Southern Pepper Sauce Recipe
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This pepper sauce recipe is a Southern family favorite. Perfect for serving with cornbread, greens, or black eyed peas, this Southern Pepper Sauce is one you’ll turn to again and again.
Pepper Sauce is a favorite condiment for serving with any number of dishes in the south. It’s delicious with foods like black-eyed peas, pinto beans, collard greens, or turnip greens. Many even like a bit of it with their BBQ. A jar of this spicy sauce can just about always be found on the supper table, making it a staple item to make each year.
At the end of each summer, Daddy would gather peppers from his garden to make a good number of jars to use, keep in the pantry, and share with friends.
Here’s our family pepper sauce recipe. This recipe is for a one-pint jar.
Southern Pepper Sauce Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup distilled white vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, or pickling salt
- 1 teaspoon olive oil, optional for extra hot pepper sauce
- about 30 small peppers
Instructions
- Clean jar, lid, and band and rinse well. Keep warm.
- Mix together sugar, salt, vinegar, and optional olive oil in a stainless steel saucepan.
- Cook over medium heat until it begins to boil.
- Fill jar with peppers and pour hot vinegar mixture over the peppers. Leave about 1 inch of headspace from the top of the jar
- Remove air bubbles in the jar by tilting jar slightly to allow bubbles to escape as press peppers against opposite side of the jar.
- Wipe jar rim to clean. Place lid on top of jar and tighten ring.
- Allow jars to seal by setting on countertop to cool with about 1 inch in between each.
- Test seal after about 12 hours by pressing finger to the center of the lid. If sealed, it will not pop back. If not sealed, refrigerate and use.
- Store in dark, cool cabinet or pantry for up to a year.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Enjoy!
Robyn xo
Very good Pepper sauce recipe. Do I need to refrigerate the pepper sauce after opening?
Laura, you can refrigerate this after opening.
The recipe looks similar to what my mom and grandmother used back in the mid to late ’50s. I don’t recall her using sugar, but then I was only 12 to 16 or so and didn’t watch too carefully. They left the stems on and canned many pint jars at a time. I remember my grandmother removing the peppers from the jar, removing the seeds from the peppers, and eating them with her collards or turnips. We had about an acre under cultivation and grew our own peppers, collards, turnips, pole beans, watermelon, pumpkins, and strawberries. I really learned to hate weeding the garden.
Did you slice the ends off the peppers or just remove the stems? Looks great, I will be trying it very soon.
Donna, I just removed the stems from the peppers and did not cut ends off. I hope you enjoy the pepper sauce.
What kind of peppers are best?
Shannon, the peppers used were jalapeño and Serrano in this photo but you can use other peppers.
I also add some baby carrots for more color , some raw onion rings and a clove of garlic.
Has anyone added a little whiskey the recipe? I am thinking about this year in one jar.
I haven’t tried adding whiskey to this pepper sauce, James, but maybe if someone else has they can tell you how it turned out.
Thank you Robyn for sharing. I made five quarts with cowhorn and sweet banana with the olive oil.
I packed the Quart jars full and it took about six cups of this mixture to fill two quart jars.
I hope you enjoy the pepper sauce, Greg.
My dad made vinegar pepper sauce with long thin peppers. I don’t know what kind and he’s gone. Can you tell me what kind those were? Mild hot but not too hot. The closest brand store-bought Trappey’s but they come in such small bottles? Can you tell me what other kind I can use? Thanks for the recipe.
Martha, the peppers used were jalapeño and Serrano in this photo but you can use other peppers.
He may have used cayanne peppers. Im just about to make some in small skinny jars. Not sure haw to preserve these. I wonder if i have to refridgerate afterward?
Kathy, the instructions for storing the pepper sauce is in the recipe. Look at instruction numbers 7, 8, and 9. I the jars have not sealed within 12 hours, place them in the refrigerator. Hope you enjoy them.
Martha it sounds like what we in the south call Cow Horn peppers..they are long slender and green…
I read somewhere to make a small slit in the peppers as you put them in the jar. This allows liquid to enter pepper and increases how hot liquid becomes. Wear plastic gloves if you do this. This procedure would also keep pepper from floating upward in jar. I intend to try this. SOME LIKE IT HOT!
Thanks for the tip, Beverly. I hope you enjoy this pepper sauce.
Other suggestions for types of peppers? I saw banana peppers, chilis, and hot cow horn peppers.
TW, the peppers used were jalapeño and Serrano in this photo.
Any hot pepper will work. And I agree with MaryB we don’t add sugar or oil to our pepper sauce. Grew up in a house that everything was saving. Didn’t put sugar in cornbread or biscuits either. My grandmother would have had a hissy fit.
Barbara, this is the way my grandmother and mother made this pepper sauce all the time. Strange how different people in the South had little changes to their recipes.
How long does it take to make