Tabasco and salt

Our destination today is Avery Island. The original and continuing home of Tabasco sauce.

In the mid 1800's Edmund Mciilhenny married into the Avery family and moved onto Avery Island off the south coast of Louisiana. From pepper plants obtained shortly after the civil war he cultivated a crop, invented a product and founded a company. The capsicum pepper plants and their recipe, first grown on Avery Island after the civil war, was so unique it was granted a patent.

 

The peppers are mashed and fermented for a minimum of three years in white oak barrels that they obtain from the Jack Daniels company. Because Jack Daniels can only use their barrels once as they advertise "aged whiskey in one time used barrels". So Tabasco buys these barrels and uses them until they deteriorate. The company then chops them up and sells them as BBQ smoking chips. It is an interesting history of a sauce that is familiar to everyone. It is sold in over 160 countries. It has growing fields in south and Central America but all production is done at the plant on Avery Island.

As it is Saturday we don't see the plant assembly line in motion.... we see a video, a small museum and their general store where you can, of course, buy anything Tabasco related.

The other interesting aspect of this is the salt mining in the area. From what we can tell it is the basis for Morton Salt. The island is basically a salt dome, some say as deep as Mount Everest is high, surrounded by bayous, which are slow moving, muddy rivers.

It is such a unique and interesting area, this southern part of Louisiana. After Tabasco land we see a Cajun meat shop and make a quick stop. We come out with more sausage.....more boudin, syrup sausage, which is new to us and a couple more hot sausages for the freezer.

I'm still looking for "the" place for a po' boy and hopefully some jambalaya before we leave Louisiana. Have found a connection for a state park just inside Texas, 20 miles south of Port Arthur. The weather and the availability of camp sites will dictate how fast and how far we travel each day from now on. The next two weeks are looking like a mixed bag of weather and temperatures. It would be nice to settle down and stay off the highways for the Thanksgiving weekend.

A dinner of leftover rice.....adding boudin sausage, chicken, mushrooms and peppers, some Tabasco chipotle sauce and Creole spices. Mouth on fire, but capsicum peppers are good for you:)

We take it one day at a time.

 

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