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Please Diagnose My Bitter Green Sludge

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It was supposed to be a hot sauce. I'm hoping someone can tell me where I went wrong. I was kind of loosely basing it on a sambal oelek recipe I found online, but I was taking all sorts of liberties as well.

First off, I started last weekend with a half dozen medium size green jalapenos that I had left over. I puree'd them in the food processor with salt and set them aside on the counter to age a bit. I put the puree in a bowl that I covered with plastic wrap and wrote "Salted Jalapeno Mash 6/6/09" on it and left it there all week.

Around Tuesday my wife brought home a small bag of green Thai bird eye peppers she bought at an Asian market. I put them in a bag with an apple to ripen them a little and left them there until today. That was four days with the Apple. They did ripen a little, but none were red.. just a few yellow ones.

So I set up to make a sauce tonight with these ingredients.

1. First I boiled a cup of water, put in the chopped up bird peppers and jalapeno mash and brought it up to a boil again. Then I covered and reduced heat and simmered for 15 minutes.

2. Next I got the food processor ready and dumped the boiled peppers in it and pureed it all.

3. I added a tablespoon of rice vinegar.

4. I added a large clove of garlic.

5. I added just less than a tablespoon of oil.

6. I added about a teaspoon of sugar.

After it'd had a good whiz for a while, I stopped it and tasted it. It tasted like bad vomit. It was slightly salty (salt from the mash) and with a pronounced bitterness. It ended with a burst of heat. Not what I was looking for.

Next I tried adding a the juice of half a lime. Still tasted bitter.

Then I tried adding more sugar. It was sweeter, but still bitter and awful.

I sauteed some onions and pureed those into the mix with the food processor until it was smooth. Still gross. As a last resort I added a little dark soy sauce and it was still awful.

Finally I turned off the pot of water I was boiling to sterilize the bottle and gave up. I didn't even bottle my bitter green sludge. There was no point. I took a picture of the resulting "sauce" and came in here to post this.

A real head scratcher. Where did I go wrong? The green thai peppers? Putting some green jalapeno mash up to ferment a bit is a bad idea maybe? Maybe I should have put it in a dark place instead of on the counter covered with Glad wrap?

I need to make an awesome sauce tomorrow to redeem myself. I have to learn the error of my ways... I hate to waste peppers. There's a fine line between making a bad hot sauce and just torturing a bunch of peppers before dumping them down the drain.

:-)

Steve
 
I will try to be more helpful. Fist off, I've never made a mash so no comment, but don't boil it after it's fermented, that makes tasteless mush. Don't boil ANYTHING in water. You are making a sauce here, not baby food. For tomato sauce, would you boil tomatoes in water and then put them in a food processor? No. You need to cook your sauce, not boil your ingredients in water and puree them. Puree the ingredients before they hit the pot with some liquid that's already going in, then cook the sauce down. Make it easy. Create a base, then add to the base and refine your sauce. What do you want your sauce to taste like? Just think about the dominant flavors, and then tweak with subtle flavors. Salt brightens. Sugar sweetens. Acids cut. Want pungent? Vinegar. And so on, and on. Keep at it.
 
I agree with THP. I have never really used Rice Vinegar for sauces. I usually use Apple Cider Vinegar. (not sure if a tablespoon of vinegar is enough either). If you want a thicker sauce do not cover it when you cook it. Covering a cooking pot keeps the moisture in and produces a lil extra as well. Like THP stated don't boil it "cook" and "simmer" it.
 
Ok, so definitely getting some good feedback here. Thanks guys, and please... PULL NO PUNCHES! If I'm being stupid, tell me. I have to learn.

No boiling peppers.

Rice Vinegar a problem?

I'm also thinking that the thai peppers were the source of the bitterness... has anyhone used thai bird peppers in a sauce and discovered they added a bitter quality? I notice that raw they have a slightly bitter sort of floral taste to them. I love the perfumey floral taste (and heat) of these, but I'm wondering if they're bad news for a sauce.
 
I eat Thai food all the time that has sliced Thai peppers and I love them. The problem was your process. Boiling and then pureeing. It's all about cooking the sauce. That bitterness will disappear as flavors and natural sugars concentrate... cook your sauce down, in other words, simmer it on low and reduce it. To do this you need to start out with a liquidy sauce.

If you reduce it and it is too thick you can add more of one of your liquid ingredients, but you would have already reduced your original ingredients, so those flavors will have concentrated.

It's all about cooking it, and finding the right sweet spot (so to speak).
 
I'm going to try again with a mix of peppers. I'm going to hold off on the fermented salted mash type of preparation until I have a better idea what I'm doing.

I'm definitely not going to be boiling anything in water this time around.

I want to try a simple Habanero vinegar sauce. I made TB's Pineapple Habanero sauce, and that was delicious (and a bit hit at work) but is more of a pineapple thing than a habanero thing IMHO.

Anyone have a recipe for straight up habanero sauce?
 
imaguitargod said:
And if you like it baby flavored, add babies!

My wife hates baby flavor, though, so I'd have to eat it all myself.

And babies are out of season right now... they're much easier to get fresh in October after all of the New Years Eve Party Bad Judgment comes to full term. And I won't use dried after what happened last time.
 
smariotti said:
Ok, so definitely getting some good feedback here. Thanks guys, and please... PULL NO PUNCHES! If I'm being stupid, tell me. I have to learn.

No boiling peppers.

Rice Vinegar a problem?

I'm also thinking that the thai peppers were the source of the bitterness... has anyhone used thai bird peppers in a sauce and discovered they added a bitter quality? I notice that raw they have a slightly bitter sort of floral taste to them. I love the perfumey floral taste (and heat) of these, but I'm wondering if they're bad news for a sauce.


I was just saying I have never used Rice Vinegar in a sauce before....it may work well, I don't know.
 
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