Physalis Habanero Hot Sauce

Now the name Physalis might not ring a bell for everyone. It also didn’t for me when a colleague offered me a Physalis plant in spring this year in exchange for some chili pepper plants from my side. It grew like mad, but unfortunately didn’t start flowering by now, so I realised I wouldn’t be able to process my own into a spicy sauce with freshly harvested Habanero’s. I ended up buying half a kilo for about 10 EUR, but I had my mind set on making a sauce of these sweet delights. The berries are sweet and have a distinct flavour and they are reasonably firm yet soft, a bit spongy I’d say as the best description. I decided to keep the recipe simple and to go for all yellow and golden or orange coloured ingredients. As I expected, it worked out great. There’s a severe punch to this hot sauce and it has all the distinct flavours from the golden berries in there!

• 500 g Physalis 
• Juice of 3 Limes
• 3 Onions
• 2 Yellow Bell Peppers
• 150 ml Red Wine Vinegar 
• 1 Coffee Spoon of Cinnamon 
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Chili Peppers to taste. I used 10 Habanero’s and 10 Habanada’s for this one.

As most hot sauces, this one is simple. Chop all the fruits and vegetables up coarsely and add them all together into the blender with the rest of the ingredients. Blend up until you get a nice consistency, as shown on the picture on the right. Put the mixture into a cooking pot and leave it to simmer at low fire for about half an hour. At this stage you can use a soup mixer to even make the sauce smoother. One could filter this one, but I like a bit of pulp in my hot sauces myself!

After cooling down, the sauce can be bottled and is ready to spice up your life! Can easily be stored for over one year in the fridge!

The nice golden orange color of the bottle looks lovely next to one of my Bonchi’s here! It works with many things, similar to all other sauces I posted here before.

• Try this one with an omelette!
• Great to be combined with grilled meat, any meat really!
• Great with curry!