Sweet Hot Pepper Sauce
A shelf-stable chili sauce built from dried peppers and tomato powder. Mixes at camp, no canning jars.
- calories
- 90
- weight
- 1.1 oz
- cal / oz
- 82
- protein
- 2 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 8 min
- total time
- 13 min
- water
- 180 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Snack
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Campfire coals
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Bikepacking
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dried hot chili flakes or crushed dried hot peppers | 2 tbsp | start with 1 tbsp if you are unsure |
|---|---|---|
| Dried sweet red pepper flakes | 1/4 cup | roasted red pepper, dried and crushed |
| Tomato powder | 3 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Sugar | 3 tbsp | |
| Cider vinegar powder | 1 tbsp | liquid vinegar in a dropper bottle works too, 2 tbsp |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp |
Method
- Boil 180 ml of water and pull the pot off the heat.
- Stir in the whole dry mix. It will look thin. Wait.
- Set the pot back over a low flame for five minutes, stirring so the sugar does not scorch on the bottom.
- Kill the heat and stir in the oil. Let it sit ten minutes off the stove to thicken.
- Taste for salt and vinegar. Spoon it over whatever you cooked.
The original is a Romanian winter preserve: fresh hot peppers and roasted sweet peppers cooked down with sugar and vinegar, then sealed in jars. None of that travels. Jars are heavy, fresh peppers rot, and canning is not a camp activity. So the peppers come dried, the tomato and vinegar come as powder, and the whole thing rehydrates in one pot in under ten minutes.
Sugar and acid are doing the structural work, not just the flavoring. The sugar pulls the heat back from a raw burn into something you can eat a spoonful of, and the vinegar keeps it from going flat and sweet. The short simmer matters too: dried pepper needs a few minutes of real heat to give up its color and stop tasting like dust.
Packing
Combine every dry ingredient in one small zip bag at home. Oil rides in a dropper bottle with the rest of your fats.
Variations
- Half the water gives a paste thick enough to spread on tortillas.
- A pinch of smoked paprika stands in for the char you would get from roasting peppers over a fire.
- Cook it in the same pot right after beans or rice and it picks up the starch, which helps it cling.
https://savoriurbane.com/sos-picant-de-ardei-iuti-cu-ardei-copti-pentru-iarna-reteta-de-sos-chili-dulceag-acrisor-de-casa