For me, no pepper holds a candle to the flavor of a roasted poblano. That said, thee roasting process is labor-intensive enough that I am rarely in the mood to add roasted poblano to a dish. But I think I’ve found a solution. With a hot sauce I can pack all that roasting and peeling into a single afternoon and have a sauce bursting with poblano flavor for weeks to come.

The heat in this hot sauce comes from banana peppers. While these certainly are not the spiciest peppers around, the peppers used had enough hit to give this sauce a little kick. But it is definitely a flavor sauce first and a hot sauce second. If you want it extra spicy, you could certainly toss a couple habaneros in the mix.

If you enjoy roasted poblanos as much as I do, you will love this recipe. The sauce has a good heat to it (depending on the peppers you put in it), but mostly brings that wonderful flavor to whatever you put it on, be it a piece of chicken, fish, or a breakfast burrito.

Roasted Poblano Hot Sauce
(makes 24 oz.)

Ingredients:
1 cup roasted banana peppers (or other moderately spicy pepper)
1.5 cups roasted poblanos
2 habanero peppers, if desired
½ medium onion, roughly chopped
½ cup carrot, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp white vinegar
2 tsp white sugar
½ tsp cumin
Salt

Directions:

Begin by roasting the peppers. I bake them at 400 degrees until they begin to brown. You want to make sure you don’t burn them, because that makes the skins harder to remove. Once they are properly roasted, remove from the oven and allow to cool for a while.

While the peppers are cooling, boil the onion, carrot, and garlic in 2 cups of water until quite soft. It is okay for the water to reduce significantly, but when you remove the vegetables, be sure to save at least ½ of the boiling water. This will go into the sauce later to thin it.

Once the peppers are cool enough, peel the skins off. This can be done by grabbing any of the areas where the skin has blistered away from the flesh of the pepper and tearing from there. If your peppers are not burned, it should not be too hard to remove the skins. The banana peppers will be slightly more difficult. Remove as much of the skin and seeds as possible.

Once the peppers are peeled, drop them in the blender with the boiled vegetables. Add the vinegar, sugar, cumin, salt, and ¼ cup of the boil water. Blend this until smooth. Add more of the boil water as necessary to facilitate blending and produce the desired consistency.

This sauce goes great on just about anything. We eat breakfast burritos just about every morning around here and that is a lovely use for it. But it would be great on a piece of chicken or fish, of even a sandwich–anywhere you want to add a little spice and a lot of poblano flavor.

Enjoy!