The destinations
Each one lists what it actually yields, what pH it lands at, whether the process is tested for shelf storage, and exactly which plants you need in the ground months earlier. Pick one and the Plan Builder works backwards to your sowing date.
Four cups of basil, a mortar if you have the patience, and nothing that turns black by dinner. Freezes for a year; cannot be canned, ever.
Twelve pounds of paste tomatoes, three hours, and a food mill instead of a peeling job. The reduction that makes a homegrown tomato taste like the reason you grew it.
Charred red peppers, toasted almonds, bread and sherry vinegar. Catalonia's answer to pesto, and the best possible use for a glut of sweet peppers.
Red jalapeños, eight hours of cold smoke, then a braise in a dark ancho-and-vinegar sauce. The single most useful jar in a kitchen.
Blistered tomatillos, serrano, and a fistful of cilantro. Naturally acidic, ready in forty minutes, and it clings to a taco because tomatillos bring their own pectin.
Yemeni cilantro-and-serrano relish, raw, ready in fifteen minutes, and violently green. The fastest thing on this site and arguably the most addictive.
Three ingredients — cayenne, salt, vinegar — and four weeks of patience. The thin, sharp, pourable hot sauce that goes on everything and gets better in the bottle.
Three weeks in a 3% brine turns raw habanero heat into something layered and sour, and carrot gives it body and colour with no thickener. The reference build for a homegrown hot sauce.