Homemade chili sauce

There are a million videos, well just about, on Youtube on how to make chili sauce. I wanted to achieve 3 things... get it to taste like my favourite shop bought one, achieve the same texture, use only natural preservatives. This was my first try.

My favourite chili sauce is found in the cool section of the vege/fruit at Tesco. It only has one ingredient that I don't want, the preservative, and it not even named on the bottle. But it's a lot better than the ones in the regular condiment aisle.

I used this method of making it, but not the same ingredients.

From my reading, I am hoping to preserve the sauce by using garlic, salt, sugar, vinegar and lime.

These were my ingredients...

red chili 241g after removing tops (14 pieces)

garlic 52g peeled (10 cloves)

salt 1 tsp

sugar 3 TBsp

apple cider vinegar 250ml

red onions 164g peeled (4 medium)

lime 1 big

This was the final product

This was the stuff that was sieved out, removed from the final sauce. 

Didn't waste it. Put it in the fridge to be used in our future cooking that requires chili & garlic.

I got 365g of sauce from it.

Thoughts after making it...

- The main ingredient is so variable in heat. The final product was hot but not unmanageable. I have no idea how to control the heat for future sauces. 

- More garlic. I love garlic so will up it to 80g next time.

- Less vinegar or lime I'm not sure. It was a bit sour on the 1st day. The next day I added it to a McDonald's burger at it was fine

- Now I know regular sauces have a TON of sugar. I used 3 tablespoons in this small amount of sauce and it wasn't sweet. Regular chili sauces are more sweet than sour.  

- Reduce the price. Chili is expensive here, and so is apple cider vinegar. I cant skimp on the chili. So probably will have to use cheaper white vinegar the next time. Or make my own vinegar!!