I am moving this post to the top of my blog to say goodbye, I made the decision about a month ago to close Convalita Farmhouse Foods, so here is a bit of a swan song for it.
This Chilli Sauce was the highest awarded chilli product at the Sydney Fine Food Fair a few years running and also scooped the pool at the Adelaide Royal Show, it is a lovely sauce, lots of flavour, plenty of heat and a really nice, rich tomato base.
Before we begin, if you haven’t already I would like you to pop in and read Preserves - Getting ready. This will show you how to get your bottles and lids ready for a preservative free sauce. Ready? Then let’s begin.
Ingredients
1kg ripe tomatoes, washed but left whole
220g brown onion, peeled and chopped
4 fat cloves garlic
200g red capsicum, seeded, chopped
8 whole black peppercorns
120g fresh chilli, stem removed, cut in half - this is where the heat of the sauce will be up to you, I use Birdseye for my regular sauce, habernero for my FH sauce and ghost chilli for my FHDS sauce.
375ml vinegar
180g sugar
20g salt
Makes 7-8 x 150ml bottles
Prepare your bottles and lids as per the blog Preserves - Getting ready, you will also need a pouring jug and a funnel if you are going to use one, I use a stainless steel funnel as I can put it in to sterilise with my jug and bottles.
Pop everything except the sugar and salt into a large pot, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, simmer until everything is very soft, ask the onion, if it is tender everything else will be. Good sauce takes time, so I don’t want you to rush this, to develop its full flavour we are looking to simmer this for at least an hour and a half, not boiling, not still, just quietly chatting.
This looks good, right, next step, it needs to go through a mouli or a passepomedoro, this will remove most of the skins from it, if you can see some skins floating around while it is cooking fish them out, they are not required, some people say they can make the sauce go off, I have never had this happen, but I do remove the skins in these two ways because I think that too many of them detract from the flavour of the sauce.
So, if you don’t have a moulli or food mill, I suggest you invest in one if you plan to make a lot of sauces. This is mine, it was $20, I also have a huge electric one that was over $1000, I do not advise you get one of these unless you are going into commercial production as it will mill your sauce in two minutes and you will spend the rest of the day cleaning it. This little cheapy will do -
Pour and wind, careful, it is very hot, pour and wind until it looks like this-
The moulli wants to keep that, that is good, we don’t want this in our sauce, it will make it bitter and grainy.
Now give it a good bash with a stick blender and then stir in your sugar and salt. Return your pot to the heat and boil strenuously until very thick and saucy, like this -
Take it off the heat, let it sit for one minute, then give it a good stir and pour into your hot pouring jug (you did read Preserves - Getting ready, right?), and from there into your hot bottles, I use a funnel for these bottles or I end up with most of it on the bench, make sure your funnel goes into the oven for sterilising with your bottles and jug. Put the lid on, twist tight, invert to prevent steam build up. When the bottles are cold I wash them, then when they are dry I dip the tops in wax as I have never yet met a bottle with a lid I trusted to be air tight.
And there you have it, Convalita Farmhouse Foods multi award winning Chilli Sauce for you to make at home.
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