Jalapeño Picante Sauce Recipe

I've been growing jalapeño peppers this year. My first haul of them came out extremely bland - more like green peppers with almost no spice to them. This happened the last time I tried growing them too, and I nearly gave up hope. After a whole lot of googling I came across multiple suggestions that overwatering can cause bland peppers. I stopped watering my plant immediately and a week later I had spicy jalapeños! In the end I managed to harvest about 25 peppers - more than I ever thought I could get in one season from one plant. With so many peppers to deal with I really had no choice but to make a sauce!

Like my habanero sauce recipe, this jalapeño sauce is largely based on another recipe and rather simple. I didn't have all the listed ingredients on hand so I had to make some modifications:

Ingredients

• 10 jalapeño peppers (mine were 1/2 spicy and 1/2 bland), finely chopped
• 3 hot house tomatoes, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp oregano
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Cook tomatoes, onion, garlic, vinegar, and oregano in a saucepan until softened.
2. Add the jalapeños and cook until they have softened and the mixture has taken on some of the green colour of the peppers.
3. Using a blender or food processor, puree until smooth. Depending how much moisture was lost during cooking you may need to add a bit of water.
4. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan over low heat.
5. Season with salt to taste.

I brought some of this to the office today and folks found it be quite good as a dip for pita chips. I suspect it would work well as a garnish on sandwiches, burritos, etc. as well.