Sriracha Makin' Party!

Ok, so y'all know how much I love sriracha, right? I put that shit on everything! I even have an "I Heart Sriracha" sticker on my car. So when my friend Shauna of Veg'n In the Burbs suggested that we make our own rooster sauce, I was in like Flynn.

I met Shauna at her house on Sunday armed with a 2-pound bag of red jalapeno peppers. She already had everything else we'd need: jars, a canner, garlic, sugar, and vinegar. Here's the recipe we used.

First, we chopped the peppers and threw them — seeds and all — into a big ole pot:

Then Shauna added loads and loads of garlic and a little brown sugar and white vinegar:

Here's everything before we cooked it down:

The mixture is simmered for a few minutes until the peppers are kinda soft, and then it's blended with an immersion blender. When it was ready, we spooned the sriracha into cute little jars and placed them in the water canner.

When you're making rooster sauce, it helps if you have an actual rooster around. Shauna doesn't have a rooster though. But her pet hen Scarlett was a fine stand-in. She wandered into the house from the backyard a few times through the open screen door, and we had to re-direct her outside.

After the canning process, I came out with six jars of sriracha! This stuff is awesome.

It's a little chunkier than the bottled stuff, so it reminds me more of the chili-garlic sauce that also comes in the rooster bottle. But the taste is so amazing! I've been eating it on everything! I'm already halfway through the first jar I opened.

Now that I know how easy this is, I plan to make all kinds of hot pepper sauce this summer. We planted a variety of hot peppers this year — white habanero, regular habanero, Trinidad Scorpions, jalapeno, Thai hot chili, and even ghost peppers! My mouth is gonna be on fire!