Jeremy lives in Lafayette but he grew up in Pensacola Florida. Jeremy still goes back to Pensacola regularly. When he does, he fills up a specialized container with 275 gallons of sea water. Jeremy trucks that water back to Lafayette. Through a process of evaporation and dehydration, he turns Pensacola sea water into salt. He packages it and sells it under the name Cellar Salt. Phil Gremilion is a Lafayette native with an equally fascinating food product. Phil’s company, Papa Jaebert’s, is a spice company unlike any other in the world. Phil is the planet’s only commercial farmer of a native Louisiana pepper called the Peter Pepper. It’s an extraordinarily hot pepper. By some estimates it’s ten times hotter than a jalapeno, and literally too hot to handle. When Phil harvests and processes the peppers he has to wear gloves and a gas mask.
But even this sci-fi image of harvesting peppers in a hazmat suit isn’t what sets Phil’s Peter Peppers apart from other peppers in the world. The most significant trait of these peppers are their shape. They’re called a Peter Pepper because they look like a penis. If all that doesn't make Phil Gremillion interesting enough, he's also the inventor of the Cajun Cooker- - a contraption that replaces the Cajun Drunk Chicken beer can technique - and a similar cooking tool for turkeys. There's very little that's more fundamental than salt and pepper, or, in this case, salt and Peter Pepper.
Out to Lunch: July 19, 2017 - Salt Peter
