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thehoodie posted:I've just moved to a place that actually has enough kitchen space to contemplate fermenting/making my own sauces. Is there a "babby's first hot sauce" guide somewhere I can look at? Do you have a vacuum sealer and bags to ferment in or will you need to do it in jars? Recipes will be similar, but you'll add water to the jars to keep the peppers in an oxygen free environment.
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Dec 10, 2021 00:25
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thehoodie posted:I've just moved to a place that actually has enough kitchen space to contemplate fermenting/making my own sauces. Is there a "babby's first hot sauce" guide somewhere I can look at? Habanero, bell pepper, garlic, carrot is a pretty fool proof recipe. Get a kitchen scale. Get some canning salt (I think kosher salt might work as well?). Get some mason jars, and zip lock sandwich bags Weigh your jar on your scale. Put the ingredients in your jar and filled it with water. Now dump that water into another vessel and weigh the jar with ingredients in. Subtract the weight from that weight. Now your ingredients final weight, you want to add 2% of it in salt to your water. So say 400g of ingredients you want to add 8 grams of salt. Put the brine water back in, throw a zip lock bag over the top and press it down until everything is submerged, then fill the top with water to keep it down. Loosely fit the Mason jar lid on to keep the bag in place. Let fermented for 2 weeks! I've had huge success doing sliced Jalapeño chips, garlic, Shallot, and a bay leaf or two. I don't even turn it into hot sauce, just munch on them. Delicious.
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Dec 10, 2021 04:44
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Jhet posted:
Do you just put the jars with the caps on straight in the immersion circulator? I stupidly tried to pasteurize them in boiling water and the caps shot off the tops of the bottle.
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Jan 4, 2022 23:59
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Ramms+ein posted:Do you just put the jars with the caps on straight in the immersion circulator? I stupidly tried to pasteurize them in boiling water and the caps shot off the tops of the bottle. I do, yes. Because the temp is lower they stay put. Water up to just over the cap. I tried to boil them the first year I did it and they boiled straight off. It makes sense, but I wasn't expecting it. 150F for just over an hour worked great.
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Jan 5, 2022 00:35
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Just as easy as a tincture make some pepper tequila. The longer it soaks the spicier it gets. I remember adding cardamom pods and star anise to my Trinidad scorpion ferment, and finished with carrot. Some say shallots give a better onion flavor than onion in one as well.
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Jan 5, 2022 01:23
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Hey thread, I have a colleague whose house burned down recently and he lost his massive hot sauce collection. We're all buying bottles to kickstart his next one. Does anybody have any suggestions for sauces that a collector would appreciate? Bonus points if they're Chinese or East African.
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Jan 6, 2022 21:03
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Notahippie posted:Hey thread, I have a colleague whose house burned down recently and he lost his massive hot sauce collection. We're all buying bottles to kickstart his next one. Does anybody have any suggestions for sauces that a collector would appreciate? Bonus points if they're Chinese or East African. There's not a lot of Chinese hot sauces around that I've seen, there's chao zhou sauce, but it's still just a hot oil. Hot oils and dipping chile powders are more common. Peri-peri peppers and Fatalii are native to Africa, so sauces with these peppers are going to be the right profile. Matouks is really good, and while Caribbean there's some unfortunate cross over in flavors. As for where to buy, here's a few places I've bought from before, and others will have some other spots too. https://heathotsauce.com/ https://www.dochotties.com/ https://heatonist.com/
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Jan 7, 2022 04:00
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Tried this Midsummer Flagship sauce from Stavanger, Norway. It's interesting that it's made with habaneros grown here (inside, I assume). It's very expensive, but the presentation is nice. The sauce itself is very pineapple forward, quite thin in consistency. Tasty, but not hot at all.
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Jan 7, 2022 15:57
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Has some of the most unfamiliar ingredients(chickpea miso is absolutely a new one on me in any context) to it out of all sauces to date----but is also now probably my favorite sauce~ https://www.seedranchflavor.com/products/truffle-hound
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Jan 10, 2022 02:59
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Thanks y'all, that was helpful - I want to get that Norwegian sauce but the shipping will take a while so I went with some lucky dog sauces from heathotsauce
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Jan 10, 2022 21:16
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ExiledTinkerer posted:Has some of the most unfamiliar ingredients(chickpea miso is absolutely a new one on me in any context) to it out of all sauces to date----but is also now probably my favorite sauce~ Where is this at heat wise? I normally don’t go for ghost pepper-level stuff, but this looks like it might be pretty mild as those go with the other stuff in it?
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Jan 10, 2022 23:11
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Do people have good suggestions for smoked chili sauces or chili sauces made with smoked peppers? I love chipotle sauces, but it's hard to find ones that are not too sweet or taste like a cuminy blended taco. I love the Chipotle Tabasco, something like that with more heat would be great.
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Jan 11, 2022 02:50
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My go-to smokey flavor hot sauce is usually the El Yucateco XXXtra hot Mayan stuff. It's super cheap and in most grocery stores ive been in. It's mainly habeneros though so it's a huge step up in heat from Tabasco.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:28
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thotsky posted:Do people have good suggestions for smoked chili sauces or chili sauces made with smoked peppers? I love chipotle sauces, but it's hard to find ones that are not too sweet or taste like a cuminy blended taco. I love the Chipotle Tabasco, something like that with more heat would be great. The best chipotle sauce in the history of the world was made by me, and you can make it too. Just take a couple of cans of good chipotles en adobo, and blend them up with however much cider vinegar you need to thin it out. Blend it for way longer than you think you need, otherwise you'll get seeds clogging your bottle. Or you could be fancy and strain it. San Marcos is the best brand I have found by a pretty decent margin, followed by Goya. They are the least sweet. Many brands are way too sweet, so look at the nutrition facts for sugar content. The adobo sauce has just enough other seasonings to provide depth, without outshining the chipotles. No cumin bombs. It lasts forever in the fridge since it's plenty acidic. I 100% always have a squeeze bottle of it ready to go. I like it fairly thick so it doesn't run off of stuff, but if you want it thinner, just add a little more cider vinegar/water. If you want it hotter, just add a few drops of whatever stunt Dave's hot sauce or the like, that you can find.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:55
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Anno posted:Where is this at heat wise? I normally don’t go for ghost pepper-level stuff, but this looks like it might be pretty mild as those go with the other stuff in it? Milder than you'd think for Ghost Pepper is a good way to think about it---the kick is absolute, and somewhat lasting on top, but the sort where you are inclined to keep adding a bit more each time as opposed to the A Dab'll Do Ya paradigm. The bottle itself imparts Gestalt, as it is the open style cap rather than something akin to a dropper---so even if you try to only put a tiny bit, you are primed to fail* and thus the enjoyment can escalate.
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Jan 17, 2022 04:02
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An article came up today with some https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mccormick-franks-cholula-hot-sauce-supremacy/ I, for one, will go down kicking and screaming clutching a bottle of Tabasco family reserve.
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Jan 28, 2022 16:09
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Pioneer42 posted:An article came up today with some Ehhhh...there are enough small/specialty/local hot sauces that it's not difficult to just avoid the major names altogether. Of the sauces I've bought in the last year, probably the most prominent name is Crystal. The biggest challenge is going to be keeping shelf space in grocery stores, but it's in their best interest to stock more than just McCormick products.
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Jan 28, 2022 17:53
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Shooting Blanks posted:Ehhhh...there are enough small/specialty/local hot sauces that it's not difficult to just avoid the major names altogether. Of the sauces I've bought in the last year, probably the most prominent name is Crystal. The biggest challenge is going to be keeping shelf space in grocery stores, but it's in their best interest to stock more than just McCormick products. My grocery stores don't have much that's interesting anyway. It's mostly from the same providers and there's probably 6-7 large market hot sauce companies with bottles on shelves. Most of the stuff I buy is via the internet. I buy maybe 1 bottle each of the standard mild hot sauces in a year. McCormick isn't going to actually be in the hot sauce market anyway, they're just going to set up camp in the mild sauce division which was already dominated by a bunch of big names.
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Jan 28, 2022 18:03
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This looks like a really good idea, ferment your chilies in honey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkGGTvIoGoo
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Jan 29, 2022 02:19
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Feels like his Charlie Kelly energy has gone up exponentially.
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Jan 29, 2022 08:04
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In addition to fermenting your peppers with honey, it's also a great idea to ferment your honey with peppers. IIRC there was a year where someone brought a ghost pepper mead to the mazer cup that was on the order of one pepper per 375 ml bottle or so, and it just annihilated all the non-chiliheads. I couldn't track down that story with a quick google search, but I did see that Moonlight Meadery took a gold medal with a habanero/ghost/scorpion semisweet a few years back.
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Jan 29, 2022 16:22
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Hot honey on pizza is an incredible combination.
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Jan 29, 2022 17:12
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I ain't ever planted peppers before, but I wanna. Is now a good time to? I live in California which is basically a desert at this point so I'm sure peppers might thrive here.
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Feb 28, 2022 22:29
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Fartington Butts posted:I ain't ever planted peppers before, but I wanna. Is now a good time to? Yes, now is a good time to start them. If you’re past your last frost date for where you live you can put them out in the ground already. That’s probably now or soon enough for southern, SF and north might wait another week or two. Check the almanac dates for your location with a quick google. You’ll need to make sure they get enough water in the summer, but they love 80-95 if they get enough of it.
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Feb 28, 2022 22:56
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I'm in San Jose where we just had a weird bout of cold, but we're back to it being 75 right now. I'll see what seeds I can get. Any recommendations for what sorts I should go with? I'd like to go with habanero and thai if that seems simple enough.
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Feb 28, 2022 23:06
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i still have an ornamental Thai from last year that nothing seems able to kill. lack of water, heat, cold, doesn't give a poo poo. no hard freezes but otherwise it laughs at death. tiny peps though. basic orange habs are pretty easy, in my experience if you try growing the weirder colors they are more finicky.
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Feb 28, 2022 23:13
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Orange habaneros are really pretty easy. Red Savina/Caribbean Reds are hotter but also are really easy. Thai are also really easy to grow and if you fertilize even once will put out a ton of peppers. Super hots can be easy enough too, and your growing season is long enough that you should be able to keep them without any issues. It may be a little early to find them in nurseries/garden centers, but it's worth a look. Otherwise I'd expect they'll start showing up soon considering you're a month past your last frost date.
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Mar 1, 2022 00:15
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We had our first garden (just north of you in San Mateo) last year and grew some amazing peppers, a shocking amount really. We got four plants, jalapenos, habaneros, cayennes, and Carolina reapers. Legit we had so many peppers. The habs and cayennes in particular produced so much I had to get pretty creative in what I did with them. They were hot too, the reapers in particular were spicy as hell.
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Mar 1, 2022 06:53
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Habs are notoriously prolific in the right conditions. Starting peppers is usually the only difficult part, once the plants are established they will absolutely run away from you. Unfortunately they are not nearly as easy to pawn off on neighbors as your usual zucchini or cucumber suspects. We'll usually set the overflow out in a big pan to dry in the laundry room or somewhere that they won't pick up ambient flavors or odors (looking at you, diesel soaked garage). Most really hot peppers dry really well and you can either save them just dried or you can mask up and grind them into your own spice mix. I still have probably four gallon zip lock bags of mixed super hots and have given away countless little jars of scorched earth hell pepper mixes. Just really be careful grinding, it will get in your nail beds, your eyes, your sinuses, just literally little grains of pain every where.
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Mar 1, 2022 15:17
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My yellow-themed pepper starts are well underway. Aji amarillos, 7 pot and ghost peppers have germinated with some secondary leaves. Manzanos are lagging but just sprouted. And my reapers have yet to germinate at all. After being warned about Pepper Joe's my instinct is to immediately blame them, but reapers are known to be finnicky, so trying to be patient!mischief posted:Habs are notoriously prolific in the right conditions. Starting peppers is usually the only difficult part, once the plants are established they will absolutely run away from you. Unfortunately they are not nearly as easy to pawn off on neighbors as your usual zucchini or cucumber suspects. We'll usually set the overflow out in a big pan to dry in the laundry room or somewhere that they won't pick up ambient flavors or odors (looking at you, diesel soaked garage). Most really hot peppers dry really well and you can either save them just dried or you can mask up and grind them into your own spice mix. I still have probably four gallon zip lock bags of mixed super hots and have given away countless little jars of scorched earth hell pepper mixes. I have a coffee grinder designated specifically for grinding dried peppers. Even being careful, the ambient air will still sting like somebody got maced hours ago. My wife is pregnant, so my uses for the powdered habanero and ghost I made last year are diminishing as her pallet gets hosed up. I'm probably going to have to give away so much sauce this year...
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Mar 1, 2022 15:45
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Chad Sexington posted:My yellow-themed pepper starts are well underway. Aji amarillos, 7 pot and ghost peppers have germinated with some secondary leaves. Manzanos are lagging but just sprouted. And my reapers have yet to germinate at all. After being warned about Pepper Joe's my instinct is to immediately blame them, but reapers are known to be finnicky, so trying to be patient! Crappy thing about Pepper Joe’s lack of QA is you won’t know until later in the year if they’ve screwed you with the wrong seeds most of the time. Reapers can be temperamental, but with good heat and moisture they’ll sprout just as well. They were the first peppers up for me this year, but it’ll be interesting to see how many starts I have versus how many of the wintered plants come back. I may have a pepper problem.
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Mar 1, 2022 16:17
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Jhet posted:Crappy thing about Pepper Joe’s lack of QA is you won’t know until later in the year if they’ve screwed you with the wrong seeds most of the time. Reapers can be temperamental, but with good heat and moisture they’ll sprout just as well. They were the first peppers up for me this year, but it’ll be interesting to see how many starts I have versus how many of the wintered plants come back. I may have a pepper problem. Yeah which makes their practice of asking for reviews just a couple weeks after purchase hilarious. Also quite stingy with the seeds! 10 per packet. Southern Exposure and Baker Creek are a good bit more generous.
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Mar 1, 2022 19:20
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Chad Sexington posted:Yeah which makes their practice of asking for reviews just a couple weeks after purchase hilarious. Baker Creek has also sent me cross pollinated crappy pepper seeds and poor germ rate pea seeds. Which is one of a few reasons to not order from them either. Some peppers really don't put out many seeds, especially some of the super hots. 10 per pack is pretty common for it. I'm just going with little baggies on flowers to seed save again this year myself. Not that it's much cheaper, but this way I can send out seeds again next year for the low price of a stamp and envelope. This summer will be a bunch of yellow peppers in the Fatalii and Lemon Drop for me. I have plenty of Reapers and Bhut Jolokia again too, but I'm mostly looking forward to making salsa with the pineapple tomatillo seeds I acquired. I did standard tomatillo salsa verde canning last year and it's good and disappears quickly. I'm also putting in 4-6 Tabasco plants for some delicious fermented sauce.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:00
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Fatalii and Trinidad are far and away my favorite peppers, both growing and eating. I went crazy with chasing the scoville for a few years and after a while I guess it just fell a little flat for me. Reapers are a remarkable achievement but after a while it just became overkill for me. I know literally one other person that will eat them and when you've got a plant (or in my case a row) just exploding with peppers it just ends up being a waste of space in a garden. Fatalii and the different Trinidad Scorpions really hit that sweet spot I think, they are very robust plants, prolific, and they're just hot enough to share with the average person that hasn't consummately erased their palate like some of us. They also have really beautiful flowers which is always nice. Tomatillos and ground cherries are super rewarding in a row too. In NC they're very resistant to our usual murderers row of pests, they're very pretty plants, and they respond really well to being trained vertically.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:46
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mischief posted:Fatalii and Trinidad are far and away my favorite peppers, both growing and eating. I went crazy with chasing the scoville for a few years and after a while I guess it just fell a little flat for me. Reapers are a remarkable achievement but after a while it just became overkill for me. I know literally one other person that will eat them and when you've got a plant (or in my case a row) just exploding with peppers it just ends up being a waste of space in a garden. The Moruga Scorpions that I have from Trinidad are not that far off in heat from the Reapers. The red variety was just amazing last year even with the crappy weather I had. I don't know many that will eat them, but I just process them into sauces and powder and end up getting through a couple plants worth of fruit. The Fatalii last year were super tasting and I'm doing 4 plants this year instead of the 1 last year. I have managed to give away starts of the super hots last year, and one of the people who took some were really happy with them by the end of the summer. I'll probably just stick another notice up on the buy nothing and see what happens with the extras again.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:58
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Not a hot sauce pepper, but are shishitos easy to grow at home? I would eat those every day if so.
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Mar 1, 2022 23:55
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I've consistently had good luck with superhotchiles.com over the years. Maybe 1 in 10 packets fails to germinate, what grows is exactly as described, and they always send me 2-4 bonus sample seed packets. Their Antilles Red Habanero made some of the most beautiful peppers I've ever seen.  vvv thanks, edited Human Tornada fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 00:08
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^ https://www.superhotchiles.com is the one you want. The other spelling wants to install crap on your computer. I'm going to add that one to my bookmarks for when I inevitably buy more varieties next year.Democratic Pirate posted:Not a hot sauce pepper, but are shishitos easy to grow at home? I would eat those every day if so. They're pretty easy to grow, but you'd need a bunch of plants to be eating them everyday once they start being ready.
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Mar 2, 2022 01:01
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Democratic Pirate posted:Not a hot sauce pepper, but are shishitos easy to grow at home? I would eat those every day if so. We grew shishitos last summer and they did really well and didn't require much babysitting at all.
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Mar 2, 2022 01:24
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Jhet posted:They're pretty easy to grow, but you'd need a bunch of plants to be eating them everyday once they start being ready. It’s a sacrifice I am willing to make. The fancy grocery store in my old city had them in bulk, so I’d always sear a few on the stove and eat them as an appetizer while cooking my actual meals.
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Mar 2, 2022 05:30
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