Make your own hot sauce

“The first time I made hot sauce - not with reapers, just orange habaneros - I ignored the advice to wear gloves. I spent two nights clutching an ice cube in a facecloth in an attempt to get to sleep. Wear the freaking gloves. My next attempt was way better as I did not touch the habs at all - I poured about four of them from a bag in the freezer onto a baking tray with some bullhorns and garlic, roasted it all up and shoved it into a blending jar with a ripe mango and some acids and spices. The result is absolutely delicious, but yeah, you don't need much.”

“I deliberately wanted to make a baseline sauce that I could use as a springboard for future experimentation, since I'd never done this before. For the sake of science, I didn't core any of the peppers, just to see how spicy it would get. That was my first mistake. I like spicy food, and have had fresh reapers before. However, the spiciness of this sauce was wildly in-your-face and unexpected, and it was way crazier than I thought it would be. Like, not the hottest thing I've ever had, but definitely way hotter than expected. So, I cut it with the citrus juices and a little sugar, and that seemed to help quite a lot. Blending the sauce was another story. I've somehow never blended anything hot before, and I was so caught up in the moment that I didn't consider the pressure differential. Suffice to say that my blender lid exploded off...more than once.”