Peach Hot Sauce
Fruity with a nice kick of heat, this Peach Hot Sauce will liven up your harvest. Why not can a few jars to preserve the season!
My family has never been big on jams. So when I decided to do more canning, I knew I’d need to work harder to find fun and unique recipes. Why so challenging? Well for food safety reasons, canning recipes aren’t supposed to be modified (with just a very few exceptions).
This means you can’t really punch up a boring recipe at will, in contrast to day-to-day cooking. So I was delighted to discover a recipe for Peach Hot Sauce in a favorite canning blog, Food in Jars.
The sauce is seriously tasty with a sweet fruitiness and nice kick—even using a milder pepper than the original called for (see below). And I love the light golden color. Makes it look kind of innocent until the heat kicks in.
You can use this beautifully complex sauce in many ways. Try it in wraps, on hot wings, or as a grilling sauce or marinade. Or atop cream cheese for a spicy appetizer. Really anywhere a hot sauce would be good!
The Scoville Scale and a Permissible Modification
In case you’re not familiar with the Scoville Scale, it’s a measure of the heat in peppers. And it’s a very helpful reference if you find a recipe with a pepper you haven’t worked with before. The scale starts at zero for a bell pepper and goes up to 1.4M+ for a Carolina Reaper. And some scales go even higher!
To give you a point of reference, the Jalapeno which most people are familiar with generally ranges from 2500-8000. Though of course, no two peppers, even of the identical variety, are the same.
Now the original Peach Hot Sauce recipe called for Habanero peppers which are around 100,000-350,000 Scoville units. And I was pretty sure that even diluted with peach pulp, this was going to be too hot for me.
It was all rendered moot when I couldn’t even find them in my small town. But I happened to have a few Serrano peppers (10,000-23,000) in my freezer.
Which brings me to one of the permissible canning modifications—you can swap different varieties of peppers as long as you don’t increase the weight/volume of pepper. Happily Serrano and Habanero peppers weigh about the same, so it was a 1 for 1 swap. If you want to go lighter yet, a single medium jalapeno (around 1 ounce) could be used instead.
And that level of heat was just right for me, a moderate heat kind of gal. My low heat husband would probably have preferred the jalapeno.
Why You’ll Love This!
Flavorful. The blend of peachy fruitiness with the peppery kick is delightful. In fact, I spooned up the slight extra that didn’t fill a jar and ate it on the spot (shhh).
Practical. Whether you’re looking to discover unique flavors, trying to eat local, watching your pennies or dealing with a big peach harvest, this could help solve your problem.
Satisfying. It’s a great feeling to make something flavorful that can help you take the harvest into the winter.
Step by Step Overview
This assumes that you are familiar with basic canning techniques. If you’re not, check out the canning information at Food In Jars, the University of Georgia’s Center for Home Food Preservation or another reputable site.
Wash and prepare 5 half-pint jars (you may only need 4), lids, rings, and canner.
In a medium saucepan, combine the peaches, vinegar, sugar, onion, peppers, garlic, lime juice, and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until everything is tender.
Remove the pot from the heat and puree using an immersion blender.
Funnel into the prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
Wipe the rims, apply lids and rings, then process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.
When the time is up, move the canner off the heat and remove the canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars and set them on a folded kitchen towel to cool. When the jars have fully cooled, check the seals and remove the rings. Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal and use quickly. 
I like to label my jar lids with the name and date using a sharpie since the lids can’t be reused (and 6 months from now lots of canned food looks the same).
Variations
After making this I realized it’s similar to a Peach Salsa I make except the salsa is chunky and much milder. Isn’t it nice to have multiple ways to keep beautiful local peaches in your life all year round!
Tips & FAQs
Be sure to use yellow peaches not white. The acidity, which keeps your canned foods safe, is lower in white peaches. While the original doesn’t specify I’m not sure the white will work and the color wouldn’t be as nice either.
I like to peel my peaches by dipping them in boiling water for about a minute. Then I rub off the skins under running water. If you’ve done tomatoes, it’s the same process.
The original uses really cute tall jars with pouring spouts. For personal use, it seemed too hard to source the supplies. But they are cute so take a look at the original if you’re interested.
Delicious Peach Recipes
- Citrus Peach Red Wine Spritzer from That Recipe
- No Churn White Peach Icecream from Magical Ingredients
- Peach Crumble from Creative Cynchronicity
- Perfect Peach Macarons from A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
- Pioneer Woman Peach Salsa from Jen Around the World
We share Recipes From Our Dinner Table! Join our group and share your recipes, too! While you’re at it, join our Pinterest board, too!
Peach Hot Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pounds yellow peaches quartered and peeled
- 1 cup 5% apple cider vinegar may use another 5% vinegar instead
- 6 Tablespoons sugar
- 1/2 small onion chopped
- 1/2 sweet orange pepper seeded and chopped
- 3 serrano peppers stemmed and seeded
- 2 garlic cloves peeled
- 2 Tablespoons bottled lime juice
- 3/4 Tablespoon sea salt
Instructions
- Wash and prepare 5 half-pint jars (you may only need 4), lids, rings and canner.
- In a medium saucepan, combine the peaches, vinegar, sugar, onion, peppers, garlic, lime juice, and salt.
- Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until everything is tender.
- Remove the pot from the heat and puree using an immersion blender.
- Funnel into the prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
- Wipe the rims, apply lids and rings, then process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.
- When the time is up, move the canner off the heat and remove the canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars and set them on a folded kitchen towel to cool.
- When the jars have fully cooled, check the seals and remove the rings. Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal and use quickly.
- I like to label my jar lids with the name and date using a sharpie since the lids can’t be reused (and 6 months from now lots of canned food looks the same).
I love the idea of the sweet and heat in one sauce. It looks so delicious and great for over ripe summer peaches.
Great idea to make delicious sauce! Lovely color and lovely flavor!
Wowzer — this sounds great, Inger. I am going to make it for sure. We are at the end of peach season but they are still coming. As for the Scoville scale and hot peppers… did you know that the more water you use when watering the chiles, the hotter they get? It surprised us. Our little chiltepins get pretty hot because Mark waters them every day. Once we grew habaneros and I made hot sauce. 1/4 teaspoon of the stuff in a batch of gazpacho blew our heads off!
Wow, fascinating David. I knew that growing conditions affected them but that’s really counterintuitive!
Right? We thought so, too. Still learning in my late 60s… amaizng!