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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 20, 2017 5:21:37 GMT -6
(By the way) The easiest way to peel garlic cloves is to place them inside a steel bowl. Then, place a second steel bowl of the same size over that one, to form a dome. Grip the lip of both bowls tightly, and shake the garlic cloves as vigorously as you can for 30 seconds. You'll be able to hear the cloves change sound as the husk is separated from the clove. Open the bowls, look inside. The husks will be separated from the cloves. Blow away the empty husks and retain the peeled cloves for processing.
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Post by glen on Nov 20, 2017 10:55:52 GMT -6
Ron, I appreciate it. I am in business now I think. I should have been growing and making my own sauces years ago. I absolutely love jalepeno's and am looking forward to growing some sweet jalepeno's in the future.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 20, 2017 20:28:18 GMT -6
I'm making a big batch of "Sneaky Dog" tonight, for Thanksgiving. It takes a few days for the cream cheese to soak up all the garlic, onion, and pepper flavors. Hopefully, by Thursday, it will be just about right!
I also have about 20 big, fat, green jalapeno peppers on the kitchen table because I couldn't find any red ones.
Either, I'll have to wait until they turn ripe in December or I'll have to make green Sriracha sauce...
They both taste almost the same, but people don't eat the green colored sauce as much. It's kind of like green ketchup. It tastes the same as red ketchup (due to food coloring) but no one will eat the green ketchup because it's not the right color.
About the only flavor difference between the red versus green sriracha sauce is the higher sugar content of the red peppers. Smoking the green ones with a little hickory helps overcome that somewhat, but it is still going to be a green sauce. It's just kind of hard to put your heart into making something that labor intense when you know it won't turn out the same as people are expecting to see.
Oh well, I guess I could wait for the Jalapeno peppers to ripen on the table and just use them for Christmas instead of Thanksgiving. I'm kind of in the mood to cook them up tonight though.
I guess you'll just have to stay tuned until next week to find out what happens. (What a cliffhanger... huh?)
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Post by macmex on Nov 21, 2017 7:38:37 GMT -6
I only use Magma sparingly, when I use it directly on food. Most of the time I use it to season stews. If I put any on my fried eggs, I only dip the spoon in it and wipe it across them. That's plenty of heat for me. But I highly covet my magma. It's concentrated hot pepper flavor and heat, stored for the cold of winter, and any other time I need it.
My tastes in hot sauce have come full circle over the years. I used to experiment with lots of ingredients, always looking for that elusive ingredient which would make it special. I finally concluded that my favorite hot sauce is made with nothing more than tomatoes (or tomatillos), garlic, salt and hot peppers. That's it. But it's just what I love the most!
George
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Post by glen on Nov 21, 2017 17:29:00 GMT -6
That's funny calling the hot sauce magma sauce. The so called magma sauce I just made was not really all that hot. And, it was just a little too sweet. However, it is good. I also made a green jalepeno sauce that is sort of like sriracha sauce that is hotter than the habenero sauce. Neither recipe has any tomato sauce in the recipe. Both sauces are better than any bottled sauce I have bought in the store. As far as magma sauce goes. I bought a bottle of hot sauce in Florida many years ago that had skull and cross bones on the bottle. The man had many variety's for sale and this bottle was 10 bucks which was extremely pricey at the time. The man said it was hot. The sauce turned out to be so hot that all I had to do was insert a toothpick into the bottle and use that tiny bit in an entire pot of chili. I never did finish the bottle and do not know what happened to it. The sauce was pretty much unuseable except in soups and stews. It needed to be diluted into probably 5 or 6 more bottles actually. Good sauce to me has good flavor and is useful at the table. Food is bland here in Panama. Extremely bland in fact. So, a watery and reasonably hot but very flavorful hot sauce really makes a difference here where I live. Hot foods are for the most part not tolerated by the locals. So, a bottle of hot sauce allows me to enjoy my food without stepping on the toes of anyone who eats with me.
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Post by glen on Nov 22, 2017 12:37:17 GMT -6
George, you mentioned that you like tomato's, garlic, salt, and hot peppers. For me, its onions, garlic, salt, carrots and hot peppers. Sweet is good in a hot sauce also. I love herbs also. However, in a hot sauce, the taste is so pungent that not so many herbs and subtle flavors make all that much difference in the taste to me. However, if you were experimenting with very mild sauces the herbs might make a difference. And, the tomato flavor might become more important. Ron will be sending me some Tam jalepeno seeds. Mild. If I take the seeds out of those peppers I think they will make a very interesting mild jalepeno sauce. I will allow them to ripen Red and add some nice perita or italion tomato's to make a nice sweet everyday sauce. I love sweet peppers.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 30, 2017 22:55:39 GMT -6
I just started a batch of sriracha sauce for Christmas, tonight. I'll try t remember to let you know how it turns out after fermentation.
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Post by glen on Dec 1, 2017 17:21:09 GMT -6
Ron, I guess I missed the part where there is fermentation. I made some sauce using Green jalepeno's the other day and just mixed the ingredients and blended it. It turned out very good. I have a bunch of jalepeno's outside now forming on the bushes. I want to make red jalepeno sauce later. Can you explain what you mean by fermentation? Or, do you mean letting it age in the jar for awhile? I remember seeing bottles of tobasco sauce that said that the peppers were aged for 3 years. I would never have the patience to let my sauce age too long. Maybe a couple of weeks.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 1, 2017 23:43:07 GMT -6
Glen, I after I got the Sriracha sauce out of the blender (the recipe, minus the vinegar) I put it in a loosely covered glass bowl, out in my Summer kitchen, in a cool, dark place. (Inside my kitchen cabinet) where it began to ferment within a few hours at about 75 degrees. You know that it's fermenting by the bubbles that start to form. By day two, the pepper (Mash) is so full of bubbles that it begins to rise slightly. I'll stir the mash, twice per day for three days. On the third day, I'll take it out of the cabinet and add the vinegar. Then, I'll run it through the blender again. Then, I'll strain the pepper seeds and skins through a screen sieve, leaving only the juice. At that point, I'll put the juice in a saucepan and boil it for about 10 minutes, to thicken it a little, and to arrest the fermentation process. Then, after it cools a little, I'll bottle it for Christmas. By Christmas Day, it will be aged almost 4 weeks. You can watch the fermentation process on this video, it's toward the end ... allrecipes.com/video/3965/how-to-make-homemade-sriracha-sauce/?internalSource=picture_play&referringId=235276&referringContentType=recipe
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Post by glen on Dec 3, 2017 11:23:27 GMT -6
I can see where that is going to be a fine batch of hot sauce. What I am looking forward to doing is making some mild sauce out of Tam mild jalepeno's. I think that is going to be a huge winner at my house. I will still make the hotter sauces as well. The mild sauce would make a fine gift to a friend if you put it in a nice bottle. I have found nice hot sauce bottles at the dollar store here for 50 cents. I think its a good idea. The peppers can be stored in the freezer also. So for example if you are running short on red peppers just pick what you have and put them in a freezer bag and add to it as they come in. Any home made product usually tastes so much better than store bought and people just don't do that kind of thing any more. Its a dying art.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 4, 2017 1:13:58 GMT -6
I reblended and strained my fermented Sriracha tonight, adding the distilled vinegar and cooking it down slightly. I think it's going to turn out well. The final test will be trying it out on my Brother-in-Law. If he says it's good, then, I know it will be good. He's the chili head in our family.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 16, 2017 22:20:19 GMT -6
Today is December 16th, it's about time to make another batch of "Sneaky Dog" for Christmas Day. I'll probably tend to that sometime this coming week. It tastes better if it's aged for a week or two before the day you serve it. My Ritz cracker stash gets wiped out in one day everytime I make it for a family function.
My Sriracha sauce is already gone ... If I get in the right mood, I might buy a pound and a half of green jalapenos and make some more of that too.
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Post by glen on Dec 21, 2017 11:05:58 GMT -6
My hot sauce is far from gone. I have been picking habenero peppers and putting them in quart sized freezer bags as they ripen. I am working on my third bag now. My jalepeno plants show many fruits now. I have one older plant that is just covered over again for the third time. I have 4 small juvenile plants with 5 or 6 peppers on each and they are monstrous. The first fruits are usually huge. Later they are smaller. I plan to pick all fruits red and freeze them. I like green jalepeno sauce but this time the sauce will be red. I will use less sugar since the peppers will be sweeter. I am the only person that really eats the hot sauce so it lasts a long time at my house. I have ahi peppers that are sweet outside now that are forming peppers now. They take a lot longer than Jalepeno's. I haven't grown sweet peppers in a long time so I am not sure how well they will do. They are cheap in the store here so I just haven't been motivated to grow them. However, I have seen neighbors growing them when I am on my walks. They are very prolific bearers from what I have seen. They are just small sweet peppers. I have been eating em for many years.
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Post by glen on Dec 31, 2017 19:18:39 GMT -6
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Post by macmex on Jan 1, 2018 6:46:05 GMT -6
They look so good! Here I am, with 6 F. temps outside the door, and you've got peppers coming on!
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