Hello all,
A newcomer enters your hallowed domain, I have a couple of questions and would appreciate some hand holding.
i am in Spain, for all intensive purposes think ‘Mars’ when it comes to obtaining ingredients and such like, oh, and I am on low funds and finally, most Spanish people don’t eat hot food.. I am on a winner here right? Oh, I also have a stomach condition that gives me intense stomach pains and had me off work for 18 months recently.. it isn’t easy being a chili head but it hasn’t stopped me.
Now to the question, I am making ‘hot’ sauce for me now, but my end game is to sell hot sauce to businesses here for tourists to put on their food while here.. since you can’t get decent hot sauce here (not hot ‘hot’ anyway) the tourists love it but the Spanish don’t make it... oh, and the ‘angle’ as it were, I have a delicate stomach.. so i am aiming to make hot sauce for people like me, who like the SHU but who go through 7 hells afterwards.. thats the end game. To make a hot sauce that doesn’t recreate the alien stomach bug scene.. I,want ‘Hot’ sauce I can eat, without killing me in the process. We are just starting out.
i make my veg and fruit and throw it in a pan, liquidize the snot out of it, then heat it for around an hour to 2 hours then bottle in re-used jam jars (having boiled them thoroughly first) and close the lid, jar cools, safety popper on jar goes down, jar is pretty much good to go as long as you don’t open it.. I think ...
As it stands a batch of veg costs me 32€.. (early days still, just nailing down recipe first) but i get 4 Jam jars out of it, full of lovely chilli salsa.. tastes fine, but at 8€ a jar... cost alone!
on burgers and in kebebs though..OMG.... .anyway, I then look at a bottle of Tabasco and realise that tobasco is at best 10% mash (is this the right term for the veg?) and 90% vinegar... where as my bottle, 20* the size is 95% mash and 5% vinegar.
i want to aim for a 50/50 maybe 40% mash 60% vinegar mix, I also don’t want it to be too runny..
Finally, the question, and sorry it took so long.
If i take my mash and add a few litres of apple vinegar (apparently the one to use) what container should i use to age it in? Ideally i want to age the mash/vinegar mix for 6 months.. forget the stereo typical image of oak casts stacked high in a forgotten warehouse somewhere aka Tomb Raider style ... i have little here like that.. can i use plastic water bottles 6 to 8L in size (goes without saying they are sanitized) or does it have to be thick glass or more beer style with an air lock?
now ‘one’ thing, my friend in Australia sent me a bottle of “sh1t the bed hot sauce”, yes it is a real thing, yes it sounds stupid, yes, australians have a dry sense of humor..no, it does not have a 1 in the name, it uses a i.
the thing about that sauce 50,000SHU was that whilst tasted great (very fruity) it absolutely sent me to the 7 hells ripping my stomach apart, i think it was the citrus used in the sauce, most people wouldn’t notice but as i said i am delicate stomach wise.. I read in the pinned 101 making chilli sauce for the first time common quests thread (thanks for that btw) that home cooks should be aiming for ph of 4.0 (very useful tip. Ty)... now I have yet to try BUT if i make a batch and the ph4 rips my stomach it is possible to make a chilli sauce z( or salsa) that isn’t PH4 but more neutral?
doctors still haven’t given me a prognosis other than ‘we know it isn’t x y or z’ but certain food typs trigger it, its an intense pain always in the same spot, about 2cm left of my belly button and 2cm down.. so a lot of the testing i am doing is trial and error, don’t ask me how painful it was to find out but things like raw lemons and tomato skins are a HELL NO!
anyway, i have many more questions but i think I have taken enough of your time already, thank you in advance of any reply you may give.
A newcomer enters your hallowed domain, I have a couple of questions and would appreciate some hand holding.
i am in Spain, for all intensive purposes think ‘Mars’ when it comes to obtaining ingredients and such like, oh, and I am on low funds and finally, most Spanish people don’t eat hot food.. I am on a winner here right? Oh, I also have a stomach condition that gives me intense stomach pains and had me off work for 18 months recently.. it isn’t easy being a chili head but it hasn’t stopped me.
Now to the question, I am making ‘hot’ sauce for me now, but my end game is to sell hot sauce to businesses here for tourists to put on their food while here.. since you can’t get decent hot sauce here (not hot ‘hot’ anyway) the tourists love it but the Spanish don’t make it... oh, and the ‘angle’ as it were, I have a delicate stomach.. so i am aiming to make hot sauce for people like me, who like the SHU but who go through 7 hells afterwards.. thats the end game. To make a hot sauce that doesn’t recreate the alien stomach bug scene.. I,want ‘Hot’ sauce I can eat, without killing me in the process. We are just starting out.
i make my veg and fruit and throw it in a pan, liquidize the snot out of it, then heat it for around an hour to 2 hours then bottle in re-used jam jars (having boiled them thoroughly first) and close the lid, jar cools, safety popper on jar goes down, jar is pretty much good to go as long as you don’t open it.. I think ...
As it stands a batch of veg costs me 32€.. (early days still, just nailing down recipe first) but i get 4 Jam jars out of it, full of lovely chilli salsa.. tastes fine, but at 8€ a jar... cost alone!
on burgers and in kebebs though..OMG.... .anyway, I then look at a bottle of Tabasco and realise that tobasco is at best 10% mash (is this the right term for the veg?) and 90% vinegar... where as my bottle, 20* the size is 95% mash and 5% vinegar.
i want to aim for a 50/50 maybe 40% mash 60% vinegar mix, I also don’t want it to be too runny..
Finally, the question, and sorry it took so long.
If i take my mash and add a few litres of apple vinegar (apparently the one to use) what container should i use to age it in? Ideally i want to age the mash/vinegar mix for 6 months.. forget the stereo typical image of oak casts stacked high in a forgotten warehouse somewhere aka Tomb Raider style ... i have little here like that.. can i use plastic water bottles 6 to 8L in size (goes without saying they are sanitized) or does it have to be thick glass or more beer style with an air lock?
now ‘one’ thing, my friend in Australia sent me a bottle of “sh1t the bed hot sauce”, yes it is a real thing, yes it sounds stupid, yes, australians have a dry sense of humor..no, it does not have a 1 in the name, it uses a i.
the thing about that sauce 50,000SHU was that whilst tasted great (very fruity) it absolutely sent me to the 7 hells ripping my stomach apart, i think it was the citrus used in the sauce, most people wouldn’t notice but as i said i am delicate stomach wise.. I read in the pinned 101 making chilli sauce for the first time common quests thread (thanks for that btw) that home cooks should be aiming for ph of 4.0 (very useful tip. Ty)... now I have yet to try BUT if i make a batch and the ph4 rips my stomach it is possible to make a chilli sauce z( or salsa) that isn’t PH4 but more neutral?
doctors still haven’t given me a prognosis other than ‘we know it isn’t x y or z’ but certain food typs trigger it, its an intense pain always in the same spot, about 2cm left of my belly button and 2cm down.. so a lot of the testing i am doing is trial and error, don’t ask me how painful it was to find out but things like raw lemons and tomato skins are a HELL NO!
anyway, i have many more questions but i think I have taken enough of your time already, thank you in advance of any reply you may give.