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Making a clear/white hot sauce

Jen Rehm

By Jen Rehm
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Jen Rehm

Jen Rehm

Posted
Posted

Sitting in New Orleans Airport wondering about hot sauce....

First: any good homebrews to recommend

Second: do you think its possible to make a clear hot sauce? Distilling maybe?

Finally: assuming there is a really smart chef/geek who can figure out the clear part.... Could it be foamed? Can you foam a vinegar based solution?

Why?

I love the idea of making a white cloud of heat

Thanks!

J

Can you eat that?

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rooftop1000

rooftop1000

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Posted

You might be able to clarify it with gelatin...I don't know if the vinegar will denature the protien though

T

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feedmec00kies

feedmec00kies

Posted
Posted

There's hot sauce on the market, made by extracting the capsaicin.

I'm not sure if this is the only brand, but I've seen this one in stores before: Frostbite Clear

You can also buy pure capsaicin but a very small amount will add heat to a large quantity, so it would probably be too strong for your intended application.

The foam part I'm inexperienced with, though, but I'd want to dilute the hot sauce linked to above somehow.

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andiesenji

andiesenji

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Posted (edited)

I know a chile-head who makes a nearly clear hot sauce for his own and his friends consumption.

He uses a stovetop steam juicer and cooks outdoors because the fumes are pretty powerful even with the closed container.

He uses a combination of Scotch bonnet, yellow habanero, manzano or rocoto, and some odd little white peppers called Peruvian white lightning.

He uses a "secret" blend of flavored vinegar to finish the sauce which has a sweet note, if one can stand the heat. I can't taste much besides the heat, no matter how much I dilute it but I will ask if he is at all willing to share.

He did some cross pollinating with the latter last year and is hoping to grow an even hotter pepper this year.

He did say that the SS cleans completely but if one wants to make regular fruit juice in the steamer, you have to get a new plastic tube - the capsaicin can't be removed.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in a similar discussion a couple of years ago. I've known Brad for twenty years and he has been an enthusiastic chile-head as long as I have known him.

Edited by andiesenji (log)

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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andiesenji

andiesenji

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Posted (edited)

I don't believe that capsicum distills. I was reading on the FCI tech blog about how they make a habanero distillate using a rotovap, that has all the flavor, but none of the heat.

Brad's stuff is certainly hot, before he dilutes it, a drop on the skin will burn and he makes his own pepper spray for when he hikes in the foothills because around his place there are feral dogs, coyotes and the occasional mountain lion. He has used the spray on feral dogs and it worked.

I'll call him tomorrow and ask if uses anything besides water to cook the peppers.

Edited by andiesenji (log)

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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OliverB

OliverB

Posted
Posted

I'm quite tempted to buy some of the pure capsaicin from that website! Seems like you could do interesting things with it, hot butter, oil, put heat into things that would not be good with a chili flavor, but could be good with a hint of heat.

Oh, and it would be kind of a fun thing to have a round, a little vial of something 1000 times hotter than a jalapeno.

This might just be the thing for the clear hot sauce, seems a lot easier than steam juicing (never heard of that before either) or other ways to get the heat, but not the color.

"And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!"

- Thomas Keller

Diablo Kitchen, my food blog

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Jen Rehm

Jen Rehm

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I am going to have fun this weekend!

I might need to trade my chef coat in for a bio hazard suit.....

On a similar note, anyone hear of piri piri peppers?

Can you eat that?

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emannths

emannths

Posted
Posted (edited)

Capsaicin isn't soluble in water, but it is soluble in ethanol and oils. Since you want to make a foam, extracting it into vegetable oil isn't the best idea. So I'd buy some of the hottest (or maybe cheapest) peppers you can find and discard the colored flesh and the seed--you want to keep just the white placental tissue which holds the seeds. Take that white tissue and add some ethanol to it to dissolve the capsaicin. You can then either dilute the alcohol with water to your desired concentration, or you can rotovap the ethanol away to leave a very high capcaicin-containing substance behind. You could perform this extraction with ether, acetone, or benzene too, but I'm guessing it's easier to obtain food-safe ethanol than it is other organic solvents.

Edit to add this awesome youtube video of how to do this via soxhlet extraction.

Edited by emannths (log)
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BadRabbit

BadRabbit

Posted
Posted

You might could run it through a centrifuge to clarify. If the colored solids were separate from the capsicum, then you could remove the colored layer and reblend the others.

I'll try it next time I'm at my dad's office and report back.

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andiesenji

andiesenji

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I talked to my friend on the phone a little while ago and he says he make up a slurry of peppers, Everclear 190 proof and "some oils" but was not very forthcoming with any detailed info. I think he is planning on marketing the product so I can understand his being a bit reticent to divulge his exact process.

He did say that one of the oils is very expensive so it wasn't something most people would want to fool with.

He works outside in a shed because his wife won't let him into the kitchen with the hot stuff. She says whatever he does takes several days and is not an instant process. Even she does not know the details.

Sorry I couldn't get more details.

Edited by andiesenji (log)

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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technophile50

technophile50

Posted
Posted

I once had a bunch of seeds and membranes that I had removed from hot peppers I was preparing for freezing. I fried them in some oil(not olive, maybe peanut or safflower), strained it, and used the oil to make mayonnaise. It did have a slight tan hue - wasn't white like miracle whip, a little darker than Hellman's. A little bit went a loooooong way, but it had a toasty hot taste that was different from other hot sauces I've had.

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Jen Rehm

Jen Rehm

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Techno- I like th idea of toasted flavor, I'm thinking of smoking the seeds first too. I could foam the oil pretty easy.

Emannths - I'm going to try your version too, I think that would produce mega heat. Again, i wonder if you smoked te membrane first would it impart a richer flavor profile.

andiesenji - thanks for trying!

I have a feeling this is a "garage" project :)

I'll report back!

jen

Can you eat that?

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