Saturday marks our 11th annual Pepperfest!
It’s when a group of us get together and spend the better part of a Saturday blending up hotsauces. I mean HOTsauces. Burn your mouth, grab the emergency cheese, and watch where you put your unprotected hand kind of HOTsauces.
It began when our friend, Henry, invited us to join him at Kreuger’s pepper farm near Yakima, WA, to pick hot peppers and then on a subsequent weekend create various versions of hotsauces. This was 11 years ago, and the tradition continues.
Sadly, Kruegers closed a long time ago but we do source our peppers from other local hotspots.
Every year is different as new people join us with ideas for their own versions of sauces. If curry is in vogue, we might blend something up with cumin and turmeric. If someone has an extra jar of peanut butter in their pantry, we’ll make one featuring PB.
Here’s how the day generally progresses:
- We start out with a generous blending of Bloody Mary mix.
- From there, we begin prepping – peeling garlic, cutting onions, roasting peppers, separating peppers.
- Blending begins with the least hot peppers and progresses over about 5 hours to the hottest peppers (habs).
Here are a few rules:
- RTP (respect the pepper)
- Always wear gloves
- Never wash a blender
- Don’t touch your eyes, lips or sensitive parts
- Always have emergency cheese or milk at the ready to cool your mouth in case of an accidental overdose
Various hotsauce names we’ve come up with (these are all based on how they taste and the naming ALWAYS happens after completion of the concoction):
- Chumbucket
- Call it Good
- Midwy
- Choco-chile
- Packin’ heat lite
- Packing’ heat (our signature hotsauce)
Of course there are lots of chips and snacks to be had throughout the day – we have to sample, you know. But we all leave with our own box of hotsauces that we get to enjoy ’til next PepperFest!
Life’s Short, Eat Well!
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