Bottling chilli oil/sauce

[Naga]

I am looking to make some chilli oil/chilli sauce and bottle it up for myself and some family members but I am a little dubious because I don't want to infect anyone with botulism.

Do I need to heat the bottles in the oven and cook the sauce and let everything cool before emptying the sauce/oil in to the bottles? How long do these things keep for?

[louisesgarden]

i was going to do some sun dried tomatos in oil, but you cant just plop them in olive oil as they dont keep and go mouldy, but i cant remember for the life of me what you put in to make it store well ? am sure i found the correct way on the internet ?

[Naga]

I think it needs to be acidic to preserve and help keep any nasties away but I am not sure what the PH is sposed to be.

I would be using:

Fresh Garlic
Fresh Chilli
Dried Herbs
Fresh or canned tomatoes.
Vinegar
Lemon/lemon juice

[louisesgarden]

I think it needs to be acidic to preserve and help keep any nasties away but I am not sure what the PH is sposed to be.

I would be using:

Fresh Garlic
Fresh Chilli
Dried Herbs
Fresh or canned tomatoes.
Vinegar
Lemon/lemon juice

Yes Naga thats what it is the acidic levels, to make it store well, it confused me ! which isnt difficult

[jayjay giant]

Sounds great, have you made any yet and have you got any pictures ?

[FionaH]

There have been lots of fairly heated discussions on this here. I decided not to risk stuff in oil as a result. I will try and find the thread in a bit.

[sarraceniac]

i was going to do some sun dried tomatos in oil, but you cant just plop them in olive oil as they dont keep and go mouldy, but i cant remember for the life of me what you put in to make it store well ? am sure i found the correct way on the internet ?

Never tried sun-dried toms in olive oil (except from the deli) round here it would definitely be oven dried, but I should imagine that pasteurisation would work. If you boil the olive oil to sterilise it, it will alter the flavour, but a certain M. Louis Pasteur (sorry it's a long time since I was at school/uni and I have forgotten what year) discovered that if you heat food-stuffs to 60-80oC and keep it there for 20-25 minutes it will kill off most of the bacteria that cause things to go off and won't noticably alter the flavour. The reason that botulism occurs in, say, chillies preserved in olive oil is that people don't either get it to the right temperature or don't give it long enough at that temperature.

Pasteurisation will not, of course, stop things going off, e.g. milk, but it will certainly give them a longer shelf life. I have been making chillies stuffed with cream cheese using this method for years and only a handful of my friends have actually been hospitalised. Sorry, that's an in joke, nobody has suffered. (Yet )

[OllieMartin]

i was going to do some sun dried tomatos in oil, but you cant just plop them in olive oil as they dont keep and go mouldy, but i cant remember for the life of me what you put in to make it store well ? am sure i found the correct way on the internet ?

I dipped each of my sundried tomatoes in vinegar before putting them in oil. They seem to be okay and I haven't died from eating them...



...yet

[Hilary B]

For sun-dried tomatoes, if you've reduced the water content, and added a tiny dose of acid, there shouldn't be a problem. DRIED stuff keeps pretty well, and tomatoes are a bit acid already....
In general it's no use heating stuff and then letting it cool before bottling. If it needs heat, then it has to be heated in the bottles so you don't get fresh bacteria arriving after the cooking! Jam/marmalade/chutney works because the sugar content makes the water inaccessible to spoilage bacteria (and there is acid content there too) and the cooking is just to get the ingredients combined in the way that makes that effect work.

[sarraceniac]

For sun-dried tomatoes, if you've reduced the water content, and added a tiny dose of acid, there shouldn't be a problem. DRIED stuff keeps pretty well, and tomatoes are a bit acid already....
In general it's no use heating stuff and then letting it cool before bottling. If it needs heat, then it has to be heated in the bottles so you don't get fresh bacteria arriving after the cooking! Jam/marmalade/chutney works because the sugar content makes the water inaccessible to spoilage bacteria (and there is acid content there too) and the cooking is just to get the ingredients combined in the way that makes that effect work.

Hilary. The purpose of pasteurisation is not to kill bacteria. It is to kill pathogens. That's why your milk is not pasteurised bottle by bottle but in bulk and then put into sterilised bottles. If cooking and pathogenic narcosis were the same thing then I and all my ex-colleagues would be top chefs. I'm not saying pasteurisation is the cooks method but scientifically there is no reason why it won't work. Interesting theory you have there though.

[Alison]

I made some lovely chilli and herb oils based on the recipes in the River Cottage preserve recipe book. Both of these used the chilli or herbs to infuse into the oil for a period of time (couple of weeks springs to mind) before straining it off so that there was nothing left to go manky. The herb oil in particular is really lovely when used in bread etc.