We’ve had a lot of side hustles at Ozark Akerz over the years. From partnering with Raleigh Brewing Company to sell Ozark Outlaw, a small batch beer made with our jalapeño peppers to crafting Christmas ornaments out of black walnut shells and brewing our popular Mesquañero™ hot pepper sauce.

Even people who didn't like hot sauce became converts after trying a sample of our mesquite smoked habanero pepper sauce. The funny thing is Mesquañero™ was a mistake! We forgot to add Ghost Jolokia peppers to one batch of pepper sauce and Mesquañero™ was born. It became our bestselling pepper sauce.

Customers continue to ask for it, but we have to disappoint them. We would love to continue brewing Mesquañero™, but it’s very labor intensive and we no longer have access to a local commercial kitchen, so we've decided to discontinue it.

It's not the end of Mesquañero™ though. We've decided to let it live on through you by revealing the recipe so you can brew it at home and share our bestselling pepper sauce with others.If you decide to share the recipe with friends and family or on social media, please credit Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm. Thank you for helping us keep the recipe alive and smokin'!

Ingredients
Base liquid:  

• 2 cups of distilled white vinegar
• 2 Tablespoons Kosher salt.

Peppers:

• Enough bell peppers to make 1.5 cups of finely chopped peppers. Using a combination of yellow, red and orange peppers will give a more complex flavor.
• Enough habeñero peppers to make 1 teaspoon of finely chopped peppers.

Don’t worry about smoking too many peppers for this recipe, you can use leftovers to season dishes or make a smoky salsa.
 
Recipe
Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds.
 
Soak mesquite chips before use. Put mesquite on hot coals and add whole habanero peppers and bell peppers (cut in half) to grill. Cook until soft with some blackening.
 
Finely chop all bell peppers in a food processor or blender to create bell pepper mix. Remove and put in mason jar so you can save what you don’t use for other dishes.
 
Finely chop habeñeros in food processor or blender. Remove and put in mason jar so you can save what you don’t use for other dishes.
 
Add the following to food processor/blender and mix thoroughly.

• 1 1/2 cup of bell pepper mix
• 2 cups base liquid
• 1 tsp finely chopped habaneros (we found that this made the tastiest sauce, but you can add more depending on your pain tolerance, it may not be as tasty though)

Although not part of the original recipe, you can mix it up by adding fresh and finely chopped garlic to a batch.
 
After blending thoroughly, put through a strainer to remove solids. You can use the leftover pepper solids (affectionately known as gubbins) to season food or salsa.

Enjoy!
Sue & Mike

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When I was a kid we celebrated Christmas on Jule Aften (Christmas Eve), a tradition my parents carried with us from Denmark to the 3 countries I was assembled in. In this post I'll share some of the Christmas traditions we brought with us including how to make Danish Christmas tree decorations, my grandmothers recipe for æbleskiver and a kick-ass drink that will keep you warm and get you in the Christmas spirit!

My first memories of Christmas are from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Spruce or pine trees don’t grow in the tropics, so our Christmas tree looked a little tattered. We decorated it with lit candles, tinsel, danish flags, baubles and homemade woven “julehjerter” (Christmas hearts). The hearts are generally filled with Danish treats but it was hard to find them in Rhodesia, not just because of the sanctions, but there just wasn't a very substantial Danish expat community to drive demand for Danish food and goods. That changed when we emigrated to Calgary, Canada. There was pretty good sized Danish expat community and the julehjerter were now filled with chocolate covered marzipan, unshelled hazelnuts or walnuts, cookies or other tasty treats.

After moving to Canada, we continued to burn live candles for a few years, but my folks discovered colored electric Christmas tree lights and the candles were soon replaced, I think the fire hazard had more to do with it than the fancy colors. The julehjerter remained unchanged though.

Making julehjerter was a tradition leading up to Jule Aften that would always get us in the Christmas spirit. My parents would get out the glanspapir (glossy paper), and we would get to tracing out the designs, before cutting pieces and weaving them together. The first julehjerte was green and white and was woven by none other than Hans Christian Andersen (in Danish he's simply known as H.C. Andersen) author of Little Mermaid, The Emporors New Clothes, The Snow Queen (basis for Frozen), The Ugly Duckling and 152 other children's stories. The original julehjerte can still be viewed in his home (now a museum) in Odense, Denmark.

My dad read me a lot of Danish childrens stories growing up. He would trace his his finger across the page as he read so I could see the words as he spoke them. That's how I learned to read Danish, I never attended Danish school, I was 9 months old when we emigrated. Many of H.C. Andersen's stories had a moral, one example is his Christmas story The Fir Tree.

The tradition became an annual event that included my parent’s friends and their families. The grown ups would drink jule gløgg, a warm and spiced wine drink, the kids would drink hot chocolate and we would all eat æbleskiver while making the julehjerter. Mom would make a few templates for the kids to use and we would continue cutting and weaving for hours. By the time we were done, the adults were tipsy and we were all stuffed with æbleskiver.

Here are a few more templates if you're inspired to make more intricate julehjerter.

The word gløgg is from the old Swedish glödgad, meaning burned. That is a drink in which most if not all of the alcohol has evaporated. My parents, Inger and Kai’s version, was meant for those of us who love to party as they did. Their recipe adds back a considerable % of alcohol with a generous pour of Danish Akvavit and they didn’t boil the gløgg to ensure as little alcohol as possible evaporates. My parents are awesome!  Here, for the first time is Inger and Kai’s finest party enducing gløgg recipe. :

Inger & Kai’s Julegløgg
1 bottle Red wine
2 Cinnamon sticks
10 Cloves
100g (1/2 a cup) Raisins 
100g (1/2 a cup) Chopped almonds
Lemon peel (no white) sliced thin
1 dl (1/2 a cup) Sugar 
1-2  dl (1/2-1 cup) Akvavit (aka snaps)
 
Warm wine and spices, covered at a low temperature. When warm, add sugar and lemon peel and stir until sugar disolves. Add 1-2 dl snaps (my personal favorite is Alborg Jublæums Akvavit) to make it stronger to taste. If you can’t find akvavit, substitute dark rum or brandy
 
Serve warm and Enjoy!

Making æbleskiver is a bit of an art, First of all you need a special cast iron pan. Arne Æbleskive can help you choose the pan that's right for you. Then there's the challenge of making them, learn from an expert how to make them perfectly round, we've never made them this perfect! We
eat them with powdered sugar and raspberry jam.

This is my maternal grandmother, Else (pronounced El-seh) æbleskive recipe that she noted in her personal recipe book on August 17, 1946. This is a word for word translation of her recipe.

500g (2 cups) flour, 8.3 dl (3.5 cups) milk or sour whipping cream, a little teaspoon salt, one lemon peel finely shredded, whisk all ingredients, then stir in 5 egg yolks and one teaspoon baking soda and then finally add the 5 egg whites. The dough should not be too thin. Approx. 55/æbleskiver. Note from Mike: you want about the same consistency as pancake mix.

Glædlig Jul og Godt Nytår!

Last week we made Pineywoods Heritage Beef flank steak for the first time. Flank is a popular cut for making fajitas, its not the most tender cut, but it's got great flavor. To tenderize, flank needs to marinade for up to 12 hours. Sue made her marinade and it tasted so good we decided to use it for BBQ sauce too. We ate it on short ribs an it was amazing!

Yep, that's one of the ingredients. Here are the rest of the recipe:
​

• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce (we pronounce it "wusster sauce", a remnant from living in the UK for 8 years. That's how they pronounce it, too many syllables, Brits are a bit lazy or is it efficient?)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 tblsp brown sugar
• 1 two oz can of anchovies, less one that Sue ate
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 medium onion, minced (about 2 tablespoons)
• 1 jalapeño, no ribs or seeds

 
Combine Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, anchovies, garlic, mustard, tomato paste, and olive oil in a blender and blend until smooth, creamy, and emulsified. Transfer sauce to a mason jar and stir in onions and store in the fridge until you're ready to marinade or smother your ribs in  BBQ sauce!

Recipe was inspired by Serious Eats