This Superhot Hot Sauce Recipe is made with a variety of superhot chili peppers including carolina reapers, 7-pot peppers and scorpion peppers. It's extremely hot and not for the faint of heart. For true chiliheads only!
Superhot Hot Sauce Recipe
OK, my friends. It's time to reveal one of the hottest hot sauces I have ever made in my own kitchen. Yes, it's homemade and it's crazy hot. Crazy hot in a good sort of way, the way only a serious chilihead can enjoy. This might just be the hottest hot sauce in the world that you can make right at home!
I grow a big variety of chili peppers every year. I love a range of heat and flavors, from flavorful sweet peppers all the way up to superhots with their incredible heat.
I use them in so many ways, and one of my favorites it making homemade hot sauce. I do enjoy milder sauces that focus on flavor over heat, but every now and then, I want some seriously heat in my hot sauce. That's when this hot sauce comes in - a hot sauce made from superhot chili peppers.
Superhot Hot Sauce Ingredients
- Superhot Chili Peppers - Use reapers, scorpions, 7 pots - use your favorite varieties - stems removed – use a mix! Anything over 1 Millions Scovilles, baby!
- Garlic
- Basil Leaves
- Vinegar
- Salt
Hot to Make Superhot Hot Sauce
Roast the peppers. Heat an oven to 400°F. Set the superhot chili peppers and garlic on a baking sheet and bake them about 15-20 minutes, or until the skins slightly char. Keep an eye on these. You don't want them to burn, and watch out for any fumes.
NOTE: Alternatively, do this on your grill outside.
Process the ingredients. Add peppers to a food processor. Squeeze garlic out of their skins and into the food processor they go. Add basil leaves and process.
Vinegar. While processing, add in vinegar until it is nicely pureed. Watch out for the fumes!
Salt and strain, if desired. Add salt and stir. Push the sauce through a strainer or use a food mill to really strain it, if desired. Adjust with more vinegar or water to your desired consistency.
NOTE: I don't always strain. It really depends on how thick you want your hot sauce.
Bottle it up. Pour into bottles and enjoy. Give to your friends! The longer you let it sit, the more the flavors will meld.
Recipe Tips & Notes
- Protect yourself from fumes. Aside from the obvious heat you will achieve with this sauce, you must also beware of fumes in the kitchen. Make this sauce in a well ventilated room. Open the windows if you can. Pepper fumes can be rough, especially with superhots. Consider a mask and/or goggle to protect your eyes.
- Also, wear gloves. I cook with superhots all the time and the oils usually do not bother my skin, but when cooking with a large amount, cutting them open, handling them, you will get some on your skin. It may burn, but if not, it can still burn other parts of your body that you touch.
- Let it sit. Once you've made the hot sauce, jar or bottle it and let it sit a week or two for the flavors to truly meld, though you can eat it right away if you'd like.
Where did you get that hot sauce bottle?
I find them locally sometimes, but I also order through Amazon. Here is a link to some bottles I like (affiliate link, my friends!): Swing Top Glass Bottles, 8.5 Ounce - Set of 4. If you like the smaller bottles that most hot sauce makers use, here's another link: Hot Sauce Bottles, 5 Oz - 24 Pack.
How hot is this superhot sauce?
With superhots, you can expect a wide range of heat, though the majority of them start at over 1 Million SHU. Some will approach or surpass 2 Million SHU, which is somewhat insane, but again, these are ranges so you can typically expect your pepper heat to fall in the middle somewhere.
The heat depends on many factors, such as soil and growing conditions of the particular peppers. Well, my peppers must have been grown under some ideal conditions, because they were HOT. I didn't want them to go to waste, so I turned the majority of them into a hot sauce that I still have today.
This is a Louisiana style hot sauce with a few extras added in for flavor. A Louisiana style hot sauce consists of peppers and vinegar, and they're extremely popular.
With good reason. This superhot version brings in the variety of superhots and adds in roasted garlic and basil. That's it, with a bit of salt. You can expect variable results depending on the chili peppers you choose to work with.
To push for the top end of the scale, use only Reapers or 7-Pot Brain Strains if you can get them. Pure Scorpions would be crazy killer hot. Or vary it up like I did. You can also make this with roasted jalapenos, or pretty much any pepper you prefer.
Choose your peppers with love. That is always a good place to start.
Storage
It should keep a few months easily in the fridge, or even longer. It's all about the acidity. To be technical, target level ph for shelf stable foods is below 4.6 ph, but should probably be lower for home cooks, around 4.0 or so, to account for errors.
I have not measured the ph of this sauce, but I won't have it around very long anyway. If you're concerned, add more vinegar to lower the ph.
The best ph meters that I recommend are from Thermoworks. Get yourself a ph meter from Thermoworks today. I am a happy affiliate.
See my post on "Does Hot Sauce Need to be Refrigerated?"
Enjoy More Hot Sauce Recipes
- Homemade Sriracha (both fermented and non-fermented varieties)
- Cayenne Pepper Sauce
- Ti-Malice – Hatian Creole Hot Sauce
- Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce
- Habanero Hot Sauce
- How to Make Hot Sauce: The Ultimate Guide
- More Hot Sauce Recipes
If you enjoy this recipe, I hope you'll leave a comment with some STARS. Also, please share it on social media. Don't forget to tag us at #ChiliPepperMadness. I'll be sure to share! Thanks! -- Mike H.
Superhot Hot Sauce Recipe (The Hottest Hot Sauce I Ever Made)
Ingredients
- 1 pound superhot chili peppers (reapers, scorpions, 7 pots - use your favorite varieties) stems removed – use a mix! Anything over 1 Millions Scovilles, baby!
- 4 cloves garlic
- 12 large basil leaves
- 1 cup vinegar + more as needed
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Heat an oven to 400 degrees. Set the superhot chili peppers and garlic on a baking sheet and bake them about 15-20 minutes, or until the skins slightly char. Keep an eye on these. You don't want them to burn, and watch out for any fumes. Alternatively, do this on your grill outside.
- Add peppers to a food processor. Squeeze garlic out of their skins and into the food processor they go.
- Add basil leaves and process.
- While processing, add in vinegar until it is nicely pureed. Watch out for the fumes!
- Add salt and stir. Push the sauce through a strainer or use a food mill to really strain it, if desired. Adjust with more vinegar or water to your desired consistency.
- Pour into bottles and enjoy. Give to your friends! The longer you let it sit, the more the flavors will meld.
Video
Notes
Nutrition Information
NOTE: This recipe was updated on 11/26/21 to include new information, photos and video. It was originally published on 11/20/15.
Mark DIX says
Yep
Made it
LOVED IT
Will be making more
(to share)
Mike Hultquist says
Boom!! Yes!! Perfect gifts for sure! Thanks, Mark.
JT says
Hey Mike.
Love your site, videos and recipes. I'd like to know the hang time (how long this is safe to keep) and will it need refrigeration?
Keep on peppering on,
JT
Mike Hultquist says
Hey, JT. This hot sauce will last many months or longer. I have a post that better answers the refrigeration here: https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/frequently-asked-questions/refrigerating-hot-sauce/
Mark DIX says
SIMPLY
the
BEST
❤️
Mike H. says
Thank you, Mark! Appreciate it.
Simon Hall says
Nice sauce made a few variations mixing my supper hots with your recipe
Mike H. says
Awesome. Thank you, Simon!
Oskars says
I decided to try this recipe yesterday - I had some 600g of hot peppers, last bit of this year's harvest. About 80% of it was a 1:1 mix of red Habaneros and yellow Trinidad Scorpions, the rest was an assortment of milder varieties (Jalapeno, Fish pepper, Helix Nebula, Aji Limon and a couple of others). Since I don't have an outdoor grill and my oven's broken, I tried using a griddle pan. That worked well for the peppers (I worked in 2 batches to have an even layer of the halved peppers, flipped them halfway after getting slight charring, some 4 minutes per side on med high heat), less well for myself - this is not my first hot sauce, but certainly the first one when my kitchen exhaust simply cannot handle the fumes. Being in the kitchen even with the window open was quite uncomfortable for me, despite being a seasoned chilihead, and my significant other, who was in the other room at the time, when done coughing, informed me that I'm never to try this recipe again when she's at home. So, some planning required for the next time 🙂
Anyway, I used 7 cloves of garlic (griddle pan worked great for softening them) and had to use dried basil (it's difficult to get fresh basil at this time in Latvia), and 2 cups of vinegar. I strained it after processing, and the yield was ~600 ml of a sauce of Tabasco-like consistency. The taste was excellent already then, can't wait to see what it becomes after a while of resting!
I'll certainly be trying this one again, with appropriate precautions, thank you!
Mike Hultquist says
Boom! Sounds like a process indeed! Yeah, those fumes will get you. I know this from experience! Haha, oops!
Linda says
I absolutely LOVE the recipes sent in CHILI PEPPER MADNESS! Well, my husband and I can be classified as chili-heads, so any recipe sent our way is a must try. Honestly, we think that the recipes are truly easy to recreate, a challenge to eat but most importantly being wholesomely healthy.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Mike Hultquist says
So great to hear! Thanks so much, Linda. You guys are the best!!
Greg says
Great recipe, have made it the past two years. I changed it up a bit this year, left out the basil & garlic, but added an 8oz can of pineapple…tastes great!
Mike H. says
Happy to hear you've modified it to your liking, Greg. Thank you for the review!
Ellen says
My husband and I just made a half batch of this moments ago using Trinidadian Scorpions, Devil's Tongues and Jamaican Ghosts. Whoa, Nelly! We pre-emptively set our dog up in another room with the door closed and window open. Thank goodness we did. The fumes, oh the fumes! You DID warn us! LOL! We each took a little "spoon lick" and we both agreed we equally regretted and enjoyed doing so! We felt like Homer Simpson after eating the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper-Infused Chili at the cook-off episode. Haha! Should have known that a hot sauce expert deeming it the hottest sauce he'd ever made wasn't for rookies! Going to let it sit for a couple of weeks and think about what it's done. Thanks for this and all of your amazing recipes! -Ellen and Jamie (AKA Pinky and Slim) From Toronto, Canada!
Mike Hultquist says
Haha! thanks, Pinky and Slim. Yep, definitely HOT!! Glad you're enjoying it, though! It should mellow a little bit for you.