Hard to Find Ingredients


 
Hello Jamie,

Any recommendations for purchasing hard to find ingredients in some of your recipes? Two that come to mind are scotch bonnet peppers and tart black cherry juice.

I ended up using dried scotch bonnet peppers for jerk chicken purchased online after checking farmer's markets and specialty grocery stores in my area.

My grocery store had tart red cherry juice, but the black cherry juice did not say tart on the label.

Also, the use of "prepared" before spice names throws me. Prepared chili powder is dry, but prepared yellow mustard is liquid mustard from a bottle? How should I handle those?

Thank you,
Scott
 
Hi Scott --

Those are really good questions. With some ingredients, the names vary from region to region or food manufacturer to food manufacturer. And some ingredients are just hard to find anywhere. I try to avoid those as much as possible. Scotch bonnet peppers are considered so essential for jerk chicken that I felt obligated to call for them. We get them in speciaty stores in California. You did the next best thing by ordering the dried version. I hope the chicken turned out well for you. I'm guessing that you were looking for tart black cherry juice to make the sauce from a chicken thigh recipe in "Weber's New American Barbecue." I tried that sauce with regular cherry juice and it was just too sweet for my taste. I bought the tart version at Whole Foods and thought that tasted a lot better, so that's what I published. My guess is that your juice was pretty sweet. As far as "prepared" goes, to me that just suggest an ingredient that has been a little more processed than the pure, unadulterated version. Prepared chili powder has a few more ingredients in it than pure chile powder. Same thing with yellow mustard and horseradish. Thanks for the reminder about this. I'll try to keep the ingredients as simple and widely available as possible.

Jamie
 
Thank you for responding Jamie!

Both chicken recipes were from your books. The jerk chicken was great, I even used pimento wood that I found online. The cherry brined thighs were good, I think they'll be better the second time around with the tart juice.
 
Wow, I applaud you for getting that pimento wood and doing the real deal, Scott. Thanks for putting your trust in my recipes. I appreciate that.

Jamie
 

 

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