Quick Garden Fresh Pepper Sauce – Recipe
A sweet, fresh chili pepper sauce recipe made from chilies picked straight out of the garden, with garlic, honey and oil. Perfect for smothering chicken or salmon dishes.
These are the days when I’m SUPER happy we have a great garden. Patty and I like to plant a big variety of chili peppers and heirloom tomatoes each year, along with some herbs, for cooking into all sorts of dishes. We try different types usually, while sticking with a few of our favorites. Our garden is really starting to produce, so I am able to step out our back door most evenings and snatch a few peppers off the plants to whip up into whatever I feel like making for dinner.
Here are a few of them I just picked.
This is just a few of them. Don’t they look great? The plants will be producing like CRAZY very soon and that is when I will start to work on preserving, making hot sauces, dehydrating, and so much more. But for now, I get to have fun with a homemade pepper sauce! Tonight I knew I was making salmon and wanted a quick sauce for the fillets. I’ve talked about my love for salmon. It has to be my favorite fish. I cook it once a week, easy. I selected some plump looking jalapeno peppers for the sauce, because I am obsessed with jalapeno peppers. #JalapenoObsession. Have you even SEEN the cookbooks I write? Yeah, obsession.
I also chose a couple of Georgia Flame peppers because they were gorgeous and ripe and I could tell they REALLY wanted to be a sauce. Our Georgia Flame plant is quite productive, and I have a lot of them already. BONUS! Georgia Flames mature to a vibrant red and have medium-thick pepper walls for a bit of substance. They have a mid-level heat, so we’ll get a bit of a kick with the sauce. If you can’t find George Flames or didn’t grow any, you can sub in different medium-sized peppers for this recipe.
Making the sauce is extremely easy. It’s a bit of slicing, oven roasting, then processing. This is based off of a Roasted Red Pepper Dip Recipe that I’ve made in the past, which incorporates oil and honey to make the dish. Heat your oven and slice the peppers in half lengthwise. Roast them in the oven until the skins are charred, then cool and peel. Add them to a food processor along with your garlic, honey, oil and a bit of salt, and process until you’re good to go.
The consistency is a bit more like a paste or a jam than a sauce, which will help it cling to your chicken or salmon. It also works as a marinade or a rub. If you’re looking for more of a sauce consistency, thin it out with a bit more olive oil. The taste is truly garden fresh and pepper forward, just the way we like it, with a nice sweetness from the honey and the coating mouth feel from the olive oil.
We served ours over salmon, and it turned out delish!
Enjoy!
- 3 jalapeno peppers
- 2 red mid-spicy peppers - I used some Georgia Flames we grew this year
- 2-3 garlic cloves
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 2 tablespoons olive oil or more, as desired
- Salt to taste
- Heat oven to 425 degrees.
- Slice off the stems of the peppers and slice them in half lengthwise. Set them onto a lightly oiled baking sheet along with the garlic cloves.
- Bake for 20 minutes, or until the peppers are nicely charred. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
- Peel off the pepper skins and garlic skins. Discard.
- Add peppers and garlic to a food processor, along with honey, olive oil and a bit of salt.
- Process to form a thick sauce. Add more olive oil if you want it thinner.
- Serve! I served mine over seared salmon.
3 comments
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Mike,
What other types of peppers could you recommend as a sub for the Georgia Flame? I have never even seen one aside from pictures online…weird since I am in Ky. I definitely didn’t grow anything that would work, just Habaneros and Ghosts. The local groceries (Kroger, Walmart, Whole Foods, Fresh Market) have the standard fare available.
Jason, Georgia Flame peppers are pretty mild, thicker walled, about 5-6 inches in length. You can use any Italian sweet red pepper if you can find them, though the easiest to use that is most available would be a red bell pepper. You can always include a hotter pepper with it to bring some heat. Take a look at some of milder varieties on my Mild Chili Peppers page and see what you can find. Carmen Italian would work, Corno di Toro, Elephants Ears. You can even make this with green, orange or yellow peppers. So many options. Let me know what you decide to do.
Can this be canned? I would like to can some for my son.
REPLY: Barbara, something like this probably wouldn’t can very well. You’d need to add an acid to bring down the ph level. — Mike from Chili Pepper Madness.