A good Halloween night in for adults needs three things and none of them is a costume: something warming to drink, something with genuine heat to eat, and a fire or the nearest approximation your home allows. Make the drink and the sauce yourself in the week beforehand and the evening itself becomes almost no work at all, which is rather the point of staying in.
Halloween has quietly become the one autumn occasion where adults are allowed to do something a bit theatrical without anybody asking why. You do not have to answer the door, you do not have to book anything, and dark spirits and chilli both suit the season better than they suit any other night of the year. Here is how to plan it backwards from the evening itself.
What should you make ahead, and when?
Work back from the date and the timings sort themselves out.
Spiced rum wants the longest run-up. Infusing takes about 72 hours, and then the rum needs two to three days to settle and clear before a second filtering, so allow about a week per batch. Start the weekend before Halloween and you will be bottling on the Wednesday or Thursday with time to spare.
Hot sauce is more flexible. You can make it the weekend before and let the flavours settle, which garlicky sauces in particular benefit from, or you can make it the same afternoon if the mood takes you. Either way it is an afternoon's work rather than a project.
Everything else on the night is assembly. That is deliberate: an evening where you are still cooking at nine o'clock is not the evening you were picturing.
How do you make the rum?
Buy an inexpensive dark rum that is not already spiced, because the spicing is the kit's job and layering your blend on top of somebody else's gives a muddled result. There is no need to spend much on it.
Then the method is genuinely straightforward. Clean the jar with warm water, add a spice sachet and a 700ml bottle of dark rum, and leave it somewhere cool and dark for 72 hours, tasting as it goes with the pipette. When the spiciness is where you want it, filter out the spices with the cotton filter, let it settle for two or three days so the fine sediment drops, then filter again and bottle it.
Our Spiced Rum Making Kit makes two 700ml batches in two flavours, a Captain's blend of classic pirate spice and a Jamaican ginger with a proper zing, which is a useful pair for an evening with more than two people in it. One goes into something long and cold, the other into something short and warm.
You control the intensity throughout. Leave the spices in longer for a bolder bottle, or filter earlier for something gentler, and if a batch comes out fiercer than you wanted, top it up with a splash of plain rum. Once bottled, drink it within a year, kept sealed and out of direct sunlight.
What goes on the table?
Hot sauce, and enough of it that people can find their own level. This is the great advantage of making your own: you can put a mild bottle and a serious one side by side and let the table sort itself out, which is considerably more entertaining than one sauce nobody can agree on.
Our Chilli Sauce Making Kit makes seven different sauces at varying heat levels from the six dried chillies and flakes it contains, so you can build a genuine range. Pick the milder chillies for the pourable everyday bottle and the hotter ones for the bottle you warn people about. Wear the gloves included whenever you are handling the chillies, because the oils cling to skin and sting badly if you then touch your face.
A few things that work particularly well on a night like this:
- A smoky sauce with anything roasted. Smoke and autumn go together, and a chipotle-led sauce is the one people go back to.
- A fruity, fierce sauce with rich food. Mango and habanero is a classic pairing for a reason: the sweetness lands first and the heat arrives a moment later.
- A straightforward vinegar-forward hot sauce. The one that goes on everything, all evening, without anyone thinking about it.
Bottle them in rinsed-out condiment bottles you already own and label them with the kraft tags and cotton string in the kit, noting the sauce and the date. Four anonymous red bottles is a genuinely annoying problem to have at ten o'clock at night. Worth knowing if you are feeding a mixed group: the Chilli Sauce Kit is vegan, gluten free and lactose free.
What about the fire, and the rest of the evening?
If you have a fire, light it early so it is properly established before anyone arrives. If you do not, candles do more work than they get credit for, and a mended bowl or a jam jar full of tea lights beats overhead lighting comfortably.
Keep the plan loose. A pot of something rich on the stove, the sauces out on the table, the rum on the side with ice, lemon and a kettle for the people who want it warm. Then a film, or the kind of conversation that only happens when nobody has anywhere to be.
The nice part is that both of the things you made carry on afterwards. There will be most of a bottle of rum left, and enough hot sauce to last well beyond the weekend, which is more than can be said for a night out.
Both kits are hand-packed in Britain and neither contains any alcohol itself, so the rum kit supplies the spices, filter and equipment and you buy the bottle separately.
Halloween night in FAQs
How far ahead should I start the spiced rum?
About a week. Infusing takes around 72 hours and the rum then needs two to three days to settle before the second filter, so start the previous weekend.
Can I make the hot sauce on the day?
You can, though a day or two in the fridge lets garlic-heavy sauces mellow and round out. If you have the choice, make them the weekend before.
How hot should I make the sauces?
Make a range. Milder chillies such as green or jalapeno give a sauce people can pour freely, and the hotter ones give you the bottle you hand over with a warning.
What rum should I buy for the kit?
An inexpensive dark rum that has not already been spiced. A plain supermarket bottle is exactly right, and each batch takes 700ml.
Will there be anything left afterwards?
Yes, comfortably. The rum kit makes two 700ml batches and the chilli kit makes seven different sauces, so one evening barely dents either.
Planning the night in? Browse all our kits and start something this weekend.
