it's time to pick them before the weather turns bad so I picked all the serrano peppers and most of the red pimento and poblano peppers. But what do you do with 3 pounds of serranos when only one is needed to flavor a dish? Well, let's make hot sauce!

I blogged a hot sauce recipe a few years ago using jalapeños and serranos but this year I'm using serrano peppers combined with a sweet red pimento pepper. It's still turned out super hot, but the sweet pepper cut the heat a little bit and gave it a nice flavor.

Sweet red pimento peppers cut the heat a bit and adds a lovely flavor to the hot sauce.

This recipe makes a lot of hot sauce (10 cups) so feel free to cut it down. Or, if you have lots of serranos and want to make this big a batch, fill some cute little bottles and give them away as holiday presents.

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Salsa Picante with Serrano Peppers
Vegan, Gluten Free
[makes 10 cups]

Requirements
High Speed Blender
5 quart or larger, enamel-coated Dutch oven 

Ingredients
3 pounds serrano peppers
1 pound sweet red peppers
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 cups chopped onions
12 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons salt
3 to 4 cups water
3 1/2 cups white distilled vinegar

Directions
Cut the tops off the serrano peppers. Then, cut them down the middle lengthwise. Set aside.
Remove the tops and the inner seeds from the sweet peppers. Dice and set aside. 

Heat the oil on medium heat and cook the onions and garlic for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. 

Stir in the serrano and red peppers along with the salt and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. 

Add the water and cook uncovered, on a medium boil, stirring occasionally, until the peppers are very soft and the water is greatly reduced but not completely dry. (I started with 4 cups of water and it took over an hour for it to cook down so maybe 3 cups of water would have been enough.) 

Add water and boil.

Cook until almost dry but not completely.

Unless you have a really big blender, you will have to blend in two batches.
Place half the cooked peppers and half the vinegar in a blender and process until smooth. Repeat with the rest of the peppers and vinegar.

Unless you have a 12 cup blender, you will have to process the peppers and vinegar in two batches.

Pour the hot sauce into jars and refrigerate. It will last for over a year!

Or pour into small bottles with a cute label and give them away as holiday gifts!

Salsa Picante makes a yummy holiday gift!

Instant Pot Great Northern BeansWhen Should You Salt Beans?

White beans with olives, artichokes, peppers, and avocado.

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Easy to make in your Instant Pot
It's easy to open a can of beans but it's not all that hard to make them from dried beans in your Instant Pot. Here's a simple recipe that's perfect for summer since it can be served warm, at room temperature, or even chilled. Bring to a pot luck, serve as an antipasto when entertaining company, or make it a meal on a bed of greens. 

To Salt or Not to Salt
A while back I read a post on Serious Eats about whether or not you should salt your beans when soaking and when cooking. You should read the entire article to appreciate the testing but their results were: "For the best, creamiest, most flavorful beans, season your bean-soaking water with one tablespoon of kosher salt per quart (about 15 grams per liter), rinse the beans with fresh water before cooking, then add a pinch of salt to the cooking water as well." 

This goes against everything we've been told about how salt during cooking will cause beens to be tough or that the skins will burst. If you've listened to this advice, you probably realize how tasteless unsalted beans are and how hard they are to flavor after they are cooked. After reading this article, I've started soaking my beans in salted water and adding salt to the pot when cooking. They come out great! So give that a try when you make this recipe.

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Mediterranean Great Northern Beans
Vegan, Gluten and Dairy Free
[makes 6 servings]

Plan ahead to soak the beans the night before.

Ingredients
For the beans:
1 cup dry Great Northern Beans
Water
2 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided
1/4 cup small diced roasted red pepper
4 marinated artichoke quarters, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons sliced kalamata olives
1 avocado, diced

For the dressing:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1/8 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste

Directions
The night before: Pick through the beans for rocks and rinse. Place them in the Instant Pot and cover with 4 cups of water and 2 teaspoons of salt. Cover and let sit over night.

Drain and rinse well. Return to the Instant Pot and cover the soaked beans with 1 1/2 cups of water and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Secure the lid, press the “Manual” button, and set for 6 minutes at high pressure. When done, press the “Off” button and let the pressure release naturally. After 10 minutes you can release the pressure. Then, remove the lid carefully with the steam vented towards the back. Drain the beans and set aside.

Most of the skins are intact and the beans are soft and creamy.

Combine all the dressing ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add the drained beans, the roasted red peppers, artichokes, olives, and avocado. Gently mix to combine and serve.

Dehydrating Serrano (Hidalgo) Peppers

Dried Serrano peppers will spice up your winter recipes!

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End of Season Harvests
I'm just wrapping up the summer gardening season. The peppers and eggplant are done producing, the rains are coming, and in about a week, I'll finally be finished canning, freezing and dehydrating - hooray! 

I grew a single Serrano pepper plant and while it was growing, I only pulled a few green peppers from it to cook with. So by the time it was ready to harvest, it had almost two pounds of beautiful ripe, red peppers varying in size from one to two inches. 

This is probably a life-time's worth of Serrano peppers, but I will dehydrate all of them and give them to whomever wants to spice up their life a bit! Last year I used them to make a lot of hot sauce, some of which I still have. It lasts a very long time in the refrigerator! Here's a recipe for Hot Sauce using Jalapeños and Serrano Peppers. 

Serrano peppers, also known as Hidalgo peppers, are spicier than jalapeños but not as spicy as habaneros. To find out how hot your favorite pepper is, check out this Pepper Scale.

Dehydrators
I have enjoyed my Excalibur Dehydrator. When I first bought it, I wondered if I'd ever use it, but I use it all the time. Besides drying fruit and vegetables, I use it to make crackers, fruit leather, and other things. There are many other brands on the market that vary in size and price so pick one that suits your needs.

Dehydrating Serrano Peppers
Place the peppers in a colander and wash them well. Wrap them in a kitchen towel and dry completely.

Wash in a colander

Wearing plastic gloves, cut the tops off of each pepper. I sliced the larger serranos in half and left the smaller ones whole but if I had to do it over, I would slice them all as it took two days to dry the whole ones. 

Place them on the woven dehydrator sheets without the non-stick solid teflon sheets so that the peppers get maximum air flow. Place the sliced peppers with the seeds facing up so they don't all fall out in your dehydrator.

Sliced peppers

Whole peppers

Put the dehydrator in a well ventilated room and open the window so the fumes don't get overwhelming. 

Place the sheets in the dehydrator and set the temperature to 125 to 135 degrees.  The sliced ones will be ready in about 10 hours but may take longer. The whole peppers may take a day or more. Make sure they are fully dried so they will not mold when storing.

Dried, sliced peppers

Put the dried peppers in glass jars and store in a cool, dry place.

To cook with the dried peppers, crumble them soups or stir fries. To make cayenne-like pepper, you can grind the dried peppers in a spice grinder and sprinkle on food. However you use these spicy little guys, they can boost your metabolism and help you burn more calories!

Make Your Own Hot Sauce

Turn late season peppers into hot sauce!

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When Garden Peppers Turn Red
At the end of the season, peppers are finally ripening and turning red. In fact, you may notice that your entire jalapeño plant has gone from green to red as well as your smaller, hotter peppers such as hidalgos and serranos. If you don't have any in your garden, I'm sure there will be plenty at your farmer's market or grocery store. Whether you are growing them or buying them, it's a great time to whip up some hot sauce for later use.

Spice up your Health
If your stomach can tolerate the heat, hot peppers have some real health advantages. Capsaicinoids, the substance that give peppers their heat, have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. They are good for the heart and can also increase your metabolism and help your body burn fat. 

Here's a pretty simple recipe to use up those red peppers in your garden. Doug and I used jalapeños and hidalgo peppers because that's what we grew but you can substitute other too. Different peppers will give you different flavors and levels of heat. We left the seeds in when we made this but if you want a milder sauce, you can remove them. 

Jalapeños (large) and hidalgo (small) peppers

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Hot Sauce
Vegan, Gluten Free
[makes about 3 cups]

Requires a high speed blender

12 ounces red jalapeño peppers
4 ounces hidalgo or serrano peppers
1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 small onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
3 cups water
1 1/4 cups white distilled vinegar

Wearing gloves in a very well ventilated room, thinly slice the peppers.

In a 5-quart enamel-coated dutch oven, or other non-reactive pot, heat the oil to medium-high heat and add the peppers, onions, garlic and salt. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. 

Add water to the pot and cook the peppers until they are soft and the water is greatly reduced but not completely dry.

Add water to pot

Cook down until the liquid is reduced.

Let the mixture cool in the pan.

Place in a high speed blender with the vinegar. Blend until smooth. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more vinegar. Adjust salt if needed.

Pour into jars or bottles. Store in the refrigerator. It will last for several months or more.

Use to spice up any dish. You can also add it to mayo for a milder dipping sauce.