Yesterday Donna and I headed out on the Spyder. We left Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville, Louisiana around 9:30am and rode to Avery Island outside of New Iberia. The route took us out LA14 through Delcambre – which I’m told is pronouned Dell-come by the locals, rhymes with welcome. Seems like a lot of letters to spell Delcome and it’s certainly not the French pronunciation you might expect.

Anyway, the shortest route from Abbeville to Avery Island took us through a lot of turns on narrow parish roads, but we found our way. Our destination was the McIhenny Company’s Tabasco plant for a tour of the facility where they make the iconic Tabasco hot sauce. I’ve been a Tabasco user for nearly 50 years.

A self-guided tour of the plant costs $5.50 for adults – military discounts are given. The walking tour starts in a small museum and takes you through five different buildings to observe the process of making the sauce – from growing the peppers to shipping the product.

We saw a small greenhouse with a variety of pepper plants. Tabasco peppers are a variety of chili pepper – capsicum frutescens.

The peppers are picked by hand. The pickers compare the color of the pepper to the color of a red stick they carry to ensure uniform ripeness.

The peppers are crushed and put into oak barrels. The barrels are used whiskey barrels that are re-purposed. The coopers at McIhenny scrape the charred interior of the barrel to expose clean oak, then they remove the iron bands and replace them with stainless steel bands. The crushed peppers with a little salt added are put into the barrels to age for three years. The tops of the barrels are covered in salt to prevent bacteria from entering. By the way – Avery Island is a salt dome! The air was heavy with a pungent odor at the barrel aging buildings.

After about three years, the contents of each barrel is tasted. If approved, it goes to the next step where seeds and skins are removed. Then the contents are put into a large vat where it is blended with pure distilled vinegar for two to three weeks. The hot sauce aroma was evident in the blending building.

The bottling process was similar to what we’ve seen in beer breweries. It’s mostly automated, but people are on station to operate the machinery and provide quality control. Once the bottles are filled, a digital camera reads the bottle to ensure it’s filled to the proper level before capping.

They had an electronic counter with a digital display showing the number of bottles produced. At 11am, it was over 184,000 for the day and quickly counting upwards.

At the end of the tour, we visited the gift store where we sampled jalapeno ice cream. Donna bought a bottle of the standard red Tabasco and a bottle of the green sauce for $2 each.  You can buy Tabasco sauce by the gallon at the store here! The self-guided tour had a number of informational kiosks and video presentations. I thought it was worth the time.

We skipped the driving tour of the Avery Island gardens and headed into New Iberia for lunch. A cafe was recommended by Betty – the Bon Creole Cafe. She told us they had the best shrimp Po’ Boys around. A Po’ Boy is a Louisiana standard – it’s a sandwich made of a hoagie roll stuffed with fried seafood – usually shrimp, crawfish or oysters. It can be made with beef as well. We ordered a full shrimp Po’ Boy and split it. It was more than enough for two people. I added a couple of dashes of Tabasco to mine.

It was short ride from there to the Conrad Rice Mill – the oldest independently owned rice mill still in operation in the U.S. It was built by Phillip Conrad in 1912. He named his company Konriko (Conrad Rice Company with Ks substituting the Cs for trademark purposes).

The leading rice producing states in the country are Arkansas followed by California, Louisiana and Texas. The mill wasn’t operating Thursday afternoon so we skipped the guided tour and just watched a video and did some shopping instead. Konriko also owns the brand Hol-Grain which makes a line of crackers. Donna loves them and bought a box of their brown rice crackers. Did you know that brown rice and white rice are the same thing, just processed differently? Brown rice has the hull with bran intact while white rice has the hull and bran polished off. Donna also bought a couple of pounds of wild pecan rice.

It’s been warm, humid and windy here. Today the forecast calls for a high in the mid 80s. As I type this at 9am, it’s 73 degrees with 93% humidity. We’re debating our weekend plans. We’re hoping to go to the crawfish festival in Breaux Bridge.