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by gwd 689 days ago
If I've understood things right, boiling as a last step won't protect you from botulism. My understanding is:

1. The botulism spore can only be killed by heating to something very high, like 250C, which can only be achieved at a higher pressure

2. If the conditions are right, the botulism spore spawns to be a botulism bacteria inside your sealed container; and this bacteria creates the botulism toxin.

3. It's the toxin that kills you, not the bacteria. The botulism toxin can be broken down by heating for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, your "boiling fermenting sauces as a final step" happens between 1 and 2, but not between 2 and 3; so the botulism toxin isn't present yet, only the botulism spore, which won't be fazed at all by 85C. If you want to use boiling to protect yourself from the botulism toxin, my understanding was that you'd need to boil it after you open the can for the first time.

Again, I'm not an expert, so make sure to do your own research.

1 comments

Ah, I forgot a step. I think this is very common when it comes to making hot sauces but after boiling/pasteurizing, you add a lot of vinegar. This should raise the PH well beyond what botulism can handle and just generally preserves the hot sauce. By volume it has to be at least like 20% vinegar. Some people leave their sauces "live", meaning they don't boil and might not even add much vinegar (common with sriracha) but I don't trust myself to leave out those two steps. Plus, I'm usually going for a tabasco type sauce and vinegar is a key part of the flavor.
Adding acid lowers the pH.
I should have said raises the acidity