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This thread was linked in the gardening thread, and I'm so very happy to have found it. Are there any good online hot sauce stores that aren't heatonist or amazon? I'm always looking to add more to my collection and I have a move coming up and I can't take all my homemade fermented sauces with me. Don't worry, I'm donating them to a good home.
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Apr 16, 2020 01:53
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mekilljoydammit posted:
Thanks for the links. I ran across the first one, but when so many hot sauces talk about asses, it can be hard to filter them out. Most of them are lying too unless they use extract and then they’re just selling me edible pepper spray and I don’t want to eat that. I fermented Reapers, Caribbean Reds, Datils, and Cayenne last year and blended in different proportions. It turned out great. I did habanero the year before and that was great too. The lactic tang is so pleasant on the palate. Vinegar is good too, but not when it holds the sauce into one profile.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:16
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Make sure you get the right seeds on the Datils, mine didn’t grow true to type and were a cross with something else. They tasted fine, but were weak.
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Apr 16, 2020 15:54
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I do mine with lacto fermentation and then add vinegar to taste. I do a 2% salt ferment with mine, so break the stems and weigh them, then add 2% salt by weight to the peppers and ferment for a week. You can do it in a crock and add water to it, or you can put it all into a vacuum bag without water and just leave it purged and fermenting. Just mix that salt onto the peppers well and leave any water that seeps out. The vacuum bag will swell, which means it’s working. A week is enough usually in a warm kitchen, but I like to put them in half gallon jars and leave them for closer to 3 weeks before purée and then you can sieve the solids and add vinegar to taste. Or you can do vinegar sauce all the way and skip the ferment and must preserve with the vinegar added. You’ll probably need to add water to balance it out from being too acetic. Edit: using barrels allows some oxygen to enter and allows acetic acid to be produced in the barrels too. So they probably end up with a multi stage fermentation. Jhet fucked around with this message at 18:51 on May 29, 2020 |
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May 29, 2020 18:49
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Are there any extract sauces that don’t taste like rear end? If there is I haven't found one. Extract sauces just taste bad to me, but I don't normally like eating pepper spray. I just read the label and skip anything that has extract. Superhots rarely make me squirm anymore, but I don't need to squirm, just need the flavor of those peppers.
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May 30, 2020 15:57
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LifeSunDeath posted:There's just no point to extracts, you can get mega hot stuff from real peppers and retain amazing flavors. I feel like extracts are reserved for cheap sauces and heat-clout chasing fools. Those are really good looking peppers. These were from my garden last year. Not pictured is the pile of Cayenne that I turned into a Crystal-like sauce (help, I'm running out). Good hot peppers can be something completely different from what you find in a bottle. Anything from fermentation, cooking, and pasteurization can really change the flavor of what you're getting. I blended them in a couple different ways, but the brightest and fruitiest tasting sauces I've made have all been brined and lacto-fermented whole pepper blended with maybe some garlic. Bonus is you can use the leftover brine to make other things too (like hot sour pickles). 
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May 30, 2020 16:58
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So, I saw this thread mention Secret Aardvark a little while ago and I saw it at the grocery store. I think I’m going to need to order it in bulk. Less than a week and it’s about half gone. I can use it on everything.
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Jun 24, 2020 20:32
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It might be a cool gift box idea, but that’s an entire second product line for sauce maker. Seems like there just wouldn’t be a good benefit for them when you’re laying out a bunch of capital on what’s more a novelty item. I’m not saying I wouldn’t appreciate getting a gift set, but I’d still prefer the 5oz or larger bottles.
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Jun 30, 2020 15:38
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Actually heat depends on the dilution of the capsaicinoids in the mixture. But it’ll depend more on the water content than the solids. If you want a rough estimate, you could average out the heat by weight, and that would be good enough for a home kitchen hot sauce. But I find it’s more fun to just put scary adjectives on the label to scare off family and friends.
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Jul 30, 2020 18:52
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For a long time I’d think? People probably still do it, but it’s not a good tool to measure things. Now they use high-performance liquid chromatography. Still measuring capsaicinoids, you just multiply the ppm by a constant to get SHU because that’s what everyone expects to see. You could do it at home if you have the equipment, but that’s more than most serious hobbyists would have, unless they love lab work for another reason. I looked into it at one point briefly on a lark for something else and it was out of my reasonable  budget.
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Aug 1, 2020 15:27
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FogHelmut posted:How much vinegar do I need in my hot sauce to not need refrigeration? I made a hot sauce out of a whole bunch of jalapenos that I grew, pineapple, shallots, garlic, and ginger. I charred everything on the grill, and then I covered everything in vinegar before I blended it. No water added. Yeah, under 4.6 pH. If you don’t have a meter you can’t really estimate due to all the other ingredients. If you can measure, then it should ship fine. I’ve shipped my sauce in woozy bottles before and they ship fine, but not in the smallest mailer box. I prefer to add 1.5-2% salt by weight too, but it’s not entirely necessary.
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Aug 22, 2020 03:37
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It’s an issue of not letting it grow at all when you’re fermenting. Once those toxins are there, they don’t go away even if you ferment the botulinum into dormancy. Use proper fermentation ratios and/or vinegar and you’ll be fine though. Aim for under 4.6pH and it can be shelf stable. Chiles are a lower pH veggie to start too, so that helps. And then post pictures of your sauce when it’s done because my habaneros did nothing this year and all I’ll have is a small pile of cayenne and Thai chiles and I need to live vicariously through others this year.
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Sep 14, 2020 17:01
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That’s a nice haul. You should be able to make a great sauce with all those. Looks very awesome. What kind of sauce are you planning?
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Sep 27, 2020 00:11
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mischief posted:I had heard that Pepper X was having FDA issues but this Apollo thing is out of the blue. Got my monthly email yesterday I think, curious to see how it goes. I had not heard this. I would believe that he's having issues with registering it like they do apples to be a specific plant where he can make money off the work he did crossing it, but I don't know why the FDA would care past labeling the food stuff properly. It makes me wonder if they've had issues registering the plant variation with the USDA, but honestly, it's been years since it was 'released' and I wouldn't bet on seeing the seeds in the wild for people to grow and make sauces from. I wonder if he's had better luck registering Apollo seeing as it has a trade name and we'll actually see those seeds being released.
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Oct 12, 2020 22:41
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Indoor grow room you say? I'd smash up those dried pods and have hot pepper flakes for pizza, burgers, and everything else. Fully grinding is something to use a mask and eye protection. Dust burns. How are you keeping the soil warm enough? X-post from the gardening thread. I have flowers on my Caribbean Reds now, and they're forming on both the Moruga Caramel and Moruga Red Trinidad Scorpions. And on the Bhut Jolokia strain too. They're all on the shelf part of the setup. Carolina Reaper are much bigger than the other superhots and are hiding on the table in front of the Chiltepins. I'm hoping for a hot winter. Jhet posted:I've posted in the past about starting an indoor chile pepper garden in a basement, and it's working a little too well. I started too many seeds and am going to run out of space entirely by December. These are only a week apart.
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Oct 15, 2020 19:22
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scuz posted:Made that mistake ONLY ONCE and sneezed for around 2 straight minutes. Not fun. It's mortar and pestle from here on out. I have the heating mats mischief mentioned, but I was trying to see if you had other plans or ideas floating around. I have my little room with a vent from the furnace, but I stuck heating mats underneath the boot mats I put the plants on. Definitely put something under the bottom though, it'll make a mess of your floor if you don't have it protected with a base. Boot mats are pretty cheap I've found and have the added bonus of dispersing the heat from the seed starting mats pretty well. I find myself wandering into my little room and just staring at the plants during the day a little too often. I have to keep reminding myself that staring at them won't make the peppers set and grow any faster, but it's very relaxing!
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Oct 15, 2020 20:46
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Missing Name posted:The latest locally grown habaneros I aquired are decidedly... Unspicy. What do You’re sure they’re not that new habanada variety where it’s a fake one without heat? It just comes with the habanero flavor. If not that, it does happen occasionally where they have very low heat which is always a bummer.
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Oct 16, 2020 08:40
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Shooting Blanks posted:I've never tried raw habanero, what's the problem with that post? The melon desert I think. I prefer my habaneros in hot sauce, but there's nothing terrible about fresh ones. The grocery store ones can be pretty blech, sometimes. I don't taste the aluminium, but it's probably not that far away from the mineral flavors I get. Maybe it's a taste threshold where not everyone picks up on it the same. You should try raw habanero though. The strong citrus/fruit that they can have is pretty wonderful.
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Oct 17, 2020 06:37
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Start with a fine mesh sieve before trying to push it through cheesecloth. I don’t know if it’ll take it all out, but it might get to a better texture. It should catch most of the ginger, but I’m not sure how well it’ll work on the coriander seed. It’s a step faster than cheesecloth, but that might be what you need to do anyway. Worst case you end up with a really thin texture vinegar hot sauce, and at least you’ll know for next time to grate your ginger and grind your spices first. You could even double down on it, add a little more vinegar, and leave it to sit and extract all the flavor you can before cheesecloth filtering.
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Oct 21, 2020 21:36
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That makes more sense. The only Pickapeppa sauce I’ve seen is just savory. Good with jerk and in a lot of other places, but I’d still add Walkerswood scotch bonnet based sauce to go with it. I also liked their hot jerk marinade. It’s pretty good for being a store bought marinade. It’s thick and rubs on and sticks really well even over a hot fire. My local grocery is currently getting rid of all the non-mass market hot sauces, so most everything else is on clearance. It’ll be nothing but Tabasco and Cholula in a few weeks I’m sure. Nothing notable so far. The best thing there was is Kill Sauce habanero which tastes similar to crystal but a little hotter. It’s not bad, but it’s barely hot. They also no longer carry Secret Aardvark which is disappointing. They put the Herdez chipotle taco sauce on clearance, but that’s about as close as it gets (not at all).
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Oct 22, 2020 16:33
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frogge posted:I've got a final batch of late harvest peppers and I want to try something new and make pepper powder with them. Already made hot sauce and pepper jam with earlier harvests. Some peppers are built for drying in ristra. It’s not terribly difficult to learn the knot for it. Just leave in a warm sunny place for a couple weeks. You’ll be able to feel when they’re dry pretty easily. They’ll be pliable but not squishy. If you dry them in your oven with heat on you’re likely to ruin any seeds if you wanted to save any. I have small taco baskets made from corn husk that also do a good job drying peppers in the sun. I like to put the smaller Thai ones in there to dry out in a warm place with airflow. I just shake them around every couple days to keep them from sitting in a place too long. Laying them out is easy, but a single layer is important for circulation.
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Oct 25, 2020 06:11
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Definitely leave the seeds in. They’re great texture and heat. I have some left from last year when I ground up all the ripe and just a little over ripe Korean Dark Green pods that I had my mom grow a few plants of too. They ended up too hot for her (and my family too), but I love putting it in everything. I made a batch of kimchi with the stuff and it’s stellar. I’m sad to think the pint jar is almost gone after being full. It still makes me sneeze if I scoop out the powder wrong or shake it at all.
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Oct 27, 2020 18:06
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I find it takes me about 6-8 months to go through a bottle of Last Dab, which is just full of flavor for being a super hot. It would go faster if anyone else would eat it, but habenero level heat is where everyone else taps out. I had a single scotch bonnet ripen on a basement chile plant that I’m in the mood for a good scotch bonnet or jerk sauce too. Anyone have one they really like? Also have a half dozen Bhut Jolokia that are starting to ripen that will get a sauce of their own. I’m looking forward to this one a lot.
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Dec 29, 2020 19:32
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How Wonderful! posted:Every Queen Majesty sauce is really good but the scotch bonnet is a standout. The ones I’ve had before were good. I didn’t remember they had one. I won’t be satisfied with only one option for it right now. I need the taste of summer and this will not do it alone.
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Dec 29, 2020 22:28
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Thanks for the recs this week on scotch bonnet sauces. I ended up picking up the Queen Majesty one because heatonist has a few other things I've been wanting to grab (and they had a mini-bottle of free Last Dab too). That Torchbearer Garlic Reaper, Karma Burn After Eating, and then another Scotch Bonnet sauce called Made from Scotch by Spice of Life made it into the list along with a bottle of Secret Aardvark because my lovely grocery store stopped carrying it because they're terrible.uber_stoat posted:look into Matouk's sauces. I'm grabbed a bottle of this too. It looks like it'll be delicious. Jhet fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2020 23:59
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I had a second fermentation in bottles two autumns ago myself. I honestly should have known better than to add unfermented peppers to the mix, but I did it anyway. With the brine the hot sauce was 3.7pH anyway, so any fermentation was just a continuation, but it did blow one cap and threaten the other dozen or so. I just tossed them in the fridge and they’ve kept well since. I’m down to my last two bottles of the stuff, but the fruity heat is wonderful. Point being, if it’s a fermented sauce and isn’t pasteurized, it’s going to start again if you add more stuff. Botulinum doesn’t survive under 4.5pH so unless it’s growing fuzz on the top, the fizz in the sauce is probably just a fizzy treat. Sure does make a mess though.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:25
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I at least had the presence of mind to avoid my first reaction, which was to run across the kitchen with a bottle of sauce forcefully jizzing green goop everywhere. I had a very red eruption all over the counter and cabinet to clean up myself. Context is important. I don't know that you can ferment avocado without it having oxidation issues or using an inert gas sealed container with an already active fermentation. There's plenty of sugar in it to ferment too. I think I'll stick to just adding hot sauce to guacamole.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:38
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The bottle(s) of Matouk Calypso Sauce arrived today and it's a good sauce. Not too hot, and the flavor is good enough to just use it like a mustardy bbq sauce. Good recommendation, and it's a good thing I didn't accidentally order a 4-pack without noticing. ... yes, that is exactly what I did.
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Jan 4, 2021 05:20
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Welcome to the hot club. There are plenty of people who just grab hot and super hot sauces and just enjoy them without much notice. It’s a unique experience, and one that I’m not sure most mild eaters understand. “Oh, doesn’t that just burn?” “I bet you’ll be feeling that tomorrow  ” “How do you have any taste buds left?!?” I just smile and tell them I’ve reached a higher state of flavor ascension and would they like to learn more about hot things? There’s a local place with a vinegar based ghost pepper sauce and I tried it and had to check the label twice. It’s just not hot. No one else in the house will touch it, but I have to not go past jalapeño/chipotle level when making chili too and it’s unfortunate.
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Jan 4, 2021 17:48
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Really? That does surprise me. What did not surprise me was this Torchbearer Garlic Reaper sauce. I knew it would have enough heat, but drat that garlic is on point. I got the rest of the sauces ordered too, so it’s going to be plenty spicy for a while a Karma Burn After Eating came too.
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Jan 8, 2021 03:34
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I have a bottle of Last Dab with Pepper X that was thick like that. It was at least very delicious but it was a pain to use like glass ketchup bottles. It either came out in a big glob or not at all. I got two sample size bottles of the current Last Dab in my order this week and it’s much more liquid and looks to be a great consistency.
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Jan 9, 2021 00:28
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Opened the bottle of Karma Sauce's Burn After Eating and it tastes great, but I was expecting it to be hotter I guess? I made a scotch bonnet with a single Caribbean red pepper sauce with plenty of garlic and onion (cider vinegar based) last week and it's really delicious. I've been using it on everything and it's going to be sad when it's gone.
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Jan 22, 2021 18:41
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So I got a wonderfully sized basement grown Bhut Jokokia Strain 2, and I ate it for dinner. I’ve been known to eat reapers on tacos and other bad ideas, but this thing acted in reverse. As in the heat started from my stomach and then decided to announce that it was there in my mouth. Clearly I need to spend more time with bhut jolokia sauces because this stuff is amazing and great. Quite the reverse experience this one. I have 2 of the plants and they’ll be going outside for the summer and I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be having enough to make some killer sauce and powder.
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Feb 24, 2021 03:41
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Any of the Heartbeat hot sauces. They even have similar bottles and it makes getting a consistent amount on there super easy. I do like the Heartbeat sauces. But the ones I’ve had are much thinner than sriracha, more like a Crystal consistency. Still great, and I love using the Red Habanero on tons of stuff.
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Feb 28, 2021 03:03
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I bought the Yellowbird stuff this week too because of the thread. The Habanero one tastes really good, but it's a bit mild for me (sorry McCracAttack, it's hot enough for everyone else in my house at least). I also managed to already eat 1/5th of it in about two days, so that's a repeat buy. The feedback on the sweet sriracha version is good to know and I may just need to skip it. They didn't have the Serrano at my store, but they did have Secret Aardvark on the shelf again. I find it very difficult to find sauces that are hot enough at the grocery store, but it doesn't surprise me at all. Not going to be much of a turn over on even stuff as low end hot like scotch bonnets. Habanero is the most medium they seem to go. I'm going to need a mini fridge just for all my hot sauces one of these days. I also wish I could find Crystal Extra Hot, that would be my eat on everything sauce. Regular crystal needs to be supplemented. Fake edit: the sriracha one might be really good on pizza.
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Mar 5, 2021 23:57
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fizzymercury posted:I have an extremely bad habit of eating a bottle of Scorpion pepper Tabasco in like a week and a half. Is there another sauce that hot that tastes good around? I'm getting bored and I've had a bad streak of buying terrible sauces. There are a ton of amazing sauces in the world. Many need to be ordered online. Chances are decent that unless you're finding something hyper-local, that someone in this thread has run across it before. I've enjoyed the Karma and Torchbearer sauces I tried recently for another place to start. Depending on your tolerance they may or may not be super hot to you. Here's some websites to browse if you're so inclined. https://heathotsauce.com/ https://heatonist.com/ https://www.dochotties.com/
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Mar 6, 2021 00:24
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Carillon posted:I'm not sure how hot the scorpion tabasco is, but sauces that are about as hot as the black garlic I really like are Fiya Fiya and the Dawnson's Sichuan Ghost Pepper one. Ooohhh, do you get much of the numbing from the peppercorns in that one? That would be my jam.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:29
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Ahh. I may try it anyway. I have a pretty decent tolerance to peppercorn so it may not even show up. That’s okay. It’ll still probably go in my next order. It was much fun introducing the numbing sensation to my very meat and potatoes family. I’m pretty sure my mother wanted to send me to my room and it was many years since that would have worked. The looks on faces was amazing. It’s a flavor and sense that more people should experience as it’s delicious and mischievous.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:38
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Comb Your Beard posted:Before I freeze them, I core jalapenos just a little bit. But not as severely as you would a bell pepper. Cut like 3 or 4 slanted 1 cm deep cuts where the stem attached and scoop out. Does that make sense? Feel like that area is more vegetal, less flavor and heat. Sure, but if you're freezing them they're easier to core while they defrost a little bit. You can just kind of pull the stem and most of the seeds out.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:33
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I'm not sure why you'd want to pluck flowers and end up with only 30 fruit, but you do you. I get 20+ fruit of single plants easily in a season and most of them are plenty large and very hot. Just fertilize and it doesn't have any issues keeping up with the growing. Except this year so far. June was cold and all the plants just stopped growing for a month and are just recovering and fruiting. The Reapers are looking to be loaded, and with 15-20 fruit per plant are the Trinidad Moruga Scorpions. I like to lacto ferment my peppers and will mix them up in their fermenting sacks, but you could supplement with fresnos or something to lay down a base pepper and then add as many as you dare to the amount you have. They dehydrate well from fresh and you can always make flakes or powder too. I don't like to cook my sauces, but you absolutely can. For ghosts I like to lean toward the cumin/coriander direction, but make sure to toast and grind your spices separately or they'll be gritty. Adding garlic and vinegar is a must for most of mine. Just maybe don't do anything with oils or added fats as they'll go rancid and you have to eat it faster. Fermented and vinegar sauces can last a long time if you pasteurize/jar them. This website has a ton of recipes and none of them look like they'd make terrible sauce. https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/chili-pepper-recipes/hot-sauces/ Any of the cooked recipes with oil will last about a month, but if you take out the oil (just cook things with a bit of added water to start) you can can/pasteurize them in smaller portions.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:05
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