gagger, you could be right. I plan to spoon as much of the salt that I can off. It's mostly very crusty and easy to see! I have tasted the liquid at the edges, and it's YES! VERY SALTY! Underneath, there is no salt, so I'm hoping it will equal out. I will definitely update this thread when it happens, but it sure is fun to watch the ferment. I'm thinking 2 or 3 weeks, and then hit it with vinegar and bottle. If it is too salty, lucky me, I've got a bunch of frozen jalapenos in the freezer, so I may have to ferment those without salt, and add them to the salty batch. I could probably kick up the ferment with a little sugar and some wine yeast. Tobasco ferments in oak for 3 years! I don't think I could do that! Waaay too long. I even have an oak barrel, but that is for wine! Most of the joy of doing this is anticipating the flavors that happen, and sharing it with family and friends, with them knowing they can't BUY this stuff! They have to come for a visit to get a taste!! My family likes heat! We are California natives, and have lived close to Mexico forever, so we do like it Spicy HOT!! tracydr, So you added vinegar after 10 days, right? Good luck with your canning! I prefer freezing, fermenting, brining, stuff like that. I fear the lid of the pressure cooker flying off and hitting me! LOL!! Nice to see you post, so i know the garlic in your ferment did not kill you! The sour dough starter gave me a lot of comfort with fermenting. half flour/half water, the bubbles come, and over the years, it just gets better! I don't have a dog or a cat or a fish. Just my Yeasties! And I only have to feed them now and then! Suzi

This is your own made-up recipe? Or is it a tested recipe from one of the approved canning recipe sources? If it your own recipe then not only would it violate the first rule of safety in home canning - that you cannot make up your own recipes - but canning it would be considered unsafe to do per the accepted guidelines. Not only do you not know the pH or the density of it but the pressure canning processing time would just be a guess. Weight used is determined by your altitude, not the ingredients. Time is determined by the ingredients, the pH, and the density of the food. If this is a tested and approved recipe then the proper processing time would have been provided for you. Otherwise canning this is something you do at your own risk and, since it is a low-acid vegetable mixture, with all those other unknowns it is a very risky thing to try to can. Freeze it. Dave

There is a Carolina Cayenne listed above(developed in the U.S.A. 100,000-125,000)that gets in the range the add says. When I grew it ,it was hotter than regular Cayenne but I only grew it once. There are probably tons of hybrids/developed cayenne types out there that are in all different heat ranges. I was refering to Cayenne in general. Maybe it was my growing conditions but in general , I don't think Cayenne peppers pack that much heat. I haven't grown them in a while. I use mostly C.Chinense,Baccatums and Pubescens for my powders and rubs heat. Annuums I use mostly for flavor.Especially Chile Negro , Poblano and Cascabel. For short intense bursts of heat a lot of the Frutescens do the trick. I grow a lot of Pubescens too. They'll fool you though. They have all 3 kinds of Caspaicin in them so they feel hotter than they are. They hit up all the receptors in your mouth. I'm more into using several types of peppers to blend together to get the taste and heat i want. I'm growing several strains of 7 Pot,Trinidad Scorpion ,Nagas and Bhuts this year with a couple seasoning type peppers to mellow them out. I guess if the growers are using a similar strain to the Carolina Cayenne type for their powder it could reach up to 125,000 units. I've just never had a Cayenne that I thaught was anything to write home about as far as heat goes. I did like yellow Cayenne better than the other ones for taste when I grew them a few years back. I've grown several different ones.Regular assorted Cayennes,Long Slim,Long red,Yellow,Carolina,Thomas Jefferson,African,Purple,Super,Orange,Golden,Turkish,Picante,Portugal,Processing and sweet.

I posted a picture of some of my habaneros on a thread that Annie started about harvesting, but I don't think I put my recipe in. Anyway, the way I make it is to take a bunch of habanero chilies and put them in a grill pan so that they will not fall through the grates of the barbeque, and then I char them slightly over mesquite charcoal, but you can use whatever charcoal you like, but it must be charcoal or wood to get the smokey flavor that I like. I usually roast a few cloves of garlic in the pan with the chilies, and I also roast a few of the large red or yellow bell peppers, to make the sauce a bit milder and make it go further. After the chilies are charred, I move them to a Pyrex or Corningware pan that has a good lid, and I let them steam covered. They must be covered right after they are removed from the grill. You can use whatever ripe chilies you have, but cayenne is not a very good choice because it is not very fleshy. You can include the tiny Thai chilies also, but I generally only use fairly large chilies, as they are better for making a sauce. After the chilies have cooled (sometimes in the fridge overnight), I remove the stems, some seeds, and some of the skin that is loose and put them through a food mill with the garlic, but you can use a sieve or colander, as long as the holes are small enough for the seeds not to pass through. Be careful of fumes at this point, and you may want to wear a snorkel to avoid breathing them in. You may want to wear rubber gloves also, but I generally do not. The worst part of it is when you have to rinse out the food mill, for when you do this, even more fumes come up in the air. When you have the bulk of the chilies through the food mill or sieve, add salt and vinegar - I generally add one part vinegar for four parts of chili puree, and I add a fair amount of salt - about one tablespoon per cup of sauce, but you can add more to help preserve it. I freeze some of it in plastic bags, but I have found that it keeps fairly well in the fridge, if you add enough vinegar. A lot of people add carrots and other vegetables to this sauce, but I prefer to keep it pure, and that way I have the most concentrated flavor. You get a lot of flavor in this sauce in a tiny amount of it. I highly recommend that you add the red bell peppers, as they also give a good flavor and make the sauce go a bit further. Let me know if you have other questions. This type of sauce is popular in Texas and Mexico, but not common elsewhere. I think a lot of people are afraid of it! Lars