It's my 100th "Kitsch-en" page! What better way to celebrate than with a recipe I'm extra proud of, homemade chili sauce?!



A couple of weeks ago I wanted to try a recipe that called for chili sauce. I dutifully went to the supermarket and was dismayed to find that it was either really expensive (well, more than I'd want to pay for something like that, anyway) or the ingredients made it sound one step up from dog food. Since I didn't feel like choosing between overpaying or buying crap, I took matters into my own hands and looked at the ingredients on a couple of bottles of the stuff. Let's see...water, tomato paste, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup--yep, I can do better than that. So I invested in a can of tomato paste and set out to make my own and I am SO glad I did! The results were heavenly! I ditched the characterless high fructose corn syrup for brown sugar and honey, used the called-for water and vinegar and added my own spices, including onion powder, pepper flakes, chili powder, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper. It worked great in my recipe, then I made another batch, to which I added chopped tomato and onion and baked for an hour with chicken. I'll never go back to bottled sauce, especially when it's so easy to make my own!

Click here to see what the Kitsch-en churned out last week.