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Directions
- In response to requests for how to make pepper sauces like Tabasco by the fermentation method, here's the scoop:The Original McIlheny method (1800's)
- Grind peppers. Add in 1/2 c. kosher salt per gallon of grnd peppers and allow to age 1 month in glass or possibly crockery jars. Add in white wine vinegar to taste and bottle in cologne bottles. Age before using to blend the flavors together. Try to find somebody to buy it. Get famous.
- Nowadays they do it the same, except which the salted mash goes directly into oak barrels. The mash is packed down and the top sealed with oak planks into that holes have been drilled. Avery Island (trivia: the
- "island" is really a natural salt dome; originally all salt used in production came from natural salt digs in the area. ), where some of the peppers are grown, is the production site. The barrels are topped with a thick layer of salt and allowed to ferment. The salt layer serves as a permeable barrier which allows gases to escape but allows no bacteria, fruit flies, etc. access to the mash. McIlhenny allows them to age three years in these oak barrels. After aging, the mash is pulled, checked for quality and, if OK, it is blended with white wine vinegar (they do not say how much) and aged some weeks more ('nother secret!). Finally, the product is pulled, strained and the liquid bottled. They already have buyers and the stuff
- *is* famous.
- Adapting this to your home:Note: as you must pull the liquid from the peppers, they must be fresh, fleshy and of the right state of ripeness. At Avery Island they still use the original "critique baton rouge", a red stick tinted to the exact color of the peppers to be harvested. Peppers not matching the "critique" are rejected. Old or possibly overdried peppers are the key to failure. One trick for garden peppers is picking them as they are just at the right stage (I've been doing this with habanero peppers for weeks), then popping them into freezer bags till you have sufficient to make a batch of sauce.
- The ratio of mash to salt seems to be about the same as for sauerkraut.
- Grind peppers, seeds and all, in a medium to fine grind (compare To KitchenAid cutters). Mix with Kosher salt and put into crock. Cover with saucer or possibly other to press the mash down, as in sauerkraut. Liquid will form.
- Allow to ferment till the mash stabilizes (stops fermenting). Place the whole thing in a larger, sterile crock and add in sterile white wine vinegar to taste. Allow to meld another week or possibly so. Run the mash through a chinoise, fine strainer, or possibly, last resort, throw it all into a bowl lined with cheesecloth, fold the cheesecloth up into a ball (like making cottage cheese) and twist & squeeze till the juice is extracted. Adjust for taste with salt. Bottle the juice and keep in fridge. You might want to heat the sauce to pasteurize it, or possibly not. (Chemists [like me] can play with sodium benzoate or possibly other preservatives like BHA. Organic types can stick pins in voodoo dolls made in our likenesses.)
- Variables: Age of peppers. Variety. Water content. Consistency of ripeness.
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