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Piri piri sauce is a particularly hot chilli sauce made from the African bird’s eye chilli. Burgers and wraps, particularly chicken, really have their flavour picked up by the sauce and this may be a motivating factor in why there are now no less than three Portuguese chilli chicken burger chains in Australia which utilise the sauce.
Bird’s eye chilli isn’t easy to find in Australian grocers but any small red chilli will do when making piri piri sauce, including these Thai things that I use in most hot sauces. If you want something to marinate a chicken in, or something to smatter a tablespoon of in a sandwich, wrap or chicken burger, give this a try. Be wary that if your usual chilli sauce is sweet chilli sauce from a bottle, this may be out of your league as it’s much hotter than the fluorescent orange gear.
Making the sauce is not more complicated than roasting the chillies, simmering the ingredients briefly and then blending and straining the results. Leave the seeds of the chilli in the sauce, they’ll be removed when you strain (so they don’t get caught in your teeth) and the white pithy membrane that covers them is what gives chillies their kick so you want that transferred into the sauce.
The bottleshop down the road had a basket out, “Free Habñeros, Please Take!”. Well that’s not something I am going to argue with right? They politely asked me to take the chillies, it wouldn’t be civil to decline.
I took four of the habañeros out of the basket, leaving about twelve. I took them home and tried to figure out what to do with them.
Habañeros are essentially the silver medal of all chillies, the only hotter are Naga (or Bhut) Jolokia, the hottest chillies available which are from northern India – and are smeared on fences regularly to keep wild elephants at bay. Seriously. Four habañeros is not many unless you are finely slicing them for pizza, I needed ideas.
Twittersourcing a plan for the habs was interesting, one person suggested seeping them in a bottle of vodka which while appealing would leave me with an aggressively spicy (and aggressively alcoholic) bottle of vodka that’d be useful for maiming friends and family, but the twitter user who piped up about a carrot sauce won me over.
Warning: I am deadly serious, this is painfully hot. If you are anything less than a rabid chilli fan do not make, or eat this sauce. Habañeros are hot enough to be dangerous to work with, wear gloves, throw the gloves out when you are done. The sauce is hot enough to blister delicate lips so it’s absolutely unsuitable for children.
