Linda's Legacy

"Sauced" in Caldwell, Idaho

A lot of people have asked about where we make our bbq sauce and how we make it. So here is the perfect place to post our last "sauce run" we did on August 24th. I took pictures of the process and will try to explain it best I can! We make our sauce in a Small Business Incubation Kitchen run by the Universary of Idaho located in Caldwell, Idaho, a town near Boise.

We rent the kitchen and depending on the kinds and quantity of sauce, we usually are there from 8am to 5pm. Sarah does most of the shopping for all the ingredients, Dale orders the pepper powder. At the beginning preparation stage, the girls do the honors of cutting up pounds and pounds of onions. Yes, it brings tears to our eyes, but not for long, compared the great aroma of the habenero peppers. As you can see from the picture, Collette and Sarah are such "cut ups" when we work! We used to sort and prepare the peppers, but have refined our recipe to using pepper powder. We have found that using real onions combined with powder keeps the substance of the sauce in tact.

Dale begins pouring the "secret" recipe ingredients in a big vat.

As you see from the pictures, we wear aprons, hairnets, and rubber gloves throughout the different stages of the process to keep the health department happy. I think Dale looks cute in a hairnet!

Next is a picture of Jefrey carefully measuring out the different powders we use. He listens to favorite tunes on his ipod, but I know he really misses the stimulating conversation that his Mother provides.

You can see one of the big vats that we use to cook our sauce in. Dale is making sure the sides and bottom get scraped well in the stirring process. There is alot more to making our sauce, like blending all the onions in a machine, cleaning out all the ingredient containers after use that can be recycled, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning to keep a sanitary environment. The time the sauce is cooking to perfection, another batch of a different kind has most likely started and we can usually eat the yummy lunch Sarah always provides for us in the break room.

The bottling stage is the busy stage. There are lots of things that need to get prepared. Bottles need to be sanitized in the big dishwasher. Lids are all laid out and sanitized, as the picture of Collette shows. Jefrey and Sarah get the label machine set up with our labels on (you can see their arms). Most important, Dale and Jef makes sure the sauce is exactly right in consistancy and then pours it into the funnel looking machine that is set to dispense just the right amount of sauce into a bottle.

When Dale gets each bottle filled, he hands them to Collette to put on the lids. We have to make sure that the machine pours out just the right amount for a single bottle. We don't want too little in the bottles and too much spills over. We adjust this level it seems a couple of times during this filling process. Collette is sporting a nice glove to prevent blisters that can appear from turning 750 caps! This comes from the voice of experience, as I have done that job myself!

The bottles are placed on a turn table that goes around to position the bottles for the labeler to pick up and place on the label machine.

Jefrey is our labeler, he runs that machine pretty slick and knows just when a tiny glitch needs to be adjusted so that the labels wrap around the bottles correctly.

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Sarah puts on the black shrink bands that go around the cap to seal the bottles. The bottles are then sent through the machine pictured on the left that heats the shrink bands. We place the bottles one by one on a turning belt that sends them through. A person takes them out and places them right in the boxes ready to go. When I do the shrink bands, Sarah receives the bottles and boxes them. This also includes labeling the boxes with the name of the right product and stacking them on a pallot for storage.

We are usually grateful for this stage when the bottles are done! Sarah always does a good job of keeping track of the numbers of bottles we did of each product for our inventory. Then comes the final clean up, which is another process in itself. We do keep the working stations clean as we go but there is the big job of cleaning the big vats and bottling machine. That's when it gets fun! When the cold water from the cleaning hoses hits the vats, the habenero sauce smell intensifies greatly.

I know that I have probably left out lots of details, but that is how we make our habby sauce...one bottle at a time. I actually enjoy doing this and Dale has said he loves making the sauce. I know it is because we get to spend time getting "sauced" with family!