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Comment by MarkMarine | Hacker News Reader

I make my own hot sauce, but they were all kind of blah until I started growing my own chilis.

I grow the bird’s eye chilis (piri piri) that is an important part of a number of Portuguese dishes that I like, including wonderful piri piri oil that I drizzle on many things. I always have extra chilis at the end of the year so I make sauce.

There is a Portuguese sauce made from fermented red (sweet, large) peppers that I’ve never been able to get right though. Finding a recipe online is tough because this is a family recipe that gets passed down, many families have their own take on it, and I’m in California and don’t have any Portuguese relatives. If anyone makes massa de pimentão and has a recipe please share

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If you haven't already tried them, take a look at siling labuyo. They are a little smaller and hotter, and IMO better tasting. I've had tons of luck growing them in the US, even indoors over a winter once(light lamp).

I like them so much I picked my username after them :)

Thanks for the recommendation, where did you get seeds for them?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/333733398766

I bought my last batch from that link and they tasted perfect.

I used to just get them from local Filipino stores/communities, if you have any. A lot of people grew them when I was in Florida.

My last house was in the desert, and wasn't able to find any locally so bought those off ebay.

>started growing my own chilis

I thought / have observed that the spelling "chili" (single letter l) was used for the US / Mexican dish called "chili con carne", and the spelling "chilly/chillies" was used for the hot pepper that came from the Americas and spread to much of the world.

Edit: Wikipedia says both spellings are used for the hot pepper:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper

Edit 2: See the Spelling and usage section.

It does not mention the y ending, but I have seen it in India.

I've never seen or heard of anyone using "chilly" to mean anything other than cold. I'm from Portland, but I've also lived in San Francisco and Tucson.

I think in India it is the commonly used spelling, and maybe in Britain and Australia too. But not sure about the latter two, need to check.

usually "Chilli" in the UK.

A few relevant points made by Govindarajan in this 1985 paper[1]:

> Chilli or Chili, a name now commonly used in Asia and Africa, is said to have come from the Nahautl dialect of Mexico and Central America.

> The U.S. Government Standard divided Capsicum into types corresponding to commercial types; paprika, red pepper, ground and crushed. The term "chilli" is not generally used in the U.S., but is used in Britain, India, Africa, and the countries in the East.

> The British Standard Specifications, however, differentiate between chillies and capsicum, obviously based on the degree of pungency. It gives no values but describes "chillies" as pungent small fruits of certain forms of the species C. frutescens L. and describes Capsicum as of varied sizes, generally big, of the species, C. annuum L.

[1] https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/10408398509527412

Chilli/chillies in the Britain, but chilly/chillies is certainly a more typical looking pair, logic's on your side!

Cool, er, hot! ;)

Interesting! I worked in an Indian food truck - owned by an Indian family - in Tucson, and we had "chili chicken" (with that spelling) on the menu. I wonder if they spelled it differently at some point.

Was it an Indian or Chinese style dish?

In India, chili chicken (probably spelled chilli chicken) is an Indianised-Chinese dry starter or appetizer kind of dish, of small pieces of chicken stir-fried with a tangy dry coating / sauce that includes ginger, garlic and red chillies. You can get vegetarian versions too, like paneer chilli. That coating / sauce is really good. It has tiny solid bits and pieces of ginger and garlic which adds to the taste.

You get it in (Indian) Chinese or multi-cuisine restaurants.

I'm from the UK and live in Australia.

Can confirm I have never seen "Chilly" as a spelling for the pepper in either country!

usually chili or chilli in India, though I've seen chilly used on occasion

Here in the UK we say chilli.

For more fun, in NM they spell it chile, and pronounce it like the country. They're convinced they're right and everyone else is wrong.

Your NM friends have better Spanish than anyone else in this thread.

Meanwhile, my fellow Texans have famously bastardized “chile con carne” to refer to spicy beef stew, and would tend to specify “chili pepper” to refer to the actual fruit itself.

Massa de pimentao has various recipes (as pretty much any sauce here). You can even buy in store different brands that have different flavour profiles. I guess you will have to tweak a more generic recipe to match the flavour you are looking for (or if you have some brand/restaurant you like, I can try and see if I can find it).

The recipe from “My Lisbon” had two versions, one that you ferment, one that you make with wine vinegar and don’t ferment.

Both of the recipes calls for roasting the peppers under low heat (my oven min is 170F) for an hour or so to drive off some water… every time I do that I think I kill off the lacto. I get mold every time I try the fermented version.

If you know of any family recipes I would love to hear them!

Also I’d love to hear about the tech scene in Portugal, my wife and I have been thinking of moving the family there

>every time I do that I think I kill off the lacto.

I have seen some people recommend to put some fresh chillis in with the roasted ones for this reason.

>I get mold every time I try the fermented version.

It is airtight? Is the brine salty enough (2-3% salt to water usually recommended)?

I’m following the same process I use for other fermentation without issues in the other ones, 2% salt to water, mason jar with a bubbler, I actually go over and above with this one because I’ve had problems… I double clean everything, I use acid sanitizer from beer brewing to make sure the jars and lids and everything is clean, I don’t leave it uncapped unless I’m working next to a candle (a technique to keep falling spores out of yeast samples from home brewing)

I’ll try adding some fresh peppers in just for the lacto and try again.

I like to mix Malagueta with good olive oil.

The piri piri oil recipe from Nuno Mendes’s book is amazing.

Cook down lemons, spices with Piri Piri (dry and fresh both) and throw some uncracked pepper corns in with the dry peppers directly into the jar with great quality olive oil, it’s my favorite condiment

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