Archive for October, 2009

Barbeque Sauce – How to Make a Quick Barbeque Sauce for Chicken

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

It is Barbeque season again, and it is time to dig out those great barbeque sauce for chicken recipes!

You don’t have to buy bottled sauce when you can easily make your own at home, and I think it tastes much better.

Here is a great Barbeque Sauce for Chicken, but it can be used for all other meats as well.

Ingredients:

1 cup of ketchup (your favorite brand)

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

3 tablespoons of honey

dash or two of hot pepper sauce (adjust this to your taste)

 

Mix the ingredients together and brush on your chicken or other meat in the last 10 minutes of broiling or barbequing. You can use this as a marinade as well, but make sure to discard the sauce after use.

As always, you want to make sure with chicken that you handle it properly. If you had raw chicken on your cutting board or counter, make sure to wash right away with hot soapy water, including your hands. There are many bacteria’s that can make us sick on raw poultry.

Make sure to thaw chicken in the fridge rather than on the counter, especially in the hot weather.

Once the pink has gone from inside the chicken, then you know it is done, but you can use a meat thermometer if you are not sure.

If you prefer vinegar based barbeque sauce.. then try this quick one.

 

1 cup cider vinegar

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon brown sugar

 

In a small bowl, combine the vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and brown sugar. Mix well This makes a great barbeque sauce for chicken as well.

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Getting the Most Out of your Chili Vegetarian Recipe

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

One vegetarian favorite is the chili. A true chili vegetarian recipe cook however, knows that there is more to just randomly adding any kind of chili pepper. There are some things that you need to take into consideration with your chili vegetarian recipe.

Know Your Chili

The amount of chili in your recipe will depend mainly on your capacity to withstand its hotness. The question however is how to find out if there is too much in your chili vegetarian recipe. One basic step is to know your chili peppers. It is a fact for example that bell peppers and pimiento provide no hot taste at all so you can basically add as much as you want in a dish. Habanero and santaka chilies however are among the hottest so you would do well to add moderate amounts in your chili vegetarian recipe. The famous jalapenos are only about moderately hot and are often the favorite ingredients in a chili vegetarian recipe.

Rev Up on Moderately Hot

Increase chili peppers in the middle or lower range of hotness if you can’t take habaneros that are too hot. It is a fact that a chili vegetarian recipe is packed with full flavor which means that you need less of salt, sugar or other sources of flavor which are not healthy in large amounts.

Chilies have also health benefits like the antioxidants that can help clean up your system. They are also natural pain killers that do not dull all of your vital senses.

Handle Chilies Properly

Chilies can burn the skin. Handle chilies only with your bare hands if you only have a small quantity to cut. Handling lots of chilies for a flavorful chili vegetarian recipe can burn your skin. It makes better sense to use cooking gloves with lots of hot chilies. Make sure too that the juice of chili peppers never find its way into your eyes. Chili juice on your eyes can be a very painful experience. You can also keep your skin and hands off chili peppers by grinding them instead.

Manage the Heat

Remove the chili seeds and the white membrane before cutting and adding the chili to your recipe if you’re not too keen about its hotness. Tomato sauce is also said to be effective in helping lessen the hotness of chili.

Avoid beer and other beverages if the chili is already heating up your tongue. While people still popularly use water to kill the fire of a chili recipe, yogurt and milk seem to be more effective.

Mix with Other Tastes

Your chili vegetarian recipe would taste best with garlic, beans, tofu, onions and tomatoes. Just make sure that you mix your ingredients well so that the chili flavor does not stick in just some parts of the recipe but watch out for burned ingredients. Experts advise though that ingredients shouldn’t be mixed all at once since this could kill the hot taste. Sauté the spices gradually to release the chili oil that holds the secret to its hot taste. Depending on the dish, you can serve a chili dish the next day to give time for flavors and tastes to mix.

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What brand of hot sauce is the hottest you ever eaten?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
caltam84 asked:

And how about the spiciest pepper you have eaten?

I am a big fan of spicy food and condiments, and I’d like to know what type and name of hot sauce is the spiciest you had.

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Homemade Barbecue Sauce – How To Make Your Own Homemade Barbecue Sauce

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

The time to start thinking about cooking BBQ is in the Spring and Summer time, with the warm days ahead and fun social gatherings with your friends and family, there is no better time to turn your attention to making these occasions special by learning how to cook something new.

Creating your own homemade barbecue sauce is straightforward once you have mastered the basics and learned how to combine various kitchen ingredients to make your own favourite sauce.

No doubt you, or members in your family had their own favourite homemade barbecue sauces that they grew up with, well now is your chance to get involved and enjoy learning something new, how to make your own, personal favourite, homemade barbecue sauce.

Here are the basic components of a homemade barbecue sauce.

The barbecue sauce base

Regardless of what type of barbecue sauce you are going to make, you will need a “base” before you can begin. Ideal bases for making a good BBQ sauce are favourites such as number 10 ketchup sauce, honey, mustard, brown sauce and fruit purée sauce bases.

Consistency of the homemade sauce base is one of the main things that you should be looking at when considering making your own BBQ sauce. You want to avoid the base from being too runny or too thick, and this is one of the reasons why using a suitable ketchup is a great place to start experimenting because it gives you a little less to think about initially and will allow you to let your creative juices flow as you consider and use the ingredients that will make up your sauce.

The #10 ketchup is one of the most popular sauce bases to use as it has the ideal consistency and acidity that complements BBQ food by giving a clean edge, or zing, to the flavour. Many pre-bought sauces will not match up to your own personal favourite once you have developed your very own homemade barbecue sauce.

If you were considering making something that had a fruitier flavour, you can use a pre-made fruit sauce and use that as your base for a slightly sweeter and fruitier flavour and adjust it to your taste, using other ingredients. Alternatively, you could use a small quantity of ketchup base and then sweat down fruit and create your own fruit purée to add to your sauce.

Acidity

Acidity is very important in a homemade barbecue sauce as its presence provides a clean-tasting zing that prepares and excites the taste buds. Controlling this acidity is important and a matter of personal preference, and experimentation with fruit-infused vinegars, such as cider, apple and raspberry all offer unique and distinct flavours that complement any homemade barbecue sauce.

You can make your own fruit-infused vinegars very easily by purchasing a good quality white wine vinegar, adding some to a sterilised bottle along with raw fruits of choice, seal, and allow to soak slowly, in a cool and dark place for 1 or 2 months.

Once the fruit has had enough time to break down in the vinegar, you find that it has taken on a pleasant fruity tang and can be used in not only your homemade barbecue sauce, but also in a salad dressing along with a little olive oil. Remember that a little goes a long way.

Other ingredients that will complement your homemade barbecue sauce base, are seasoning’s and vegetables that will add a distinctness to it and separate it from the typical, off-the-shelf variety.

Worcestershire sauce for example, adds a low-down meaty flavour and is similar in colour to soy sauce, though it tastes nothing like soy sauce at all. Widely used, Worcestershire sauce has a slightly spicy tang to it as well as a dark colour that will deepen the colour of the sauce that you are making.

Other great ingredients are Tabasco sauce for example that adds a mildly hot, fruity pepper flavour and is excellent as a component for sauces that are going to be used on chicken, baby back ribs and chicken wings. If you want to try a slightly milder alternative to Tabasco, Cholula hot sauce is similar in flavour, though slightly less piquant to its hotter counterpart.

For a full and more rounded flavour you can add sauces similar to Texas Pete’s hot sauce, which has a fairly thick ketchup-like consistency and adds a broad and mild mix of spices. Once again, there are many alternatives to thick sauces that you can add to your homemade barbecue sauce, and it is worthwhile experimenting with them in very small batches and pick out the flavours that excite your taste-buds the most.

Read the labels, pick out the flavours and aromas that appeal to you and then note them down for future use.

Seasoning’s

Now that you have the base of your homemade barbecue sauce well under way, you can take a look at the spices, salt, pepper and sugar that will be used in relatively small quantities to give your BBQ sauce its own distinct flavour.

If you haven’t used a particular seasoning before, start off by using small quantities to avoid over-powering your first homemade barbecue sauce.

Cinnamon for example is a particularly strong bark-like spice that is also available in ground form. Use it like salt, by adding a little at a time until you get the balance right with the other flavours. Use too much and you will find that just like salt, the cinnamon will almost certainly overpower everything else you have in your sauce. Unless you particularly like cinnamon, use it very sparingly.

Here is a short list of seasoning’s that you can use in your homemade barbecue sauce to give you some ideas.

Spices such as cayenne, Jamaican jerk seasoning, red pepper flakes (in moderation), clove, cinnamon, ground ginger, coriander, garlic, mango powder, mustard, paprika, cumin, oregano, and parsley are all excellent choices.

Whole seeded chilli peppers such as Chipotle adds a dark and smoky flavour, Habanero and Scotch Bonnet peppers add a lot of heat along with a delicious fruit flavour, red bell peppers for great fruitiness but little heat, Serrano and similar long carrot-shaped chillies also offer a nice fruit flavour along with a mild-heat.

Sweetness

To add sweetness if necessary to your homemade barbecue sauce, you can use sugars and sweeteners that suit your personal preference. Palm sugar has a unique and distinct flavour that has an Eastern influence, cane sugar, molasses and dark brown sugar are also widely used.

You can use any sugars that you prefer, though darker sugars generally have more flavour and are more suitable for use in a BBQ sauce. More exotic sweeteners such as passion fruit and guava syrups can also be used to good effect, along with regular honey and golden syrup.

If your homemade barbecue sauce is going to be used to baste your meats and poultry during cooking over a hot grill, remember that the high sugar content can burn easily and it will invariably result in blackened food.

Take this into account when cooking your food and adjust your technique accordingly. Using the “low-and-slow” method of cooking is the perfect way to cook food that is coated in a high sugar content BBQ sauce.

Salt

Salt is a very important part of cooking, seasoning any food improves the flavour and when used in BBQ sauces, it is used in the same manner, to add flavour and also balance the sweetness and acidity. Use salt sparingly during the last 15 minutes of reduction time to adjust the taste to your liking by allowing the salt to cook through the sauce slowly, while stirring continuously.

Taste a small amount of the sauce, not forgetting to allow it to cool first beforehand, and determine whether you have reached the right balance.

It all comes down to a matter of personal preference that is based on our upbringing and regional influences. Use the ingredients and flavours that talk to your taste buds, experiment and make it your own unique homemade barbecue sauce.

Thickeners

To prevent yourself from making the most common mistake when creating your first homemade barbecue sauce, avoid the addition of sauce thickeners such as corn starch, gelatine, flour, butter and cream as these will impair the flavour and potentially ruin your BBQ sauce.

Thickeners are not required as your homemade barbecue sauce will be thickened naturally by the evaporation of liquids, and reduced gently on a relatively low heat in a saucepan until the ideal consistency is achieved.

Making your homemade barbecue sauce

This section is not designed to be a particular recipe, just some basic guidelines in the preparation of your homemade barbecue sauce.

To start with you will need a pan large enough to hold all of your ingredients with some room to spare to allow the BBQ sauce to bubble gently without overflowing onto your cooker, and now add the following ingredients;

500ml of #10 ketchup

50ml cider vinegar

1 large onion coarsely chopped

2 large garlic gloves, finely chopped

1 thumb sized piece of ginger, finely sliced

1 tsp Tabasco sauce

1 tbls passion-fruit syrup

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp cumin powder

2 finely chopped seeded hot red chillies

1 tbls brown sugar

Salt to taste

Once you have all of the ingredients in the pan, stir until thoroughly combined and raise the temperature of the pan until it achieves a boil, then immediately reduce the heat so that the mixture is just simmering very gently around the edges of the pan.

Do not cover the pan and stir occasionally with a plastic or wooden spoon, checking for any sauce that may have start to stick to the bottom of the pan. If the sauce begins to stick, reduce the heat a little, stir, and check again in a few minutes. Refrain from adding water during cooking as this will only serve to prolong the reduction process.

The reduction process can take up to 4 hours depending on your ingredients and desired sauce consistency. Allow plenty of time for making your homemade barbecue sauce prior to use, preferably allowing 24 hours for the sauce to cool properly and allow the ingredients to finally combine and stabilise the flavours before use.

Your BBQ sauce can be prepared and refrigerated ahead of use using a sterilised jar or suitable air-tight jar making it ideal for continued use if you are going to have several barbecues during the week. Your homemade barbecue sauce will be at its best for up to a week if stored in the refrigerator.

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Another Cool Austin Festival : The Austin Hot Sauce Festival

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

With almost two decades under its belt, the Austin Hot Sauce Festival is a time-honored tradition featuring some of the most defining characteristics of life in Austin: hot sauce, hot weather, live music, great food and a fantastic way to give back to the community.

A major fundraiser for the Capital Area Food Bank, the festival boasts free admission, with a donation of three healthy, non-perishable food items or a cash donation to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Always held in late summer, the weather is guaranteed to rival the sauces in hotness, but this popular event consistently draws more than 15,000 spectators to Waterloo Park in downtown Austin – this amounts to a sizeable donation to one of the most community-centric and necessary non-profits in town.

The heart of the festival is the hot sauce competition. The contest, with separate judging for individuals, restaurants, and commercial bottlers, is divided into three categories: red, green, and specialty variety. The festival attracts as many as 350 entries, who each provide a quart of their entered hot sauce that makes over 100 gallons of hot sauce being consumed annually at the festival itself, let alone all the jars available for purchase. Combined with over 650 lbs of tortilla chips, the sauces are available to be sampled by all participants. The sauces are judged, however, by respected area chefs, and as this festival’s reputation has grown, so has the competition, which is as fierce as the heat.

In addition to sampling the finest hot sauce in the area, spectators can partake of food from many local restaurants, many of whom have entered, and won, the hot sauce competition. The food provided often highlights or incorporates the salsas, and although weighted towards Austin’s renowned Tex-Mex, interior Mexican and BBQ, other ethnicities are often represented. Restaurants that have participated in the past include Curra’s, Dona Emilia’s, Matt’s El Rancho, Ruby’s BBQ, Santa Rita and Suun Garden Shaved Ice.

What would an Austin festival be without live music? Again focusing on our local talent, the festival boasts quite a cross-section of musical genres, with kid-friendly bands, country, jazz, conjunto, and many others. Bands who have played at past hot sauce festivals include, Loose Cannons, the South Austin Jug Band, Los Jazz Vatos and the Gourds.

Getting to try the cream of the salsa crop, eat the best food Austin has to offer, dance to the grooviest bands in town and make a contribution to a worthy cause is one of the highlights of an Austin summer. The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is an institution, and one that will face its next two decades in the same spicy fashion.

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