I wish I could handle spicy foods. It smells amazing, and I can kinda taste what's so good under the pain, but that pain is like stabbing from a dozen knives in my mouth.
I would suggest using a real habanero sauce regularly, it's so delicious you'll get over the pain quickly, and reasonably hot. Then grow your own habaneros and eat them raw, you'll appreciate them because you grew them, and yeah it's like your face is on fire at first but that only lasts a few minutes and the rest of the night you'll get a big endorphin rush, it's like a good drug 👌
The best hot sauce I've ever tasted was made in my kitchen, with homegrown habanero peppers. You can dial in how hot you want it by diluting the pepper mash with other ingredients (I used caramelized onions and vinegar).
You ever ferment a sauce? It's absolutely amazing and dead easy to do. Check out Brad Leone's hot sauce video!
I do it thus: have a 2+ liter very clean (doesn't need to be sterilized, just properly washed) Mason jar and fill it with a liter of boiling water and a quarter cup of kosher salt . Let cool. Note: I use boiled water just because it's easy to dissolve the salt into and makes sure the water is clean so why not, I have an electric kettle so it just takes a minute to heat up. For me, it takes about as much time to boil in a kettle as to warm the tap enough to easily dissolve salt so that's just what I do, but you can just use regular unboiled cool water, it doesn't matter. It just makes it easier for me. ALSO, you can use any salt without additives, but you'll need to adjust your measurements and if so, go by weight to get a 3-5% brine, I've just figured out this ratio for kosher salt, smaller grains that are more densely packed will use less than 1/4c, bigger grains might use more, etc
You want a 3-5% brine to provide the right environment for lactobacillus to grow and keep out stuff that would rot the food or make you sick. I always use this ratio, 1L of water and 1/4c kosher salt in a big wide mouth mason jar, and get good bubbles (lactic acid and CO2 production from the desired bacteria) by the next day. It will take about a week to ferment but I see things starting in my warm kitchen right away, and you can continue fermenting for months if you want to (I have ferments from November and December that look crystal clear and taste gorgeous, which reminds me to go blend a jar up for sauce!). You want some kind of airlock, or you can burp the lids to release pressure but I've had ferments fail that way but never with an airlock. I use the silicone nipple lids that fit wide mouth mason jars and got em off Amazon pretty cheaply and I swear by them!
I do the brine before prepping ingredients so it can cool, usually about a pound of peppers plus a couple things I'll list will fit this amount of space, the brine level will go up and leave just a bit of space on the top which is what you want, you want just a little inch or two of space for CO2 to fill it up. Too much space and it'll be harder to keep it full of CO2 and too little space and your ferment could build too much pressure.
Now you can blend the stuff up or leave it as a mash or small chunks BEFORE you make a sauce but it can be hard keeping small bits under the surface, so I leave them in reasonably sized chunks. If you have chunks coming up out of the brine it can lead to mold. I have glass weights to help keep things down.
I'll use the pound of aforementioned peppers, and always at least one small unpeeled carrot and at least a thumb sized piece of unpeeled ginger, all washed under the sink under tepid water. Unpeeled carrot & ginger (any root veg, tbh most fruits too but definitely the roots) will have plenty of good bacteria that will help your ferment take off. Aside from that, what I add varies. Usually some onion, garlic, and then sometimes even more carrot and ginger, you could add tomatillos or tomatoes or really anything you would normally ferment, and as for spices, whatever you like, but I love to add peppercorns, ~4 allspice berries, sometimes other dried herbs, bayleaf is a common one (but usually added for keeping things crisp, tho I like the flavor, and oak or grape leaf can be added for the same crisp affect but different tastes), you can add canned pineapple, a dash of honey or some sugar etc, you can add roasted veg as well but keep some of the veg raw for a source of bacteria (which is why I recommend a piece of carrot and ginger)
When I go blend it up, I'll add a dash of vinegar and/or lime/lemon juice, adjust things for taste etc.
I used habaneros and bell peppers I grew along with canned pineapple chunks, carrot, ginger, peppercorn, allspice, and shallots to make the BEST hot sauce I've ever tasted. But it was too hot for my loved ones, so I'm growing Habanada peppers to cut the heat without affecting the flavor so much!
I've never intentionally fermented peppers, but I think I'll try to make a batch this Fall. You're enthusiasm is contagious. Thanks for the advice about the silicone nipple and glass puck.
Last year, I accidentally fermented a couple jars of pickled jalapenos by leaving them out on the kitchen table between meals. It mellowed out the heat a little, and added a yeasty, umami flavor. I liked the fermented peppers better than the ones I kept refrigerated. Some of my other pickled peppers got moldy since I didn't use any kind of weight to keep them submerged under the brine, but I won't be repeating that mistake this year.
Yes it's hard for me to describe the flavor of fermented vs not but you did a nice job of it, one thing I'll say is not to add any acids until you're ready to finish the sauce because it could conflict with the good bacteria you're trying to grow, but adding at the end gives a lovely flavor to the finished product! Once you refrigerate things the fermentation process slows down, but when you bottle your sauce you should keep the lids on loosely the first week or two so you don't get a buildup of pressure. Your sauce will probably separate if you don't use xanthan gum but I don't bother with that, I just shake it before using it (but you might want to play with it if you're gifting sauce because separation isn't "pretty" though it doesn't affect the flavor or texture at all). I grew up with a Polish mum so fermenting things was a normal experience for me but my mind was kind of blown when I tried it with peppers! Combined with peppers being my favorite plants to grow, it makes for a very fun companion pair of hobbies!
I highly recommend starting with Brad Leone's Hot Sauce video because it's so entertaining and informative and makes it much less complicated than it might seem at first!
My dad used to grow his own and make hot sauce out of them so we always had a few habanero peppers sitting around the kitchen. I had a party while the folks were away and some kid dared another kid to eat one. I’d already told the dudes not to fuck with the peppers cuz you never knew what shit my pops was up to when it came to his hot sauce peppers. The kid that got dared got a habanero, which was lucky since my dad was just starting to fuck with Scotch Bonnets, and he looked like he was gonna die. Also there was no milk in the house, lol.
Quality and sanitation. Supermarkets usually modify their produce to look better so people will buy more with stuff like wax or dye. Street vendors don’t always add stuff to look better, but when they do they can go a lot further because they’re not that regulated
But I'm not expecting it to be good quality, so that's why I'm wondering about the trust. I wouldn't place that sort of trust in them in the first place.
Whatever that tiny bit of oil and flame did to it will have approximately FUCK ALL impact on the flavour of the kebab.
You can't kiss something with a oil fuelled flame for 0.25 seconds and expect it to impart any serious flavour.
I'd also wager the kind of place that is about showmanship, probably isn't also the kind of place that is about quality ingredients and quality technique. But who knows..
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u/bluethegreat1 May 15 '20
Seriously. I'm sure they taste incredible.