I’m always buying hot sauce and/or receiving it as a gift, so the bottles start to stack up in the pantry. This is a recipe that I have come up with to use up some of the sauces that have been sitting there for a while, and it delivers a very tasty snack.
Ingredients
16 oz Raw Sunflower Seeds (Unsalted)
1 Tablespoon Butter
1/3 Cup Hot Sauce (See Below)
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 Teaspoon Season Salt
Directions
Mix together the hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and seasonings in a bowl or measuring cup. Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Add the Sunflower seeds with the butter and stir until coated. Add one-third of the wet ingredients and stir. Repeat until the seeds are evenly coated.
Heat in the microwave for two minutes. Remove the bowl (careful, may be hot!) and stir. Repeat three to four more times until the seeds feel mostly dry. Spread out on a cookie sheet and let cool for about an hour. Like me, you will certainly sneak a few before that hour is up, but the taste tends to come through better after they have settled for a bit.
As for the type of hot sauce I use, I typically start with a Louisiana style as the base to give the seeds the right tang. That will make up the majority of the 1/3 cup the recipe calls for, and if you stick with that the heat level will be mild (assuming you are not using a super hot Lousiana sauce). Cholula or Tapatio would be good options as well, and the latter may up the heat just a bit. (I found that the Cholula Sweet Habanero Sauce worked quite well, adding just the right amount of sweetness.) I will then usually add a few drops of one or two other sauces for flavor and heat. And that almost always includes one of the really hot sauces I have in the pantry like Dave’s Insanity to give these seeds a kick. I find that the cooking process mellows out the heat from the sauce, so you can add more than you might expect without turning these into nuclear seeds!
Try various combinations of sauces to add your own twist to the recipe. Since I don’t always have the same sauces sitting on the shelf, each batch usually turns out a little different, but always good. I have also substituted roasted, unsalted peanuts for the sunflower seeds, and that turned out okay. But ultimately this works best with the seeds.