Learn how to make Pineapple Mango Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce. This hot sauce is an absolutely delicious combination of sweet and spicy with the additions of other complex tastes including smoky, earthy, and tart. It is amazing on chicken wings. I also love adding it to sub-sandwiches, tacos, and pizza. Despite the notorious reputation of ghost peppers, this is NOT painfully spicy due to addition of the fruit.
Confession: I’m Addicted to Hot Sauce and Growing Hot Peppers…
I have a love affair with hot sauce. And pretty much all spicy things. Naturally, this means that I also love growing hot peppers, and I always grow at least: jalapenos, serranoes, and habaneros. In addition to those top three hot peppers, I also like to add tons of different varieties of other hot peppers to my garden and I swap them out with other hot pepper varieties every year.
This year, in addition to my top three hot peppers, I’m also growing: Georgia Flame, Hot Portugal, Hungarian Hot Banana, Brazilian Starfish, Ancho Poblano, and….Ghost Peppers. I will ALWAYS grow ghost peppers from now on in my garden. Forever and ever.
You see, last year, my darling hubby decided to surprise me with a gift of a ghost pepper plant (usually I start my own seeds, but I did not consider growing this one, so he bought me the plant from a nearby nursery). The thing about growing hot peppers is that oftentimes, the hotter the pepper, the longer the growing season needs to be for the harvest.
So, last November, my homemade salsa tomatoes and peppers were all harvested and either eaten or preserved (here’s my list of tons of ways to preserve hot peppers and here’s my FAVORITE pickled jalapeno/serrano recipe). At about the time all of my milder peppers were done for the year, THEN my ghost pepper plant was loaded with ghost peppers that were finally ready to harvest.
My Adventures Into Making Homemade Hot Sauce
As I stared at my basket of ghost peppers, I knew without a doubt that I needed to invent my own ghost pepper hot sauce recipe. I have already played around with making my own hot sauce with my Roasted Hot Pepper Hot Sauce recipe and my Citrus Grapefruit Habanero Hot Sauce recipe and my Roasted Poblano Habanero Hot Sauce recipe, but ghost peppers were a whole new level of hot sauce seriousness for me.
I started by gathering all the varieties of ghost pepper hot sauce recipes that I could find on the internet and in various canning books and cookbooks that I already owned.
My goal was to make my own twist on a recipe for ghost pepper hot sauce and not just copy another recipe. I had papers all around me as I wrote down ingredients that I liked and didn’t like from the various recipes and started thinking about ratios for the ingredients as well. It took forever, but I finally figured out my ingredients.
THEN I started playing in the kitchen. Making homemade hot sauce is a special type of challenge because it’s possible to leave spicy imprints everywhere. I wore two layers of gloves and had to keep remembering what I touched so I could wipe it down.
I have a lot of experience with making things with hot peppers in my kitchen, so I’ve gottenreally good at…”learning hot pepper lessons” that includes things like:
- If you touch the refrigerator door with glove that touched hot peppers, your fridge door handle is now covered in hot spicy pepper and it needs to be washed off;
- If you turn on your kitchen faucet to wash your gloved hands so you can take your gloves off, you now need to wash the faucet handle because it’s covered with hot spicy peppers;
- If you touch kitchen utensils, pot handles, the kitchen counter, or ANYTHING while handling hot peppers, you need to take note of them so you can wash them off.
So yeah, if you start making hot sauce at home, PLEASE be extra careful by wearing gloves and cleaning every kitchen surface possible. Your eyes and skin will thank you for all the cautions you take.
The result from all of my research and trial-and-error was the most delicious hot sauce I’ve ever had. I seriously cannot WAIT for my next garden harvest of ghost peppers so that I can make more of this super tasty Pineapple Mango Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce!
Pineapple Mango Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce: The Ingredients
The Fruit:
A lot of the other homemade ghost pepper hot sauce recipes I found focused on using only one type of fruit as the addition to the ghost peppers. I understand that fruit helps smooth out the spicy and edge from ghost peppers, so obviously fruit needed to be added to my recipe.
But I couldn’t help but wonder…what would happen if you combined mango AND pineapple with the ghost peppers instead of choosing just one of those fruit? The combination of these two fruit was amazing. I find pineapples by themselves too sweet and mangoes too…earthy? Mangoes have a taste to them that I don’t care for on it’s own, but I’ve always loved them with spicy things (you HAVE to try my homemade mango salsa recipe…YUM). The two fruit together helped keep the flavors from being too sweet or too ‘earthy’.
I also added lime juice. This helps keep the hot sauce from turning an off-color and also helps brighten up hot sauce with a tart-edge.
The Peppers:
The first time I made my pineapple mango ghost pepper hot sauce recipe, I used 4 ghost peppers. This made a lovely medium-spicy hot sauce. Since I love spicy things, after I finished my first quart of hot sauce(I’m an addict!), I then made another batch with 6 ghost peppers. I liked the kick and heat from the extra ones. If you are not sure if you like super spicy things, I suggest you make your first batch of this hot sauce with 4 ghost peppers and add more in your next batch of hot sauce if necessary.
I also added 2 jalapenos to my hot sauce. They have a bit more…pepper taste/girth to them. I can’t think of another word for it. Basically, the hotter the peppers, the thinner the walls of the peppers. When the peppers are thinner, they have less pepper-taste to them. So I added a few jalapenos for that pepper-taste.
Other Ingredients:
I didn’t want a cilantro-heavy hot sauce because my darling hubby hates the stuff. I love it, though, so I compromised with a small-ish amount of cilantro. If you love cilantro, you could add another tablespoon or two of cilantro to this hot sauce and I think it would taste really good.
I also added some honey as a sweetener. I didn’t want to add sugar because I hate the stuff, but some type of sweetener helps smooth out and sweeten the hot sauce. Honey worked perfectly for this.
I also added smoked paprika because smoked paprika is my favorite spice (here’s more culinary tips on how to use paprika, in case you’re interested). Plus, a bit of smoky flavor added the perfect amount of complexity to my hot sauce.
I don’t have canning instructions for this hot sauce recipe. I kept mine in the refrigerator. I kept it in a quart mason jar (this recipe makes quite a lot). It stayed good in the fridge for at least 4 months. That’s about how long it was around, because I kept adding it to all of my foods (and I was licking the spoon afterwards so I didn’t waste a single drop).
This hot sauce can last around 6 months in the fridge if you used clean bottles and also keep the bottles clean as you use it (I’m notorious for leaving hot sauce dribbles on the lids/rims).
Pineapple Mango Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe
Yield: Approx. 1 quart
Ingredients:
- 1 tsp. olive oil
- 1 mango, diced
- 1 pineapple (about 2 cups), diced
- 4-6 ghost peppers, diced (see notes below)
- 2 jalapenos, diced
- 1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
- 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup white vinegar
- Juice of half a lime
- 3 tbsp. cilantro
- 1 tbsp. honey
- 2 tsp. smoked paprika
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. pepper
Directions:
- Heat olive oil in a tall soup pot. Sauté the fruits and vegetables for 5 minutes (mango, pineapple, ghost peppers, jalapenos, onion, and garlic).
- Add the remaining ingredients, cover the pot, and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Use an immersion blender (like this) to blend the ingredients into a sauce.
- Strain with a mesh strainer into glass bottles (don’t forget to label & date them!).
- Store in the refrigerator and use within 4-6 months.
Notes:
**For “normal” heat-loving hot sauce folks, I suggest you use 4 ghost peppers. It’s the perfect amount of heat, similar to many hot sauces made with ghost peppers from the store. If you’re crazy-in-love with heat (almost to the point of pain) like me, try making this hot sauce with 5 or 6 ghost peppers instead. I made both: one batch with 4 ghost peppers and one batch with 6 ghost peppers and I liked them both.
**As mentioned a bajillion times in both this article and my other hot sauce recipe and hot pepper articles, PLEASE WEAR GLOVES AND AVOID TOUCHING YOUR EYES.
**A tall pot is the best option for making this hot sauce. It makes it easier to avoid splashing hot sauce in your face when using an immersion blender than if you use a shallow pot (ask me how I know…).
Did You Try My Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe?
PLEASE let me know if you liked my ghost pepper hot sauce recipe! I love getting feedback from folks who try my recipes!
And if you like spicy things, make sure you check out my other articles:
- Roasted Hot Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe
- Citrus Grapefruit Habanero Hot Sauce Recipe
- Roasted Poblano Habanero Hot Sauce Recipe
- Ways to Preserve Jalapenos and Serranoes
- Refrigerated Pickled Jalapeno (or Serrano) Slices (MY FAVORITE!!!)
- Homemade Salsa Recipe
- Homemade Chili Recipe (my family-favorite recipe)
