A smokey barbecue
sauce in Italian style!
Sweet yet sour,
smokey awesome sauce!
Introduction
This sauce has been through 4 or 5 generations by now. It’s definitely one I’m always proud of bringing to a barbecue party with friends! It combines many Italian touches, with fiercely hot peppers, chipotle from dried jalapeños with fresh basil. No not Basil Fawlty, although I’m pretty sure he’d be up for crazy sauce like this too. I’ve always been into the smokey hot sauces, but I wanted to have my own too. This one in fact was inspired by blend no. 7 from the late Chili Blender company, that also has smokey touches from chipotle. I’ve adjusted the recipe many times over the years, so what you get here is v. 3.0 or something (as some generations didn’t vary so much). This one is really great with grilled steak, with burgers, in your spaghetti sauce, on your omelettes, I could go on. Convinced? It’s not a complicated one, so give it a go! In case you were wondering, I put in 5 Carolina Reapers and 2 Moruga Scorpions in this one.
Ingredients
The ingredients shown here make up for about 1 to 1.5 litres of this smokey sauce. Note I went quite strong with the peppers here, so adjust to your liking! With this amount of acidity from the limes and the red wine vinegar, this sauce will easily keep for many months in the refrigerator. Over time, the sauce will evolve as some mild fermentation will happen as it ages, the sauce will “ripen” if you would like to call it like that. I definitely do!
- 20g Fresh Basil
- 2 Bell red bell peppers
- 3 Tomatoes
- 3 Onions
- 5 Cloves of garlic
- 3 Limes
- Can of tomato concentrate
- 20g Chipotle
- 10g Cumin
- 200ml Red wine vinegar
- Peppers to taste (I’d recommend about 3 Habaneros for starters, go stronger if you know you can and want to)
- Pinch of salt to taste
Preparation
This one is really easy to do! Clean the vegetables and chop all of them coarsely. Toss everything in the blender. Add the juice of the limes to the mixture, along with the tomato concentrate. Do not forget the chili peppers, chipotle, cumin, red wine vinegar and basil. Blend all into one smooth mixture and put it in a kettle to let it simmer for about half an hour to one hour. Sample and add salt to your personal liking.
Serving tips
This one was part of a batch of 3 sauces, that are depicted on the side here. In this recipe we look at the right one of the pack, the Smokey Hot Italian Fire Sauce. In the middle is Mango-Habanero Hot Sauce and on the left there’s the Sweet-and-sour Cayenne & Mint sauce!
- Try this one with grilled meat. Pretty much any meat I’d say but I do recommend a very juicy steak! There, I’ve said it…
- Add a bit to your spaghetti sauce, or just on top of your plate when serving.
- Like pretty much any spicy sauce, try it on an omelette, really, really nice, believe me!
- I’ve tried this one in plenty of other sauces I cooked, such as for meat balls in tomato sauce, or stuffed bell peppers in a spicy tomato sauce.
- Try this one on a sandwich with some nice cooked ham, it works really well.
- And have this with your kebab, any type of kebab, really!