
El Fuego Viviente Chili Sauce - otorrillas
https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente
======
ntaylor
A recipe without 10 pages of useless, boilerplate SEO content?

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icpmacdo
I have recently purchased an instant pot the SEO content on recipes searched
for drive me mad

~~~
chrissnell
I feel your pain. My best IP recipes are adaptations I've made from old
recipes of my family's.

Here's my Cajun mother-in-law's red beans and rice recipe. She's from Chauvin,
LA and this recipe is my favorite for when my wife is away and I'm cooking for
the kids.

You'll need:

1 pound red kidney beans

1 link of Hillshire Farms smoked sausage (like polish style)

1-2 bay leaves

Brown rice or long-grain white rice

Crystal brand hot sauce

Rinse 1 pound of red kidney beans, then cover with 3-4" of water and soak
overnight. The next morning, dump the water and rinse them thoroughly.

Chop one medium-sized yellow onion and one celery stalk.

In your pressure cooker, go a few times around the pot with olive oil and heat
until shimmering.

Add the onion and just brown the shit out of it. Seriously, I always stop too
soon. My mother in law gets it all nice and browned, like chocolate. Use sauté
mode on your IP and turn it up to the high heat setting. When it's about
halfway browned, I add the celery to the pot for the rest of the browning.

Once the onions brown, cut the heat and add 5 cups of water. If I was doing
this in the crock or regular pot, I'd add way more but since we're not losing
any to steam, give is perfect.

Scrape all of the burnt crap off the bottom of the pan.

Add the beans to the pot along with a bay leaf or two and one link of smoke
sausage (like Hillshire Farms polish sausage style) cut into circular slices
about 1/4" thick.

Bring to pressure and then cook for 15 minutes. This is how long I did it in
my Instant Pot, which may not be the same as your cookers. The IP brings it to
15 PSI and then lowers it and cycles between 10 and 11.5 PSI.

After 15 minutes of cooking, remove from fire and allow the pressure to
release naturally. At about 15-20 minutes, I just manually dumped what little
pressure there was left.

Salt to taste. Refrigerate overnight before reheating and serving because it
just tastes better that way.

Serve over brown rice or regular long-grain white rice if you prefer.

The Cajuns put Crystal brand hot sauce on top. The regular kind (not the
extra-hot). It's very tangy. I've never seen a bottle of Tabasco in a Cajun
pantry.

[https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Hot-Sauce-Louisianas-
Pure/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Hot-Sauce-Louisianas-
Pure/dp/B0005ZHPFI/)

Louisiana Brand is also okay if that's all you can get

~~~
dranka
I notice that it's not uncommon for American recipes to be tied to a specific
brand of sauce or similar. I don't see this as often in "European" recepies,
here usually the recipe is broken down further or listing a generic
ingredients, this makes the recipe more useful in contexts where it is hard to
get "Trademark brand sauce", but of course you lose some precision in the
flavor..

Modular cooking vs roll your own :)

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Branded products having recipes on the label has been a marketing staple in
America for a long time. Sometimes you could mail them for a little book of
recipes all using that specific brand of oil/chocolate/flour/etc.. Quite a few
"old family recipes" are something that Grandma got off of a Crisco tin.

~~~
helb
_> something that Grandma got off of a Crisco tin_

Related – "The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’" on HN a few months
ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16534495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16534495)

------
tmporter
The idea of open source recipes on GitHub is so charming to me.

~~~
zmmille2
I agree. I especially like the idea of branching recipes, being able to find
spicier, sweeter, etc. versions of the main branch.

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jsilence
Also pull requests for pork! SCNR.

~~~
teniutza
Pulled pork?

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chrissnell
I'd love to see a salsas repo. There are hundreds (thousands?) of salsas in
the Americas. It would be awesome to have them catalogued and to have recipes
written. awesome-salsa?

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mrcms
Hey everyone! I made the sauce and put it online on Github. I am a fan of
fermented food and love cooking. Nice to see all the comments!

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bpicolo
I visited the Marie Sharp's factory in Belize ~a decade ago, that was a really
cool experience. It's an impressively sized business and something of a
national pride.

Not to mention, all the sauces are super delicious.

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ASalazarMX
Habanero chili is extremely hot but has a sweet, fruity flavor. I haven't
tasted piri piri chili, but I'm sure this sauce is delicious. I'm kinda upset
the chilis are deseeded, though.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
I make craft hot sauces, and I stand by deseeding and depithing. If I want
heat, I'll use a hotter pepper. Thai birds in particular carry most of the
heat in the flesh, for example. The flavor difference from using flesh only is
huge.

~~~
sandGorgon
Can you explain this ? Do seeds produce a bad flavour ?

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stirner
It’s commonly thought that the seeds are the spiciest part of a chili, which
is the impression Matticus_Rex seems to be under. In fact, the heat comes from
the white pith (which they mentioned) and ridges around the seeds.

~~~
dekhn
The seeds are definitely coated in a sticky juice that is spicy (I've
seperated them out and eaten them individually. It's the bitterness that
really sucks, though.

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stevewillows
A year ago Cinc was posted as a Show HN [1]. I'm surprised this concept isn't
more popular / common.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14799111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14799111)

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exabrial
Need an open source for Cholula sauce :D I replaced my ketchup with that to
reduce my calorie count, and save a few $

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cascala
Interesting use of github

How do you know Microsoft won’t steal your secret sauce?

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el_benhameen
There’s nothing to steal, it’s open sauce.

~~~
whitexn--g28h
Comment of the day!

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raverbashing
The Aquaself strips are a water hardness test for those who are curious (I had
to google it)

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falsedan
Water hardness isn't measured from 0-14. Those are pH testing strips (aquaself
pH Teststreifen).

~~~
raverbashing
Yeah, you're probably right.

Most pH strips I've used have only 1 color, I guess you need 4 to measure
across the whole range.

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toomanybeersies
Interesting to see Github used as a recipe repository. Git does make a lot of
sense I guess for recipes.

Personally, I like my chilli sauce to be vinegar based. Kaitaia Fire [1] is my
favourite. I'm not sure if you can buy it anywhere outside of Australia and
New Zealand though.

[1] [https://kaitaia-fire-ltd.myshopify.com/](https://kaitaia-fire-
ltd.myshopify.com/)

~~~
BenjiWiebe
If you like vinegar-based, try Cholula. I'm really enjoying it.

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classichasclass
The best foods are fermented. :9

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum) ?

Strange how such a wildly popular sauce vanished from the face of the Earth.

~~~
sampo
They still have fermented fish sauce in some parts of Southern Italy. Also, I
understand the Thai and other Asian fish sauces are somewhat similar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colatura_di_Alici](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colatura_di_Alici)

~~~
mirimir
And not just "fish sauces". Fermented fish paste adds richness and body. Even
if the fishiness isn't obvious.

------
ctrijueque
For the fermentation aficionados.

People's Republic of Fermentation.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDfUp9XK6kA176NN76_4v...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDfUp9XK6kA176NN76_4vxx983PEGK9q_)

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shannongreen
Always scared about fermenting things like this. How do I know it has the
right culture in it and I won't die?

~~~
maxk42
It's really hard to get wrong. The salt kills most of the bad things and the
capsaicin and garlic have potent anti-fungal properties which make it
especially difficult to mess up. If you remember to turn your ferment once a
day or so it'll go very well. (By turn I mean physically mixing the material
at the top of the jar down into the depths of the jar and dredging up the
stuff at the bottom for a while to sit at the top. This keeps "scum" from
forming, but the scum won't kill you and can be safely scraped away without
spoiling the batch if it does form.)

~~~
maxk42
You could also look at it this way: This technology is thousands of years old
and predates refrigeration and most basic sanitation. It's that easy.

~~~
zandl
The pH test reads 6 however, which is out of the safe range afaik.

~~~
cr1895
If you look at the color of the top block, it's matching somewhere between 3
and 4. Botulism is avoided if the pH is under 4.6.

The test strip is sitting on 6 but it would have to be darker to have that
high a pH.

~~~
mrcms
This is the correct reading. I had it at 3-4 as well. The camera also
saturates the colors a bit.

------
whistlerbrk
Marie Sharp's is the best all around hot sauce I've ever tried, absolutely
love this.

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gpresot
Newbie question: Are Marie Sharps's sauces fermented? Or is this a variation
of the recipe? I was in Belize a few months ago and these sauces are the only
things I brought back. Wish I bought more.

~~~
mrcms
I am not sure. The reason I mentioned it was more about the ingredients. I
really like the use of carrots etc for the mild and earthy sweetness and not
having added sugar. Fermentation brings a mild and round acidity, which is not
as sharp on the tongue as vinegar.

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leroy_masochist
Do you think you'd lose any flavor/goodness if you strained it prior to
bottling? If you have made a strained or more finely blended version of this
were there any key learnings?

~~~
jofer
A big part of this style of sauce is the chunkiness. We used to make tons of
these types of sauces growing up, and some things changed the flavor more than
others. Leaving it a bit chunky is best for this style (with carrots/etc),
i.m.o.

Straining it changes the flavor the most, in my experience. It filters out the
pepper skins, seeds, carrot bits, etc which add a significant portion of the
flavor. I find it more astringent and less sweet after straining. At that
point, I'd prefer to make "sport peppers" (fermented peppers and garlic left
whole while the vinegar solution is used as a sauce).

Blending it to a fine paste seems to have less of an effect on the flavor, but
it makes it a lot hotter. I'd assume that's because it releases more of the
capsicum in the seeds. It also removes the variability you get with a chunky
sauce (e.g. sweet bit, then hot bit). Whether that's good or bad is a matter
of opinion, but I rather like the variability.

~~~
jofer
Hmm... And on a side note, I just realized that the rest of the world does not
use the term "sport peppers" the way I do (the exception being a couple of
regional brands). I never thought of them as the peppers on a Chicago style
hot dog... Today I learned!

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js2
This hot sauce looks delicious.

I know some people think it's heavy on the vinegar, but there's nothing wrong
with original Tabasco – peppers, vinegar, salt. No modern food additives.

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nkkollaw
Very cool. First time I read a recipe on GitHub, too, and it's incredibily
efficient without 2 pages of introduction.

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atomical
How does this taste? Sweet? Sour? I'm a big fan of gochujang because it isn't
so tangy.

~~~
cr1895
Probably a nice tang from the lactic acid and the only sweetness would be
residual from the vegetables.

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exabrial
Also... With fermented sauces, once you store it, should/could you pasteurize
it?

~~~
s73v3r_
You could, but there's really no need. The salt used in the brine brings the
PH to a spot which is really inhospitable to bad bugs.

~~~
maxerickson
Salt doesn't change the PH.

The fermentation produces acid though.

~~~
anonytrary
True, salinity !== alkalinity

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king_nothing

       git clone https://github.com/allrecipes/awesome-sauces
    

Obligatory as I have ADD.

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jbob2000
Why github? You couldn’t just use pastebin? It’s a recipe! How much
collaboration are you expecting to happen? Are you expecting people to file
issues about your chili sauce?

~~~
ebikelaw
I don't know why this is flagged. I'm honestly interested. Why not a bunch of
other things, like Dropbox Paper or Google Docs?

~~~
jbob2000
I flagged the original submission because I honestly thought it was spam or a
joke or something. Perhaps it’s a vindictive flag in return.

But yeah, there’s not much else to say about a recipe on GitHub aside from the
fact _that it is on GitHub_. Am I the only one that finds it strange? Am I
taking crazy pills?

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onychomys
Chiles are the vegetable. Chili is the meat and bean stew-like concoction.

~~~
p1necone
Possibly in your particular corner of the world - but preferred spellings for
Chili/Chilli/Chile vary all over the place.

In fact I imagine the reason you spell the vegetable one way and the recipe
the other is that they're both regional variations of the same word from
different places too.

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xasd4
That recipe crates the conditions for Botulism which is fatal. You can’t store
low acid vegetables in air tight containers without boiling them or adding an
acid.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism)

~~~
maxk42
This is incorrect, and why the recipe emphasizes a brine of 5% salt. Botulism
cannot survive in saline conditions.

Lacto-fermentation is the oldest means of food preservation aside from cooking
and drying. It is used throughout the world for preserving everything from
sauerkraut to pickles to kimchi to capers to fish. The garlic and the
capsaicin also have antimicrobial properties that prevent especially molds
from growing, making this a very easy ferment.

~~~
zandl
The test shows a pH of 6 however.

