Morning y’all, and welcome to another Downheah edition of Saturday Morning Garden Blogging. All are welcome, gardeners and non gardeners alike! Whether you’re a regular visitor here or a newbie, please tell us where you’re from, post comments, ask questions or share pictures of your garden! We’re here every Saturday morning at 9am Eastern….
2023 has been a pretty good pepper season, but as you can tell from the title picture, the Pepper Patch has about run out of steam. All the plants are still producing, but the fruit is smaller and ripening quickly; I’ll probably get one more picking in before I call it quits for the season.
I made a small batch of Prairie Spice sauce last week and shared it with some folks at work. Everybody seemed to like it, but a couple of folks commented that it wasn’t really very hot. It’s comparable to a jalapeno, about 5-8000 on The Scoville Scale. I call it “sneaky hot”; it’s got a nice, slow building heat...
Easy to save seeds; they’re clustered in the stem end...
The next batch is Hinkelhatz (Amish for “chicken heart”). At somewhere around 30,000 on the Scoville Scale, this sauce should have a bit more “kick”...
These produce heavily. Got about 2 gallons in the freezer...
I process them in the blender with water and some salt, and let them ferment for about 24 hours before combining with vinegar, more salt, and a bit of citric acid and lime juice. After bringing to a rolling boil, I let it simmer down to about half its original volume. I’ll get this batch strained and bottled up later this weekend.
I recommend wearing latex gloves...
In the next few weeks, I’ll be doing some Rooster Spur sauce. It’s comparable to Hinkelhatz heat-wise, maybe a bit hotter...
They are nice as just an ornamental, also...
The hottest pepper that I grew this year was Fatalii, but I only managed to get 9 ripe fruit off of the two plants. A little goes a long way with these, though. Maybe I’ll have enough for a decent batch of sauce...
I did a diary back in 2020 about making hot sauce; you can see it HERE. I’ve simplified my process since then; seems to work ok…
Well folks, that’s about all I’ve got for this Saturday Morning. I welcome any comments or questions y’all might have. It’s a late kickoff for Bama/Mississippi State, 8pm. We’ll be hosting dinner for the stepdaughters and their meathead husbands. Roll Tide!
I hope y’all have a beautiful weekend, and please share what’s going on in your garden!