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The does and donts of sauce making

CAPCOM

CAPCOM

I am not a sauce maker yet. But I do enjoy a good sauce or two now and then.
I just recently bought a sauce and was taken surprise by when I began to inspect it and discovered it contains a large amount of seeds.
In sauce making has anyone found that seeds impart bitterness or any other unfavorable flavors? I am just curious because when I use a sauce, that is all I want to be using. seeds are for growing.
 
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To be honest I never even notice the seeds when consuming hot sauce in my food. I guess if I was being picky I'd go no seeds for looks but they don't affect the eating experience.
 
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A lot of good points being made. However, if it not going to enhance or benefit the sauce in any way, IMO, it don't need to be in there.

I don't know of anyone who adds garlic or lemon juice just cause you have it sitting around the kitchen.

The argument could be made that, well, your not actually adding the seeds, they are already there. And I would add , do you make any attempt to not add to remove the lemon seeds that might include themselves to the brew?

I have yet to find one seed in a bottle of any kind of Tabasco sauce. I would think that specialty sauces should be made using even higher standards.
 
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CAPCOM said:
A lot of good points being made. However, if it not going to enhance or benefit the sauce in any way, IMO, it don't need to be in there.
 
​I agree~ but at what cost or time to remove?  on a commercial level, I don't know any who remove seeds.  Many choose varieties that have minimal seeds.  Is anyone going to remove seeds from Habs, 7 Pots or Bhuts?  Maybe if they use a food mill, but to manually remove the seeds...yea, not so much.  But if the 7 Pot sauce is food milled, it would probably remove a bit of pulp and skins as well.  But by that time, the sauce is already cooked and any bitterness would already be in the sauce. 
If the sauce is processed such that the skins are macerated/smooth, the few seeds and placenta would be macerated/smooth also.

I don't know of anyone who adds garlic or lemon juice just cause you have it sitting around the kitchen.
​I've been known to add a few weird ingredients just because they were 'there'....-lol-...but I get that point.  Not every sauce needs to have garlic, and not every sauce tastes good with lemon.

The argument could be made that, well, your not actually adding the seeds, they are already there. And I would add , do you make any attempt to not add to remove the lemon seeds that might include themselves to the brew?
 
​And I would say that there are options for adding lemon to a sauce-
  • fork the lemon and squeeze out the juice (juice, no seeds or rind oil)
  • ​cut in half, use a hand held juicer and strainer (more juice, some skin oil)
  • ​electric juicer which would get some oils from the rind, and some possible flavor from crushed seeds)
  • ​slice and throw the whole thing into the sauce, blend it and food mill it for rind and seeds
  • ​slice and throw the lemon all in the sauce and then blender the snot out of it with a good commercial blender which would obliterate all the skin, pith, membrane and seeds, just like pepper seeds and skins.  ​Any bitterness from the seeds, skin or pith would be in the sauce, but then again...it was in the lemon so it should be part of the sauce?!?!???
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I have yet to find one seed in a bottle of any kind of Tabasco sauce. I would think that specialty sauces should be made using even higher standards.
 
​ Tabasco is 'aged' for 3 years and then blended/macerated for 30 days in a continuously agitated vat that breaks down all of the seeds, skins, flesh, to a pulp which is then mixed with vinegar to the solution that is in the bottle.  Don't know if there is a sediment size filter at any step of that process, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was, just in case one 1/8th of a seed made it through the vat.   
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I would not use Fresno chiles in a commercial sauce because they are LOADED with seeds, placenta, ribs.  From the few times I've used them to make a demo fermentation for hot sauce classes, I would cut them in half and remove most of the seeds and ribs.  Probably half of the volume of those Fresno chiles was waste. 
 
For jalapenos, they seem to still have a lot of seeds for my preference and when I use them for pickled peppers, I add all the sliced ingredients to the big bucket for the pickle, and when I'm scooping out of the vat into jars, I try to 'rinse' the seeds down and in the bottom of the bucket is a descent layer of seeds that is discarded.
 
 
For most peppers cayenne/habanero and higher, the ratio of seeds and ribs/placenta to flesh is a lot less.  Yes, the chiles are more thin walled, but the seeds are also a lot less.  No one  that I know of removes the seeds from the higher heat peppers when processing. 
 
HOW those sauces are processed will determine the consistency of the sauce and the resulting mouth feel.  Some don't mind seeds, some hate 'em.  I can handle a few, but I do not like a lot of seeds in a sauce.
 
 
 
For habs and higher peppers, I don't thing the seeds or placenta add enough to the equation to impact bitterness.  I think the general flavor of the pepper is where some bitterness comes from.  Which is a WHOLE OTHER discussion!  :lol: 
 
 
 
 
 
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Genetikx said:
I remove the seeds. The only reason not to remove them is because it's too much work. There's no one that says mmm i like it better with those tasty seeds. Suck it up and remove em lol
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...tell me that when you are staring down 50-100-200 pounds of habaneros and superhots....  would you even consider de-seeding 500 pounds of 7 Pots?????
 
 
...and I have processed 500 pounds of fresh superhot chiles in one fall season, by hand...............
 
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D3monic said:
food mill work for removing seeds or does it just end up grinding them through the mesh?
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obviously, it depends on the food mill itself, but with the old fashioned ones I use, the seeds and large skin bits remain and it does a pretty good job of working the flesh through the holes.  It's also a bit of technique when using the food mill.  work it, work it, work, it...dump the tailings.  repeat.... but if you leave all the tailings in the mill, they could get more ground up and not taste so good.   
 
I've used it on spent grapes-
put grapes from our front yard vines into a juicer/steamer.  Bottled the juice as it came out of the steamer and at the end was this wonderful grape pulp.  Schmeared the mash (NOT FERMENTED!!!!!!)  through the food mill to separate the skins and seeds from the flesh.  Took the GoodPulp, mixed it with some sugar and made some jam.  YUM!
 
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salsalady said:
 
 
...tell me that when you are staring down 50-100-200 pounds of habaneros and superhots....  would you even consider de-seeding 500 pounds of 7 Pots?????
 
 
...and I have processed 500 pounds of fresh superhot chiles in one fall season, by hand...............
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I rather keep a small operation which would allow me to keep my techniques, and then charge more since it's a fine hand crafted micro brewery type product. If I'm at 500 pounds, perhaps outsource the deseeding lol
 
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I de-seed but i may have to rethink that this year with the 7 Pot and the MOAs. Once you get to the upper end of hab heat levels or above, de-seeding can be very painful. I pour my sauce through a strainer anyway. Whatever stays in the strainer is dried and ground. A couple of the powders ive made this way were quite good.
 
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salsalady said:
I've never heard of sauce makers leaving the seeds in as proof they used the whole pepper, but I guess... 
I use whole superhots and a good quality BlendTec blender for a supersmooth sauce.  If a person doesn't have a blender capable of getting a really smooth consistency, the sauce can be run through a food mill to remove the seeds while keeping the rest of the cooked flesh and placenta.  I personally don't care for a bunch of seeds in a sauce, don't care for the texture.  They can impart some bitterness if there is a whole bunch.  The placenta can also. 
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I Did as a green saucer and be known that's all my opinion

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk
 
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