RCP: Inner Beauty Hot Sauce

I may have posted this before, but it's good enough to warrant another posting.

Chris Schlesinger runs the East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Massachusetts--an informal but excellent restaurant specializing in eclectic dishes from the "ring of fire" around the Earth's equator. We're talking the zone where the chile pepper reigns supreme. For many years the restaurant sold commercially a Jamaican-style mustard-and-habanero based hot sauce called Inner Beauty. It's no longer commercially available, but Schlesinger has published the recipe, and here it is.

Ingredients
15 habanero chiles
one mango
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 cup cheap yellow mustard
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 TBS curry powder
1 TBS ground cumin
1 TBS chile powder (I use cayenne)
1 tsp black pepper (freshly ground)

Method
Peel the mango, seed it, and mash it (I chopped it in a food processor).
Remove the stems from the habaneros, then coarsely chop them (I put them whole in the food processor and chopped them).
Put the mango, habaneros, and vinegar in a blender, and puree until fairly smooth.
Add the mustard and puree until fully blended.
Add the curry powder, cumin, chile powder, and black pepper, and puree until everything's blended to a smooth sauce.
Remove the whole mess to a sealed container and refrigerate. Leave it for a couple of days, to let the flavors marry, before you use it. It will keep forever if refrigerated.

Notes
I always feel like Harry Potter in Potions class when I'm preparing this.

Yes, you really do want to use cheap yellow mustard, such as French's, here. Frou-frou Dijon or other fancy mustard (or even cheap brown mustard) just won't work out right. Making this sauce is, in fact, the only reason that I ever buy French's yellow mustard.

DItto the curry powder. This, and a few random Chinese and Singaporean dishes, are the only reason that I ever buy prepared curry powder (as opposed to mixing up a specific spice blend for an Indian dish).

Treat the habaneros, and the finished sauce, with respect. If you're at all sensitive to hot peppers, wear rubber gloves. And whatever you do, DON'T rub your eyes or in any other way touch your face unless you've thoroughly scrubbed your hands with lots of soap and hot water first. And beware of the fumes from the habanero puree and the final sauce. Trust me on this.

Chris Schlesinger penned these notes concerning this hot sauce:

"WARNING: Use this to enhance dull and boring food. Keep away from pets, open flames, unsupervised children, and bad advice. This is not a toy. This is serious. Stand up straight, sit right, and stop mumbling."

If you love hot sauces, you will adore this one. And you can use this, plus some minced green onions and allspice, as an excellent Jamaican Jerk marinade.

Enjoy!

-Paul W.

I love hot sauces and make my own jerk from scratch but I cannot imagine 15 habanero chilies given the small amounts of the other ingredients. Your caution should be well heeded.

Thanks for the post. I never used Inner Beauty myself but capsaicin-headed friends always spoke well of it.

Funny about cheap yellow mustard: it's a key ingredient in a favorite sweet/sour/hot barbecue sauce of my acquaintance, too. In that receipt, the "better" mustards tend to stand apart from the sauce instead of harmonizing with the other ingredients. French's all the way.

[Jenise]

I've just sent a copy of this to my friend Annabelle, whose Uncle Cecil in Trinidad used to make the most killer yellow habanero sauce. It contained habaneros, mangos and cheap yellow mustard, but we weren't sure what else. Annabelle used to bring home a gallon when she'd visit him and siphon off a bottle for me. Cecil finally he agreed to give her the recipe on her next visit, but he unfortunately died first and the recipe went with him. Annabelle attempted to make a hot sauce according to how she thought he made his, she wasn't happy with her own result. We've all been getting by on Melinda's XXX ever since, which is very good, but it's not Uncle Cecil's. This might just get us there.

I made this recipe to go with a Caribbean meal of curried goat, etc that I'm having for Sunday dinner today. I used 8 habaneros (which was plenty hot enough) and used hot pimenton for my chile powder. I found that it lacked balance in the flavor and one main ingredient -- Salt! (Why sugar and not salt -- the ying and yang of any vinegar based recipe?!) I added 1/2 TBSP salt and the recipe became magical. Just a thought and personal note.

Jo

Jo,

My personal taste tends to be low-salt. If a bit of salt turned on the magic for you, that's fantastic. And all credit to you for recognizing what was missing and for correcting it. It may depend on the salt content of the prepared curry powder you use, too. And I like the idea of hot pimenton.

-Paul W.

Thx, Paul
I make my own curry powder -- no salt (but a tbsp dessicated coconut). That may explain it.

[Jenise]

I'm making this tomorrow!

Let me know your take on the salt -- although I know you don't use much.

[Jenise]

Will do. Btw, have you seen Rogov's obit? Just got here. Just saw it. I'm reeling.

[Jenise]

Question about this. It's an uncooked sauce, I just realized. Have you tried cooking it so that it could be 'canned' or stored at room temp? The sauce I'm sure this is so similar to, my friend's Uncle Cecil's Trinidadian sauce, had to have been a cooked one as refrigerator storage wasn't required.

I never tried cooking it. I just keep it in a plastic container (the kind that yogurt comes in) in the fridge. It keeps forever that way.

-Paul W.

Question about this. It's an uncooked sauce, I just realized. Have you tried cooking it so that it could be 'canned' or stored at room temp? The sauce I'm sure this is so similar to, my friend's Uncle Cecil's Trinidadian sauce, had to have been a cooked one as refrigerator storage wasn't required.

It's peppers and vinegar. There should be no need to cook it. You can just place it in sterilized jars and hot process it for shelf storage.