Getting HOT in here!!

I'm not sure there is any one out there who loves pressure cooking more than I do.  Well, maybe.  Amazing women like Laura Pazzaglia over at hip pressure cooking and Lorna Sass at lornasass.com probably love pressure cooking as much as I do and because of women like them I have been inspired so many times in my own kitchen to cook up healthy and delicious meals in my pressure cooker. 

Yesterday though, things went wrong,  terribly wrong.  Or perhaps amazingly right, depending on whether or not you enjoy the feeling of a HOT HOT HOT pepper shoved into your sinuses causing hours of runny nose and sneezing from a hot sauce experiment that came out too, far too, way too, HOT. 

I should have known something was different because while the sauce was in the pressure cooker I had to step out of the house as I was already starting to feel the effects of the capsaicin in the peppers.  Matt and I decided to walk around the pond and feed the fish.  Last summer my incredibly industrious husband got an idea to rent a bulldozer and expand the existing puddle into a pond almost an acre large.  

Upper right clockwise, old pond with estimated outline of new pond,
Lexa testing the waters, the dock Matt built using the deck off
the back of my sister's house, umm...mistakes were made,
the dozer on the bottom of the pond.

Thanks to a wet summer and a very snowy winter, we awoke this spring to a full pond.

This was the first time I realized I could see the water from
the house since it was finally high enough.  This was taken April 7th,
less than a year after we finished digging.

We began stocking it in May so that in a few years we might have an awesome bass pond.  How cool would it be to be able to grab a fishing rod, walk across our driveway and catch dinner?  So far we've added fathead minnows, crayfish and bluegill.  There are minnows EVERYWHERE.  Granted most of them are itty bitty, but as long as they serve as food for the larger fish, I think we're on the right track.  We don't see any signs of the crayfish, but unless we get in there and start moving rocks, I'm not sure we ever will.  We don't see any evidence of a crayfish die-off so I think we're moving in the right direction there as well.  And lastly, our bluegills.  Perhaps the most controversial critter in our pond.  A few hatcheries vehemently advised against it.  Others said they'll make great food for largemouth bass.  But if not kept in check, apparently bluegills can take over your pond.  I'm looking forward to having our nieces and nephews over and letting them fish the heck out of the bluegills some day!  In the meantime, if you stand on the shore and one bluegill spots you, he calls over his friends and next thing you know, there are five or six there just waiting.  Waiting for you to head over to the chicken coop, steal some of the chicken feed, and throw it in for them.  Who knew bluegill liked chicken food so much?  And it's really fun feeding them it.

Stocking the pond and feeding the fish. 
Is it just me or does Lexa look like she wants to push Matt
in and is looking to me for permission?

So back to the hot sauce.  I follow Laura's technique for Instant Tabasco and have used it several times already.  We had a party a few months back where I put out three different versions of my hot sauce and they were a big hit.  I've used jalapenos, Fresno peppers, Serrano peppers, Sandia peppers, all with great success.  And then...I was gifted these...

Habanero chilis (imagine a spooky tone of voice)

I thought, awesome!  Now I can make sauce that will even make my husband feel the burn (I know that doesn't sound very nice but he likes the burn, I promise!).  So I went to work, I weighed them out and needed to add one bright red jalapeno to get a total of 12 ounces.  You remove the stems, chop them up and place them in your pressure cooker.  To that you add 2 teaspoons of smoked salt (regular works too, smoked adds extra depth though) and 1-1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar.  I've started adding a combination of cider vinegar and apple juice to add a little sweetness and minimize the vinegar flavor allowing the flavor of the pepper to shine through.  Pressure cook on high for one minute and then allow the pressure to release naturally.   

CPC-600, almost five years old and used several times a week.
I highly recommend this item if you're interested in pressure cooking.

Once we were done feeding the fish, I went back into the house and took the lid off the PC and woah!  Capsaicin city.  Usually when I make hot sauce this way I never have a problem staying in the house and being in the vicinity of the pressure cooker.  I've never had a problem removing the lid to puree the peppers either.  But apparently, and I didn't realize this, habaneros are in a league of their own.  Afterwards I looked up the peppers on the Scoville scale.  If you're not familiar with the Scoville scale, it is basically the end all be all of what's hot and what's not.  And it turns out, habaneros are WAY hotter than any other pepper I've worked with.

Oops.

Your general habanero comes in around 350,000 SHU (Scoville heat unit).  For comparison, a cayenne pepper ranges from 30,000-50,000 SHU and a jalapeno is around 10,000 SHU (Scoville Source).  I probably should have done that research before I made a hot sauce out of 87% habaneros by weight.  

I repeat.  Oops.

I pureed the sauce, strained out the pulp and bottled it.  But I believe I will be making another batch with all red/orange bell peppers and diluting the habanero sauce to something that humans are capable of consuming without the fear of dying.  

Hot sauce.  Made out of reasonable peppers.

I'm always trying new things, regular salt, smoked salt, pureeing in some fresh garlic, adding liquid smoke, maybe a little brown sugar next time??  If you try making hot sauce using Laura's technique please comment letting me know what you think!  Or do you use a different technique for hot sauce?  Do you add any extra flavors to it?  I'd love to learn more.