Not that I would, since I’m lazy and it’s easier to just buy it. But I’d still like to know how to make it, just to know how to make it.
Tabasco Sauce is made with ‘just three ingredients’, according to the Tabasco website: ’ fully aged red peppers, Avery Island salt and high quality distilled vinegar.’ Another page on the site says:
I heard that the ratio of mashed peppers to salt is one gallon to one cup. I don’t know about the vinegar. Any guesses? So I could get a small oak barrel, put in a gallon of mashed chilis, a cup of salt, and some vinegar, top it with more salt, let it sit for three years, and then I’ll have my own Tabasco?
How easy is it to get tabasco peppers? Using cayenne peppers (similar hotness) might work, but probably won’t taste exactly the same. The end result would be probably that you only saved a few cents for a shitload of sauce, or more likely paid too much because of all the startup costs.
I guess the main problem will be resisting cracking the barrel open for three years.
Most chiles are of the species capsicum annuum. Tabasco chiles are capsicum frutescens, and are much jucier than typical grocery store chiles. If you squeeze a cut tabasco chile in your fingers a fair amount of juice will flow out. I suspect that the McIlhenny Company recipe for Tabasco Sauce wouldn’t work well with other chiles.
BTW, if you take the Tabasco Sauce factory tour in Avery Island, Louisiana you can buy a bag of pepper mash. They don’t advertise it, but if you ask about it in the gift shop they will send you out to the aging room to get a gallon bag of the stuff. There you can see barrels of fermenting pepper mash.
I’ve bought the pepper plants at Home Depot. They were labeled Tabasco peppers. I grow them as ornamentation. The peppers could easily be used to make pepper sauce. Boiled vinegar with peppers in a jar. Let it sit for a few months. My dad made the stuff for years.
Tabasco sauce is a little different. They got more stuff in that.
I saw a Food Network episode on this (Unwrapped?). It’s really that simple. They just grind up the peppers into a mash, mix with a little salt, and let stand in barrels for three years. What they also mention is that the atmosphere in the warehouses is so corrosive that equipment only lasts a few years. It can reduced a forklift to junk in less than five. Something to consider if you are thinking of storing the barrel in the garage with the MG.
ace: Trappey’s makes a shaker bottle of that stuff that is delicious. Little yellow peppers in vinegar. You have to have it for collards and greens.
I’m going to try that pickled peppers recipe. Mr. Sali planted hot peppers in the garden. Somone gave me a mason jar of yellow banana peppers and onions in vinegar, for sandwiches, and I need more. Much more.
My grandfather and now my husband love that stuff. You can add more vinegar to the bottle, and it will take on the flavor of the peppers. My grandfather used to keep two bottles going, one with fresh vinegar that was aging, and an aged bottle that he was currently using.
Yum. We used to have a Tex-Mex friend who never left the house without a bottle of the stuff tucked into his back pocket. Ate it on everything.
I read about Rooster Spur Sauce, a Louisiana tradition, years ago in the newspaper and have had a lot of fun with it over the years.
Pack a jar (I usually use a viegar bottle from the store with the plastic shaker insert) with rooster spur peppers and add a teasoon of pickling salt. Boil white vinegar and pour over the peppers. Seal and let stand a month or so before using.
I also add a pinch of sugar to bring out the pepper flavor.
Tradition says that this used to be given to newlyweds as the bottle and peppers would last a long time. When the sauce was gone one just boiled more vinegar and repeated the process to refresh the jar. It was a gesture of wishing longevity on the marriage.
Since first trying this I’ve experimented with types of peppers. At the Farmer’s Market there are a number of smallish peppers of different colors and types. Makes a nice gift.
I sitting here watching Food Tech on the History Channel, and they are doing Tabasco sauce. The crushed peppers and salt ferment for three years, and only then is the vinegar added. It must smell to high heaven in there!
The way I recall seeing it done in an older TV segment I watched about Mc Ilhenny was quite low tech, and appeared to involve mostly feel, intuition, and experience- It actually seemed like a very simple process. The Tabasco peppers were added by the bushel to a grinder apparatus and handfuls of salt were tossed in after by an older gentleman, that I’m sure had years of judging volume and mash consistency. The mash appeared to be about the fineness you would get out of a grind through an old fashioned meat grinder/sausage maker- It still had some consistency and wasn’t processed all to hell or a very fine soupy puree. That salt mash was simply added to old bourbon barrels (white oak), with the top bunged into place and a thick layer of salt was then caked over the top of the barrel to double seal the bung. Then it is warehoused and aged upright for three years. I noticed there seemed to be some seepage out of the top of the barrels into the salt cake seal, so the top was at least semi permeable but protected by the salt. And I believe occasionally more salt was added to the top of the barrel as needed, for maintenance. That mash is then strained and blended with vinegar (not sure the ratio) in a very, very long blending process (a whole month, I believe.).
Incidentally, the salt used in Tabasco Sauce no longer comes from Avery Island. IIRC, it all comes from somewhere in California. The Avery Island stuff is used industrially - mainly for salting roads.
Every year I do a super-simple pepper vinegar. Pick the peppers, put a slice in them lengthwise to let the vinegar in (but don’t cut all the way through), blanch them for a minute or two, and put them in a bottle with vinegar, salt, and maybe some cloves of garlic, which will turn brilliant blue due to some weird chemical reaction. It’s good stuff.
One year I made fermented hot sauce. I processed a quart or so of peppers with a few cloves of garlice, then layered the mash in a jar, alternating about 1/2" of mash with a thin layer of kosher salt, until the jar was full. I put the jar in the pantry for a week or so until it was starting to bubble from fermentation, then added vinegar and a little bit of honey. A couple mo nths later I processed it again, and ended up with something vaguely similar to Sriracha. It was fantastic.