Namemycat - 2025

 

IN SHORT…

This was not a sauce we planned to make, but in mid-August Tim’s friend Brandon sent him a recipe for Kau Txob, a hot sauce made by the Hmong people in southeast Asia. We don’t have any background in Hmong cuisine, but we decided to take this recipe and turn it into a fermented hot sauce in the Tom & Martha’s style. When we later learned that cats play an important role in the spiritual culture of the Hmong people, we knew we had to name after it after the bizarre subreddit that was the once a favorite stomping ground for a man we know.

  • This sauce was low-temperature pasteurized and preserved with calcium disodium EDTA (to maintain color and inhibit rancidity) and ascorbic acid (to prevent oxidation). While technically shelf stable, we would strongly recommend keeping it refrigerated to help preserve its flavor.

  • Common Allergens: Onion/Garlic, Shellfish, Fish, Soy, Wheat

  • This sauce is not vegetarian. It contains both fish sauce (which is made from anchovies) and oyster sauce (which, of course, contains oysters).

  • Green Tomatoes, Cilantro, Shallots, Fish Sauce*, Oyster Sauce**, Green Thai Chili Peppers, Garlic, Lime Peel, Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Ascorbic Acid, White Pepper, Kosher Salt, Calcium Disodium EDTA

    *Anchovies, Sea Salt

    **Oyster Extract, Soy Sauce (Soy Beans, Wheat Flour, Salt), Water, Sugar, Salt, Modified Starch, Corn Starch, Glucono Delta Lactone, Sodium Benzoate

  • Outside of the green tomatoes which came from Moon Valley Farm in Woodsboro, Maryland, all of the ingredients for this sauce came from either the grocery store or online retailers.

    For example, the oyster sauce is made by Maekrua, the fish sauce by Red Boat, the white pepper came from Ceylon Flavors, and the limes, cilantro, shallots and garlic came right out of the produce section at our local Wegman’s.

  • One of the fundamentals of our approach is to make several small batches of each sauce and blend them in the winter to have the best possible final result. However, there are always exceptions, and because this was an experimental sauce, it was made in one batch.

    The sauce was prepared in Tim’s kitchen where the peppers were destemmed, deseeded and had most of their placentas (“ribs”) removed. Most of the tomatoes were left uncooked, but about a quarter were roasted and a sixth were smoked over hickory wood.

    All of the ingredients were placed in a vacuum sealed bag and slowly fermented at 56°F in Tim’s workplace wine cellar for about two months before resting and very slowly fermented at 41°F until ready for bottling.

    The sauce was pureed in late December, just prior to bottling, its pH adjusted with citric and malic acids and then it was slowly pasteurized for 40 minutes at 147°F.

    • Brix: 14.8

    • pH: 3.45

This sauce just before we laid it down to ferment and a week or two prior to gaining its name.

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