[CH] Freeze/thaw hot sauce
Cameron Begg (begg.4@osu.edu)
Wed, 06 Mar 2002 08:20:03 -0500
Hi C-H's,
I had a couple of questions about how I do this, and so I'm writing
to the list to save myself some time. If you're not a kitchen chemist
you may want to skip this post.
This works for any fleshy peppers like habs, savinas and would work
for rocotos too if I could ever get my hands on sufficient quantities!
The idea is to soften the flesh up by repeated freezing and thawing.
The ice crystals perforate the cell walls and make the pods mushy.
Put the peppers in ziplock bags. Put in the freezer every night and
remove in the morning for a few days. Don't let them warm up enough
that they might start to spoil.
Put the thawed pods through a "ricer". Mine is a KitchenAid
attachment that separates the juice from the skin and seeds. If you
like, you can hold the juice at about 70degC for a few minutes to
pasteurize it. Weigh the juice so that you can calculate correct
additions of sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate. You will need
accurate scales, which will be a problem for people that don't work
in an academic or scientific situation. Sorry.
My additives came from:
http://www.soybean.com/cgi-bin/store/cashcart.cgi?ACTION=thispage&thispage=preserve.htm&ORDER_ID=126316390
..........who also have the details on amounts to use.
The sauce can be thickened with xanthan gum (from a health food
store) YOU DON'T NEED MUCH! and you may want to add salt, lemon and
lime juice as I do, but that's basically it.
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Regards, Cameron.