Turbo-1's HOT STUFF

turbo

I'm curious, Woolie. Did you use my (super-simple) relish recipe, or have you used a different one or tweaked mine? I'm pretty happy with my relishes, but I'm certainly open for suggestions.

NeoDevin

Thanks Turbo, I'll see if I can find time to make a batch this weekend. I don't have a very large crop (I only have 2 plants, and they got off to a bad start, I didn't repot them to bigger pots soon enough), but hopefully enough to make a small batch and experiment for next years crop.

wolram

Yours, but it is so difficult to get the fresh chili peppers, staff at shops look at me gone out when i ask for them.
Do you ever use ginger in relishes?

turbo

Thanks. I was curious as to whether you had another recipe - I try stuff out (in little batches), but my most simple recipe seems to do the job pretty well.

My wife and I often use fresh ginger-root grated into stir-fries, but I've never used it in relishes or salsas. I usually can large batches of those, and I would be disappointed if the flavor of the ginger overpowered the tomatoes, green peppers, onions, chilies, etc. It may seems funny to talk about ginger overpowering something as hot as habaneros and jalapenos, but those chilies have distinctive flavors in addition to the heat, which is why I like the simple relish recipe so well - it lets the chili flavor come through, with just a bit of salt, sweet, and sour.

Chilies are pretty easy to grow in containers or in a sunny spot in a garden, so you can get your own chilies without having to use a grocer's shop. The peppers in the stores around here are pretty anemic - my home-grown ones are much more potent and flavorful; especially the habaneros! Even when I have run out of relish and am forced to use store-bought chilies, my wife has a hard time finding them in the supermarkets - one produce manager at a local store was stocking them fairly regularly, but if the demand is low, they can sit around a long time losing flavor. When I make relishes, it's always within an hour or two of picking the chilies.

NeoDevin

I made a small batch last night. It's pretty spicy. I'm not a big fan of vinegar, so I went easy on the vinegar, but it still has a little taste of it. I was wondering if there was anything I could add/substitute to get rid of the slight vinegarry taste. It's not very strong, but I think it would be better without it. I don't have enough peppers this year to experiment much, especially if I want some left for cooking. Hopefully in the next few years, I'll be able to find a house on an acreage and really start growing some crops.

turbo

The vinegar is there to provide enough acidity to allow safe canning with relatively short processing times. If you are going to make little batches and refrigerate them, you could substitute other liquids that are not so acidic. Apple cider might be good, as well as other fruit juices or wine. If I were going to try a wine, I'd experiment with a full-bodied red wine with some astringency - perhaps an inexpensive cabernet sauvignon.

turbo

Hot stuff update. I just had a hot dog on a roll (both pan-fried in butter) and instead of using my habanero relish and yellow mustard, I dressed it with dill-pickled jalapeno rounds and yellow mustard. Ding, ding, ding!! What a nice taste! Essentially, I used our standard kosher dill pickle recipe, but instead of pickling cucumbers, I pickled sliced jalapeno rounds (with all seeds, placenta, etc intact) with a couple of cloves of Russian garlic in each jar. This is killer stuff. The problem is that the sliced jalapeno rounds take up a lot of space in the jar when raw, and they shrink a lot when softened during processing, so each 1/2 pint jar contains enough peppers for just a few sandwiches or hot dogs. Well worth the effort, though! I'm going to have to refine this next year, and maybe chop the chilies and pack them tightly to reduce the volume reduction during processing.

wolram

I save the balsamic vinegar from pickles, it adds a different taste to dishes that need
vinegar.

Astronuc

This is the plant that produced a few pounds of habaneros last year.

NeoDevin

Ok, I'll have to experiment a little when my current jar runs out, and see what I can come up with. Hopefully next year I get a really good crop. My whole balcony is going to be covered in plants.

turbo

That's one productive plant Astronuc! I had a whole row of habanero plants this year. If they had all produced like that, I'd have enough relish made up for 3-4 years.

Astronuc

That was a great plant. I wish I knew how I did that. It was one of 4 and the only one to take off like that! This year, I had 4 plants, but some critter (probably deer) ate the tops and they never recovered.

I once had 4 tomato plants that produced shopping bags of large tomatoes. We had so many tomatos, we had to give away bag fulls. They produced well into November, and IIRC into December!

Math Jeans

I am going to attempt to make my own salsa now! I have finally reached a point where I just need salsa all the time!

I don't know which one to pick. Any suggestions?

http://www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/...ents.cgi?salsa

turbo

Here you go! Just scale it down so you can make small batches and experiment. If you decide to add cilantro, tear the leaves and stir them into the salsa just after you're done cooking it. Keep your recipes simple, but don't be afraid to tinker with them.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...0&postcount=18

This recipe works well for green tomatoes and red ones, or a mix of the two.

Math Jeans

I got some Dave's Insanity for valentines day. I don't know if any of you have had that stuff, but I swear the scoville count on that is more than my habaneros.

So I tried some on my finger and it was really fun .

Astronuc

I have a collection of Dave's sauces and one jar of relish. It's OK. I believe Dave's is based on habaneros. The thing to remember is that the hot sauces are a solution of the capsaicin, so it reacts readily with the tissue it contacts. If one chews on a habanero pepper, there is a delayed reaction because the capsaicin has to be released from the plant cells. If one takes the ribs of the habanero pepper and purees them, and then places that on the tongue, one gets an immediate reaction.

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/capsaicin.asp

Math Jeans

Well. I think that its more than habaneros because it doesn't say that it is habaneros in the ingrediants. It just states, hot peppers, (something else about peppers that I can't remember), and pepper extract, then a few other things.

So is taking the ribs from the pepper and pureeing them how you make extract? Because I would enjoy using that much more than chili powder.