My wife and I decided to use the peppers off our cayenne pepper plant in some hot pepper vinegar.  I took a quick glance online to see if I could find some recipes, and I found this site.

It suggests boiling the glass container the vinegar will go in (makes sense) and to boil the vinegar.  I'm not sure why they suggested boiling the vinegar, but I did anyway.  This was probably a mistake for three reasons and I'll get to that later.


Anyway, here's all the peppers we've taken off our plant so far.  We are drying out the three on the top; the rest were picked right before this photo.  No, the red ones aren't THAT neon colored...the flash overexposed them slightly.




Here is our finished product:





A few lessons learned:
1: We needed more peppers; this definitely wasn't enough for the size bottle we have.
2: Boiling the vinegar is a mistake, unless you are really concerned about spoilage.  Here's the deal:

• Pouring the hot vinegar into the glass container cooked the peppers.  I'm not sure how that will play out with taste, but they definitely aren't as brightly-colored as they were before.  This makes me a bit sad, since I was hoping this would be something that looked AND tasted nice.  Do the peppers do this if the vinegar isn't boiled, or do they normally stay brightly colored?


• Boiling the vinegar ate some of the enamel coating off of my canning pot. I figured since the enamel was non-reactive the vinegar wouldn't affect it, but I was wrong.  There is a distinct different in texture between the parts where the vinegar wasn't boiling and where it was –– the affected areas feel more like running your fingernail over a chalkboard.  Definitely not smooth or glossy anymore.


• I figured that putting my canning rack with some mineral deposits in the leftover boiling vinegar would help get the chalky white stuff off the rack.  Whoops...the vinegar ate the chrome off the rack.

Obviously the last issue was completely my fault.  I am a bit disappointed in the enamel coming off the pot, but I suppose that it WAS exposed to a boiling acid.  Using one of my stainless pots would have probably worked better, but...oh well.


The last part of this recipe recommends leaving the newly made hot pepper vinegar in a dark place for 2 weeks or more, so I will report back on that in a bit.


Do any of you have any hot pepper vinegar recipes you would like to share?

Boiling the vinegar helps to extract the volatile oils from the peppers, it's essentially for flavor.
The best thing to do with cayenne is to dry them and grind into cayenne powder.

I really like Vietnamese food and I have been learning how to cook it.
Nuoc Cham is a delicious sweet and spicy dipping sauce that accompanies noodle dishes, spring rolls and other appetizers.
It's really easy to make and it's good on other things.

Vietnamese Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Cham) Recipe
SND Note: This recipe is how my family likes our nuoc cham. Adjust the ingredients to your tastes, particularly the lime since the juice varies with each fruit.
To make a ginger dipping sauce (nuoc cham gung), add 1 tablespoon of minced ginger.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup fish sauce (Viet Huong Three Crabs brand)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 of a lime, juiced
3-4 cloves of garlic , minced
2-3 Thai chili pepper, minced

Directions:
1) In a small sealable jar, combine water and sugar and stir to dissolve the sugar. Add fish sauce, vinegar and lime juice and mix. Adjust flavors to taste.
2) Add garlic and chili pepper. The sauce can be stored at room temperature, if served the same day. Otherwise, store it in the refrigerator.
Makes about 1 1/2 cups

tag

ETA - double tap for nuoc cham bonus

That is my experience, as well.  It will be much hotter in 2 weeks than it is now.



 

I was just dicussing this with the wife wile we we in the office and she said you can only boil vinager in Stainless steel.

She is right.  Vinegar is an acide

Right....even so I was exactly expecting it to begin dissolving the enamel.  The molarity of acetic acid for white vinegar isn't particularly strong.  Then again it was boiling, which I'm sure accelerated the action.  Plus with it boiling I'm sure some of the water was  turning into steam, thus increasing the acidity of the solution.

Or I could be completely wrong.  My degree is in History, not Chemistry...

Always use Pyrex  or Corning when dealing with vinegar....