This is a recipe for a basic vinegar-based hot sauce (similar to the various spicy sauces found on restaurant tables across America), but with a twist: it’s made with the world’s hottest chile.  Ghost peppers are so hot that only a few are needed for this sauce.  To give it a more robust chili flavor (and color) without further amping up the heat, we’ve added several Aji Panca Chilies.

Of course, this same technique can be used with all of our bulk dried peppers, making a great base for home experimentation (use our dried pepper heat scale as a guide).

Ingredients:
2 cups distilled vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 dried ghost peppers
10 dried aji panca chilies or dried organic aji panca chilies

Directions:

1. Put on gloves, and keep them on while handling ghost chilies.
2. Reconstitute the dried peppers.
3. Remove the stems and seeds from the chilies.
4. Using a food processor or blender, puree the chilies with the vinegar and salt.
5. For Milder (but still hot) Sauce: Immediately strain the sauce through a fine mesh strainer.
6. For Stronger Sauce: Leave the solids in the sauce for up to two weeks, then strain.  The longer you wait before straining, the hotter the sauce will become.

Makes a little over two cups of sauce, which will keep in a bottle or jar in the fridge for quite awhile.