What Makes Banana Pepper Sauce So Great
First of all, it’s one ingredient. I hear you saying, “How good could this be?” The answer is, extremely. I love banana peppers; they’re vinegary and zippy and just a touch spicy. I add them to almost every sandwich I make. It never occurred to me to treat them like a condiment.
Blending the peppers into a smooth sauce along with a bit of their pickling liquid makes for the perfect one-step “fresh” hot sauce. It’s pretty mild as hot sauces go, which is welcome sometimes, and adds the same bite of tartness you would get from adding pickles to something. It’s awesome. It’s also opened my mind to all of the dishes banana peppers taste great on: eggs, tuna salad, or drizzled on a rice bowl to name a few. Yum.
How to Make Banana Pepper Sauce
- Add 1 cup of sliced banana peppers and 1/4 cup of their pickling liquid to a blender. Blend until smooth, 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Banana Pepper Sauce Tips
- Think of it more like hot sauce and less like banana peppers. For some reason prior to making this sauce, I only used banana peppers on sandwiches, but they can do so much more. Just like you can treat hot sauce as either a condiment or an ingredient, you can do the same with this sauce. Use it to add extra flavor to salad dressing or a marinade. Try stirring it into your next batch of pasta salad and add a dollop to your deviled egg mixture. The possibilities are endless.
- Adjust the spice level. Banana peppers come labeled as both “mild” and “spicy.” Go with mild if you want something with less kick, and spicy if you want true hot sauce.
- For a smoother sauce, add more liquid. The ratio above makes a sauce with a good consistency for me, it’s smooth, but not runny, and has a bit of body to it. If you want something more liquidy, just add some extra juice from the pepper jar.
- Add to it for even more flavor. A sauce made with one ingredient is a precious gift, don’t get me wrong, but you can also make a variation on this nearly perfect sauce by throwing in a clove of garlic, some fresh herbs, or a bit of ground black pepper. Use your imagination.