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Writer's pictureMarianne Tshihamba

Pili-Pili, Congolese Hot Sauce

My hot sauce always gets rave reviews. The sauce uses habanero pepper base for the fruitiness but is tempered with other ingredients to cut down on the heat. Make no mistake, it is still very spicy, but the emphasis is on flavor rather than the scorching heat. And how can you go wrong when the secret ingredient is bacon!



Pili-Pili

Ingredients

4 cups Habanero or Scotch Bonnet peppers, stems removed.

3 cups of colored bell pepper, banana pepper, cherry pepper, anaheim pepper or other mild peppers. Try not to use dark green peppers because they throw the color off.

1 cup peeled garlic cloves

2 whole onions, peeled

2 whole tomatoes

5 slices bacon

1/2 cup salt

Enough water to cover.

1 cup white vinegar

¾ cup vegetable oil


Method

Place all ingredients except vinegar and vegetable oil in a large pot. Add enough water to submerge all of the ingredients with an inch of water on top. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Warning: You might want to open your windows and turn on your exhaust hood for this step – the fumes can be overwhelming!

Strain the mixture and allow it to cool to room temperature.

Place all the ingredients in a food processor with the white vinegar until smooth. Once it’s smooth, start pouring in the vegetable oil in a thin stream until the mixture emulsifies into a creamy consistency. Store in glass jars in the refrigerator for up to 2 months or in the freezer for up to a year.





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Grew up in jungless ofCongo in the 60s. In the early 2000s, my parents helped a family of Christian Congolese escape a refugee camp.

The mother, Jackie, used to make me hot sauce from the village from whence she hailed..

Best hot sauce ever. We called it Congo Hot.


Sadly, she had contacted AIDS from a filthy hospital in the jungle and she passed way too soon.


Great memories and all of their children, 4 girls and 1 boy, are all successful and are still appalled and saddened at our/the black culture here in America.


Rightly so; the blatant outcome of liberal policies designed to destroy the nuclear family producing fatherless children are horrifically apparent.

Pray.

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