Course: WVA 104 Sauces, Condiments & Dressings

Reading

(1/2)
How to Bottle and Sell your Own Hot Sauce and An Overview Food Additives

In this section of the reading assignment, students will read about the ideas, decisions, and implications of creating value-added sauces for the value-added foods market place. In the article, How to Bottle and Sell Your Own Hot Sauce on the Mother Earth News website, students are asked to consider the steps involved in development of a homemade hot sauce as it relates to flavor, manufacturing, marketing, and future sales. Questions to consider include:

- Do you want it to be all natural?
- How do you feel about salt?
- Does your sauce need thickening, and if so will you use a natural thickener?
- How do you feel about thickening your sauce with xanthan gum, which is a common thickening and stabilizing agent?

Additionally, students will go to the FDA website to read Food Ingredients and Colors, about the types of food additives available for food processing and manufacturing and the advances in technology help make that possible. There are thousands of ingredients used to make foods. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of over 3000 ingredients in its data base "Everything Added to Food in the United States", many of which we use at home every day (e.g., sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla, yeast, spices and colors). According to the FDA, some consumers have concerns about additives because they may see the long, unfamiliar names and think of them as complex chemical compounds. The purpose of this information is to provide helpful background information about food and color additives such as what they are, why they are used in foods, and how they are regulated for safe use. Students are asked to focus on identifying starches that promote shelf stabilization.

Click here to access the How to Bottle and Sell Your Own Sauce article from the Mother Earth News website.

Click here to access the Overview of Food Ingredients, Additives & Colors article from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

Click here to access the Food Ingredients & Colors article from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.