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other-condiments Chile pepper oleo saccharum

Edaxflamma

Edaxflamma

So I haven't seen it mentioned here before, or much at all online really, but I'm surprised I don't see more folks making oleo saccharum with their chile harvests. I figured that since harvests are starting to come in, that I should mention this in case any one is looking for something to do with their bumper crops.

What's an oleo saccharum?
www.seriouseats.com

How to Make Oleo-Saccharum, the Game-Changing Condiment You've Never Heard of

Leave lemon peels to sit with sugar and watch as this beautiful, bright and sunny syrup forms. It's great on everything from drinks to fruit salads and pancakes.
www.seriouseats.com www.seriouseats.com

Long story short, it's normally just a process of using sugar to draw out the essential oils of citrus fruit peels. The resulting product is a sweet, citrus-flavored syrup for cocktails, candies, or baking. But this doesn't work with just citrus. You can do this with almost any relatively dry, oil containing fruit.

Before we moved, I had a good group of folks that enjoyed the occasional get together for spicy margaritas and ranch waters. It was always easy to offer up some interesting pepper varieties during the summer months, but it wasn't sustainable year round. Fortunately, a few years ago as the season was winding down and I was making a batch of my normal lemon-lime oleo, just for S's and G's I did a separate batch of a few of the chinense varieties that were still producing. I just followed my normal oleo saccharum recipe and just swapped the citrus peels entirely for chilies. The results were fantastic.

Now, instead of messing around with fresh peppers, it was super easy to just pull out a few jars packed with the syrup all ready to go and let folks choose what chilies they wanted in their drink. Even better, I could offer the same (or better in my opinion) experience during the winter months when my plants weren't as productive.

One of the nice things about this method is that for whatever reason, with chinense especially, the sugar seems to put a bit of separation between the heat and their usual floral/fruity bouquet. At least in my experience, this gives me just a few more seconds to enjoy the full flavor profile before the heat finally washes over. Since I mainly grow chinense, I haven't really experimented with annuum or any of the other varieties. I suspect that there may be too much water in some of the larger walled chilies for there to be a proper extraction. That said, for those of you with dehydrators, you might be able to partialy dry down some annuums or other varieties to make them more fit for extraction.

Anyway, if you give it a shot, I'd be interested to hear your experience, especially if you can get some of the other varieties to work well. There are a million guides out there for making oleo saccharum but I'm happy to take some photos next time I make a batch if there is interest. Cheers.

Edit: one side note, macerating the citrus or chilies isn't necessary. The sugar will do all the work. I just put it in a recycled glass jar and shake for 30 seconds to a minute, and then leave it on the counter for a couple hours before storing it in the fridge. After 2-3 hours the sugar should start to dissolve and turn into syrup.
 
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This sounds really interesting! I'd definitely be interested in pictures of your process.

Are you slicing the chiles? Or zesting them? Based on your description, I'm guessing you're using a similar amount of sugar per pepper.

Looking forward to trying this with some of my bonnet harvest this year.
 
hadanero said:
This sounds really interesting! I'd definitely be interested in pictures of your process.

Are you slicing the chiles? Or zesting them? Based on your description, I'm guessing you're using a similar amount of sugar per pepper.

Looking forward to trying this with some of my bonnet harvest this year.
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In all honesty, I just use a small glass jar that I was planning on recycling anyway, slice my peppers in half, remove the stems and seeds, dump in enough sugar to coat them, close the jar, and then just shake it like it owes me money for a minute or so. Once the sugar dissolves, I'll add a bit more sugar until the sugar stops pulling out enough liquid to dissolve. There's a ratio for citrus that I can't remember but eyeballing it pretty reliable.

You really don't need that much sugar. It feels like around 0.75 parts sugar to wet weight of fruit rind / pepper but I'll try to grab a bag of sugar this afternoon and take some demo photos.
 
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Alright, set yourself up with some peppers, white sugar and a jar with a good seal. This jar is a bit too large for what we'll be doing, but it's the only one I have. All of our stuff is still in transit from the move. The peppers we're using today are just some left over no name chinense that came in a grocery store hot pepper mix.

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Trim your peppers to remove the seeds, placenta, and stems. This helps cut the heat a bit and keeps some of the more bitter flavors from extracting.

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Normally I just eyeball how much sugar goes into each batch, but I figured that I would try to be a bit more accurate since we're making a guide. I only had 53g of peppers after cleaning everything up.
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Tare your scale and add roughly 70% sugar by weight to start. You can always add more later if need be. For 53 grams of peppers I added 37g of sugar. Pretty close to my original guess, but it's better to under estimate.

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Close the lid and give your peppers a brisk shake. You should see the sugar granules start to clump up a bit.

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Keep shaking and the oil and water will begin to extract.

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After a couple of minutes of shaking, you'll start to get a significant amount of extract at the bottom of your jar.

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At this point, give it one more good shake, trying to keep the syrup and sugar on the peppers themselves. Chopping your peppers up a bit more, or using a smaller container will help ensure that they maintain contact with the sugar. You can just leave this alone on the counter for the next few hours to let it extract. Right now, there are still a ton of visible granules that aren't super appetizing. Visible granules means that either there is too much sugar in the syrup, or you need to give the sugar more time to extract.

After about 3 hours, you should see that a surprisingly large amount of liquid has been pulled out of the peppers. At this point you can toss it in the fridge if you are happy with it. After about 24 hours, check to see if you still have visible granules. If so, give it a few more shakes every time you open the fridge, and you'll be left with a nice extracted syrup with no visible granules as time progresses. You can always add more peppers if you get them and re-balance if need be.

I typically decant the syrup into a small Crew bottle and then strain off the remaining liquid from the extracted peppers. The left over peppers can be a nice candied garnish or a very sweet cowboy candy style treat.

You may get to the point where a lot of liquid has come out, but there is still a layer of sugar granules that have settled to the bottom of the jar. You can reshake or add more peppers to try to get more liquid out, or you can just carefully decant the liquid off the bed of sugar. Won't hurt a thing.
 
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Alright, one hour or so later, and the sugar has completely dissolved.

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Because these peppers have a thicker wall than most of the superhots I usually grow, I think another round of sugar and shake is necessary to get the full extraction. My guess is that I might get that very thin layer of sugar at the bottom of this one since we have gone past a 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit. Technically, the sugar should be able to pull out somewhere around twice its weight in water, but I don't usually see that.

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I'll check back in an hour and see where we are. This should move faster since we have better pepper coverage.

Despite these having a slightly grassy flavor when eaten raw, the flavor of the syrup at this point is extremely sweet and has a very strong fruity habanero flavor with no hint of that grassy flavor. I may need to run out and get some cheap mezcal for tonight at this rate...
 
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That looks awesome. Thank you for the breakdown! I'll be giving this a try with some of my harvest this year.

Editing to ask because I'm not a scientist: what's the food safety risk with switching from lemons to peppers? Any risk of botulism or the like?
 
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Good question. Fortunately, it's very unlikely to be anaerobic so I think botulism specifically is a super low risk. Obviously wash your produce and tools before getting started, and if you see it changing colors, smelling, or growing things, toss it.

Honestly, after a while it starts to behave like honey. Any water that was extracted slowly evaporates out, and it begins to recrystalize, especially when stored in the fridge. I only let it extract at room temperature for 24 hours or so before storing in the fridge.

Is there a risk of microbial contamination? Sure, there is always a risk. Is the environment extraordinarily hostile due to how much sugar is trying to suck the water out of everything like in most syrups? Also yes. I think that as long as your moisture is low, you're pretty safe.

I think of it like maple syrup, but honestly, it doesn't last in the house for more than a year anyway due to turn over.

Also, hour two update: Almost all of the sugar is dissolved and I have somewhere around 1/4 of a cup of syrup. I'll leave it out until I go to bed tonight and then toss it in the fridge. Tomorrow, I would strain off the syrup and package into a crew bottle and then save the candied peppers for snacks. Since I don't have all my stuff yet, and this is such a small amount, the whole jar is just going straight in the fridge and will probably end up being spicy mezcalitas over the next month. For all intents and purposes, the syrup is ready to go.

If I had a dehydrator I bet drying the candied peppers a bit would make great little snacks or could be the start of a fun and crispy fruit or ice cream topping.
 
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Great idea, EF. I make syrups using ancient methods with wild plants, usually in pots exposed to the sun. I also make candied chili peppers and hot syrups. I think I'll try experimenting with your cold method, or something in between 😋
 
This is very interesting. It should be a delicious thing to make with red cardi scorpions. They're really sweet anyway. I looked and found an old bag of white sugar in the wayback of the top shelf in a pantry. I learned something about sugar. The bag said as long as it it well sealed, the sugar is good indefinitely. No problem there. I had it all taped shut with box tape.

Removing seeds I understand but is removing the oily placenta a benefit for those who highly value capsaicin?
 
I don't think removing the placenta will make that much of a difference when it comes to flavor. If you're all about heat, by all means leave it in, especially since this method tends to blunt the overall heat quite a bit. The flip side is that the flavors get super concentrated so for some it's a benefit, for others a trade off.
 
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