Beta program now open, first bug report.

Made my first actual sales at the AMNH Exhibition Dept holiday party yesterday. I am so thrilled by the interest and support and feel like this whole chile venture is gathering steam. I hope that everyone who tries a jar will be interested in giving feedback on the taste of the chunky chile oil since I’m still tinkering with the master recipe. I’m kind of thinking of chunky chile oil as it exists today as like a beta version of a software program – it’s almost ready for retail prime time, but there’s definitely still room for improvement. I encourage all beta testers to send in bug reports as you taste the chile condiments.

I realize that the current batches of hot and mild both have a mistake in the ingredient list. There is a bit of lemon juice in addition to the ingredients listed. While this inclusion of citric acid hopefully will go a long way to making the oil more shelf-stable, I encourage everyone to refrigerate your jars between uses. My experience is that it will keep for weeks in the fridge, but use caution about storing it at room temp for more than a short time.

Chunky chile oil beta testing begins.

Welcome friends family and foodies. My process working on the chile garden and it’s first offspring chunky chile oil has been so slow that I had to give myself a kick in the ass by inviting more people to try it out. I’m certainly still early in the process so I hope you all will bear with me as I’m still figuring out things like mail order fulfillment. But it’s really exciting to hear back from so many old and new friends and make you all batches of CCO. 

This week I’ve been experimenting with adding ancho peppers to the mix. I’m running out of rooftop grown de arbol peppers (I grew way fewer de arbol than chiltepins this year.), and the replacement supply I found at Kalustyan’s seems to be hotter than the ones I grew. Food writers generally refer to the de arbol as a very hot pepper but for some reason mine are super flavorful but mild and so have been working well for a mild version of CCO. So I’m in search of a commercially-available mild pepper to get me through the winter months. I’m pleased with how the anchos are working out so far and will be interested in hearing what other people think.

Other big experiment now is varying the amount of oil I’m using in each batch. Some early tasters didn’t like the way the oil separates from the chunks at the top of a jar (like health food store peanut butter) so I’ve gradually decreased the amount of oil until the result is more like chunky chile paste than chunky chile oil. I like it better this way – it’s closer to the sambals I tasted in Singapore which got me so excited – but I don’t know if others will find the product as easy to use this way. Only way to decide is keep trying more variations. And please let me know if you have a preference.

New searingly scientific batches of chunky chile oil.

I’m preparing to send some samples of chunky chile oil to a lab at Cornell for testing of pH and water activity analysis. The results of these tests are crucial for determining if these recipes I’m using are safe to sell to the public. So I’m using stainless steel cookware, wearing a hat and rubber gloves, cleaning everything carefully, and weighing everything going into the current batches.

It’s not just an improvement of my scientific method though. I feel like I’m really improving my basic recipes, refining my technique and creating new variations of the basic method. Today I made batches with a higher proportion of chiles, mixing de arbol and chiltepins together. One batch has garlic but no shallot, and another has shallot but no garlic. In both cases I left it chunkier. The results seem spectacular, especially visually. Bigger chunks and more chile yields a really good looking chunky chile oil. I hope it’s just as good in the eyes of the food scientists at Cornell.