The Dried Campanian Pepper That Changed Our Lives

Have you ever walked by one of those one-off international grocery stores, touting high-end imported goods from around the world? There’s one in Seattle, and in 2016 it unwittingly became the seed locale for Stuzzi’s origin story.

Stuzzi co-founders Carla and Richard Betts had wandered in to poke around the colorful aisles of promising-looking condiments when they found these fabulously beautiful dried peppers with an earthy, almost smoky aroma. Grown in Campania in southern Italy, they later learned they were not smoked, but were instead slowly dried in the shade in the countryside for one to two months. That slow, patient process is what lends such aromatic depth to the peppers. For context, industrial chilies are usually chopped up and sent through a dehydrating machine for a maximum of 24 hours. 

Think about it like a chicken stock: you can use a pre-packaged chicken bouillon cube dissolved quickly in water, or you can spend an entire evening roasting a chicken, picking the meat, then simmering the bones along with carrots, celery, and onions to create a complex, highly aromatic stock. My money is on the 6-hour stock every single time. 

That slow, whole-pepper drying process resulted in a complexity beyond anything Carla or Richard had previously seen in any other dried pepper. This inspired them to concoct their own hot sauce at home, traveling with it everywhere. (At the time, they were traveling over 200 days a year, and if you’d ever lived that kind of existence, you know that airport food needs all the help it can get.)

(The Rza Sauce, the precursor to Stuzzi)

Sometimes, All You Have to do is Ask

When they met Ethel and Jakob 4 years later, after the approximately 1-cocktail's-worth duration of time wherein they met one another and immediately agreed to make a hot sauce together, they planned a road trip to chase down that special Campanian pepper, hoping that Ethel and Jakob found it as exciting as they did. They found the farmer responsible, drove to his house, and asked if he’d be willing to sell them some product. It sounds illicit, I know, but trust me when I say the meeting ended with him becoming a friend (we gave him a bottle of wine, which helped), and inviting us to town for ice cream cones, so perhaps a little more innocent than you were thinking. 

Why Fermentation is Rad

With the base dried pepper sorted, Ethel and Jakob suggested employing lacto-fermenting fresh peppers from Sicily and Tuscany to layer even more complexity. Ethel is from Singapore, and Jakob is from South Tyrol in northern Italy, both places that are well-versed in fermented foods and the exciting umami notes fermentation can add to a dish. In Ethel’s words—‘First and foremost, fermentation is a flavor enhancer. It unlocks the peppers’ aroma and flavor potential, adding bright, citrusy top notes and compelling umami flavors. Second, fermentation is a method of preservation; it lowers the pH, which reduces the amount of distilled vinegar needed in the final sauce. This allows us to bottle without any nasty preservatives, resulting in a far superior tasting sauce that does not need refrigeration.’

(Fermented fresh peppers)

The Final Touches

We steep the dried peppers in organic distilled vinegar, and the small amount of unrefined sea salt we add is harvested in Sicily at a Slow Food presidio, which is a small-scale food production site that protects traditional and artisanal products at risk of disappearing. Fun fact: Because salt is a mineral, not a product of agriculture, it can therefore not be certified organic. 

Stuzzi is in the process of becoming non-GMO certified (did you know that GMOs are not even allowed in the EU, where all our peppers are grown in Italy?), and all of our peppers are farmed organically, with official organic certification coming soon.

As you can see, Stuzzi has been an unscripted, shoot-from-the-hip kind of adventure for us, peppered (lol) with road trips, laughter, friends, and above all else, fabulous flavor. The best part is, we’re only just getting started. Join us for the party, why don’t you?