Happy Hot Sauce Day ! Today I am blogging about a Louisiana original :
The diet of the Reconstruction South was bland and monotonous, especially by Louisiana standards. So Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce to give the food some flavor and excitement. https://www.tabasco.com/tabasco-history
let’s take a tour and find out more :
McIlhenny grew his first commercial pepper crop in 1868. The next year, he sent out 658 bottles of sauce at one dollar apiece wholesale to grocers around the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans. He labeled it “Tabasco,” a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean “place where the soil is humid” or “place of the coral or oyster shell.” McIlhenny secured a patent in 1870, and TABASCO® Sauce began its journey to set the culinary world on fire. Sales grew, and by the late 1870s, he sold his sauce throughout the U.S. and even in Europe.
McIlhenny packaged the sauce in small cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments, which he then corked and sealed in green wax. The sprinkler fitment was important because his pepper sauce was concentrated and best used when sprinkled, not poured. Though we no longer seal our bottles with wax, the sauce inside is every bit as pungent as the one McIlhenny first bottled back in 1868.
Today, nearly 150 years later, TABASCO® Sauce, the basic recipe, the process by which it’s made, and the ingredients remain virtually unchanged. Now the aging process for the mash is longer – up to three years in white oak barrels – and the vinegar is high-quality distilled vinegar.
Come Visit Avery Island and the factory https://www.tabasco.com/visit-avery-island/
The plants that started it all :
A food lover and avid gardener, Edmund McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that had come from Mexico or Central America. On Avery Island in South Louisiana, he sowed the seeds, nurtured the plants and delighted in the spicy flavor of the peppers they bore. Many years later field hands used a little red stick, or ‘le petite bâton rouge,’ to measure the ripeness of the peppers. Staying true to history of TABASCO® Brand, we still use it today to ensure the quality of our harvest.
Spicy Cane Syrup Butter recipe :
- 1 teasp Hot sauce
2 cups cane syrup
2lb. unsalted butter (cut in small cubes
2 tsp salt
- In a small sauce pot combine salt and cane syrup. Heat up the cane syrup until it starts to simmer. Once at a simmer, pull off the heat. Slowly start whisking in the butter one cube at a time until fully melted. Continue to whisk until the sauce cools and begins to thicken. Add TABASCO® Chipotle Sauce and serve immediately with cornbread or use as glaze on grilled/roasted meats. This mixture will hold in the refrigerator. If you are using from the fridge then pull the sauce out and allow it to come up to room temperature over an hour or two. Stir the mixture as it is coming to room temp to re-emulsify the butter with the syrup.