best hot sauce ever ~

Really. I mean, that's the name of this hot sauce.

I got it from our church cookbook, submitted by a local doctor who likes to eat healthy stuff.

And let me tell you, it's best with fresh tomatoes. But my brother's tomato plants are long gone, and tomatoes in the store are too expensive right now to make this huge batch of sauce, so when fresh is unavailable (or unaffordable) please use canned, it's really good in spite of not being fresh.

So - here it is - Best Hot Sauce Ever. Tweak the ingredients to your liking - everything is adjustable except that you do need a lot of maters. And once, I made a smaller batch using fresh everything, but I diced it all instead of using a blender, and then tossed it in a bowl with a squeeze of lime juice (I left out the tomato paste on this version). It makes a great fresh chunky salsa.

Best Hot Sauce Ever

(original recipe by Vince L.)

1 #10 can whole tomatoes, drained (reserve juice)

1 can tomato paste

1 large onion

3 large jalapeno peppers (more or less to taste)

large handful cilantro (more or less to taste)

Process the whole tomatoes in a blender, until they are a thick saucey texture. Process by using pulse and in small batches, so they don't get processed too thin.

In the last batch, top them with rinsed and drained cilantro (I use a whole bunch, but that's pretty strong flavored - adjust to your own taste) and rinsed and destemmed jalapeno peppers (again, to your taste - these 3 huge peppers made the sauce pretty wonderfully spicy). Process the same as the tomatoes, in pulse mode to retain some texture.

Peel and slice the onion into wedges. Pour a little juice from the reserved tomato juice into the blender, top with the onion wedges and the tomato paste, and pulse until blended into a nice saucey texture. You can see it in the 3rd from last picture, poured in front of the green stuff.

Combine the tomatoes, green mixture, and onion mixture well. Salt to taste - the mixture will foam a little but it will soon go away. Be careful not to salt too much right now - you'll have to taste again after the flavors meld and maybe add more, maybe thin with a little reserved juice, maybe just leave it alone. You can eat it right away, but it's a lot better when you let it refrigerate overnight. And it's good with anything you'd eat hot sauce with - chips, eggs, taco salad, whatever...

One more thing - this hot sauce freezes GREAT, and thaws quickly, tasting as good as when you first made it.

I could make myself sick on this stuff.