Datil Pepper Festival, Palatka, FL

Holy tingling tastebuds, Batman! 🌶️ Joe and I are intrigued by datil peppers and we do our best to support small businesses. We love to eat datil peppers, grow datil peppers, and have fun making datil pepper sauce. So when we heard they were having a datil pepper festival, we knew what we had to do, lol. 🤩

There are many people who have not heard of datil peppers. 🤯 They originated in Spain and it is believed that the Minorcans brought them over in 1777 when they arrived in St. Augustine, Fl. St. Augustine and the surrounding areas are where the datils thrive. We bought our datil pepper plants at Maggie’s in St. Augustine, where Mike & Dora grow them abundantly! 🌱

As we drove up to the downtown riverfront area on the shores of the picturesque St. John’s River, we were met with a variety of datil pepper vendors. 😄 Our first booth was Wingin’ It, where we tasted and fell in love with the Datil Pepper Bloody Mary Mix. Needless to say, 2 bottles ended up coming home with us. If you’re interested in some spicy and delicious Bloody Mary Mix, you can go here to purchase it: https://datilbloodymary.com/. It is amazing!!! 🍅🌶️

Our next vendor was Dippin Datil. They had a unique gourmet mustard sauce that had a bit of sweet heat. It would be so fantastic with a soft hot pretzel–going to have to try that soon! You can find their website here: https://dippindatilmustard.com/ We highly recommend! 🤤

Mayhem Datil Pepper Farms had the ultimate Datilmen’s Gold Datil Pepper BBQ Sauce and were some of the nicest people! The Mayhem Original Datil Pepper Hot Sauce was also fantastic. We tried the medium spice and it was just right for us. To get some of their delicious sauce for yourself, you can visit their website: https://www.savethedatil.com/shop.html 🥰🌶️

At Deaken Datil, we met the sweetest couple–Deanie and Ken. We truly enjoyed the Key Lime and Datil Pepper Seasoning. It was tangy with a hint of heat. We tried it on chicken and fish and are ready for another bottle! They have some other delicious products that you can find here: https://www.deakendatil.com/ 😉

The Castaway Sauce Company had quite a few different sauces: Mango Chipotle, Ball Kicker, Falling Iguana, and Blackbeard’s Revenge. My favorite was the Falling Iguana which had just the right amount of heat. 🦎 They have sets of flavors which would make an awesome gift! You can find them here: https://www.castawaysaucecompany.com/

Dat’l Hook Ya was one of our favorite stops! We tried their clam chowder made with the Datil Sauce and the Datil Seasoning. Wow! 😲 Even both kids loved it! We will definitely keep this recipe handy as one of our favorites! John and Andrew were so kind and let us sample their soup and sauces and we really loved everything we tried! 😍 You can find their amazing products here: https://hookyaproducts.com/products/datl-hook-ya Here’s the recipe for the fantastic Dat’l Hook Ya Chowder we tried: https://hookyaproducts.com/blogs/datil-recipes/dat-l-hook-ya-chowder P.S. Made this chowder for some of our friends and they loved it!!!

We decided to finish our chowder sitting in the shade listening to the live music. The band was great! What we loved most was that the majority of the sauces had all natural ingredients and they were all local entrepreners.🙃

After a while, we decided to take a stroll around the area and found the bounce house. Joe and I were glad to have a seat and watch the kids have some fun after we signed the petition to make the datil pepper the state pepper! 😁

We saw a stand that we missed on the way in, so of course we had to visit. A. P. iary sells locally harvested honey and are part of the Beekeepers of Putnam County. It was a sweet spot for our last stop.🐝

Since it was getting late and our taste buds were already tingling, we decided to head out and let the kiddos get some rest. It was a great day with great people and we would love to make it back for the next Datil Pepper Festival. Well done, Palatka! 🌶️🥰😎

I love making flavored pumpkin seeds and the kids have fun scooping them out of pumpkins. 🎃 Win, win! I decided a new Datil flavored batch of pumpkin seeds sounded like fun. I ended up making 2 small batches to see how they would turn out. We used the Deaken Datil and Dat’l Hook Ya seasoning blends. The Deaken Datil had a nice key lime zing with it, but definitely not overly hot. I like salty pumpkin seeds, so I will add some sea salt to the seeds next time, but we really enjoyed the flavor. The Dat’l Hook Ya had a nice deep paprika flavor and no additional salt was needed and it had a bit more heat to it, which added a different kind of kick. Both were delicious and I’ll definitely be making more! 😋

We hope you are enjoying our travels! We’d love to welcome you to subscribe to our email list, Facebook, & YouTube channel. You can also share it with your friends, if you’d like. We added some videos on our YouTube channel to go along with the post: https://www.youtube.com/@TravelingwiththeTrapps

Thanks so much and stay tuned for more Traveling with the Trapps! 😀

Share this: