Nightmare On Maple Street

I had an opportunity to ferment more hot peppers, so joining the group of cayenne pepper products with Sauspiria and Apocalypse Kraut is my latest hot sauce, Nightmare On Maple Street!

Freddy's new gloves are a little less dangerous than they used to be.

 I had about twice as many hot peppers to work with than I with my original hot sauce attempt, and since that one (Sauspiria) was a hit, I decided to make it again as well as try a new variation with maple syrup.  To do this, I fermented the peppers all together with whole garlic cloves in a jar and the same salt water brine that I used the last time.  After two weeks, I blended the entire contents of that jar until it was as smooth as my blender could get it.  Then, I poured about half of it out to give me Sauspiria, and left the other half in the blender to become Nightmare On Maple Street.

Nightmare is on the left, Sauspiria is on the right.

To figure out how much maple syrup to add I poured some into the blender while it was running, stopped it for a quick taste test, and then repeated until I was happy.  I did this about 3 times until I either thought it had just the right amount of sweetness added or I couldn't taste anything anymore (I can't remember which).

Either way, the results came out great!  Its a slightly thicker sauce than Sauspiria (which you would expect), with a bit of sweetness added from the maple syrup (the whole point of adding it, after all).  But more than just adding sweetness, it also adds a bit more eat-ability (is that a word?) to the sauce with the syrup lowering the heat just a bit and the sugar making you want to keep adding more.

But fear not, just like its brother Sauspiria, its still hot, versatile, and named after a horror movie.  After all, why stop a good thing?