Dave, Hello, and thank you for reading my email. I recently tasted a few drops of hot sauce (actually an extract) rated at 1.5 million Scoville Heat Units. While the pain in my mouth was quite intense, it was nothing compared to the headache I experienced about 60 seconds after tasting the extract. It was a severe pounding that started in the …
Making Frozen Mash
Above, commercial tanks store huge quantities of mash Dave, What’s your experience/opinion on not using a mash for a commercial hot sauce? Can it be practical? Our most popular hot sauce is based on cayennes, and we’ve always used fresh peppers for the recipe. Now I’m looking to have this sauce professionally made and bottled, and I’m wondering about the …
The Taming of the Wild Chile: Part 1, The Tolerated Weed
by Dave DeWitt and Nancy Gerlach Recipes: Corn and Potatoes with Two Chiles Papas con Tomates Squash Soup with Chile Sauce “The fruit [of the Peruvian Uchu chile] is as indispensable to the natives as salt to the whites.” ‑‑Friedrich Alexander von Humboldt, 1814 For more than 10,000 years, mankind has been …
Cooking with Fresh Chile Peppers
Fresh Red Chile Most chile lovers are familiar with New Mexican green chiles, which are the large (5″ to 10″), fleshy, mild chiles that are also called Anaheim chiles. (Anaheim is actually a variety of New Mexico chile, as are Sandia, Big Jim, etc.) These same green chiles are the immature stage of the New Mexico red chiles, which are …
Pepper Gardening 101
By Dave DeWitt Hundreds of articles and at least one book– The Pepper Garden— have been written on the home and commercial cultivation of the Capsicums, so there’s far too much information to go into great detail in this section. This is designed as a basic gardening guide for beginners using organic techniques. The Strategy The combination of long growing …