Habaneros Galore from Chef Cavan!
August 31, 2011 by: Cavan
I have one habanero plant and I wish that my six tomato plants yielded as much as that one plant does. So what do you do with a crap load of intestine burning peppers. The easy answer is freeze the ones you’re not going to use immediately; however, in this post I’ll give two recipes that I’ve found are very versatile.
Habanero BBQ Sauce:
- 2 habaneros finely chopped (seeded and deveined if you’d like to cool it down slightly)
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 small onion
- 1/2 finely chopped green bell pepper
- 2 cups tomato sauce
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 molasses
- 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp yellow mustard
- Salt/pepper
Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly browned. Add garlic, habaneros, and green bell pepper and cook for 1 minute. Add tomato sauce, vinegar, honey, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, and mustard and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until thickened, stirring occasionally, about 20 to 30 minutes. Season with salt to taste. Pour sauce into the jar of a blender and puree until almost smooth.If you are using this for wing sauce–which I highly recommend–season the wings with paprika, granulated garlic, salt, pepper and cayenne. Then grill the wings until almost cooked (I recommend at a lower heat setting so the skin gets nice and crispy). Coat wings and let the sauce caramelize. You don’t want to have this sauce over heat for more than 5 mins or so because those sugars will burn pretty quick if you’re not careful.
Another versatile and easy dish to make is mango habanero salsa. This can be used on tacos, as a garnish, in quesadillas, and so on and so forth.
Habanero Mango Salsa:
- 2 cups of mango cubed (about 1.5/2 mangos)
- 1/2-2 habaneros finely diced (you choose your heat and destiny)
- 1/2 red onion finely diced
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
- 1/ tbsp olive oil
- 2-3 fresh tomatoes
- Salt Pepper
- (add about 1/4 cup of water if you are going to blend)
I like to use this as an ingredient so I chop/dice everything but it’s just as good as a classic blended salsa. This works very well with fish and poultry.
