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We are located in Saint Etienne de Baïgorry, France
the hometown of my grandfather.
My dad acquired this old farm that was falling into ruin
and decided to install the first workshop to start cooking
canned foods in a convenient environment.
After every game of pelota, my grandfather
was in charge of the "mechoui" (barbecue of a whole roast sheep)
because everybody appreciated his sauce
Since he was famous in the area for his talent of kicker,
he was nicknamed 'the Sakari".
One day, my dad got tired of cooking the same meal
several times a week after the games of pelota;
he decided to to bottle in the sauce
and named it "the Sakari sauce".
When I started working with him 15 years ago,
we were selling 10,000 bottles and now at the end
of September we are going to get past the 250,000.
It's a renowned product because it goes with
so much more than just roast sheep.
The sauce can accompany either cold or warm meals.
My dad was a pork butcher and little by little
he specialized in cassolettes mostly in can.
We are now in the kitchen and today we are cooking duck confit
and conserved duck-wings which we're going
to use tomorrow to make some soup.
They are glazed and soaked to remove the fat and feathers
so that the product looks better for the consumer
The product arrives fresh at the dockside.
Then, we salt it and season it.
We keep it 24 or 48 hours so that it permeates with the sauce,
then we soak it in the fat and we remove
the last little feathers and we put it back in a can.
We add some grease so that the product
finishes cooking while sterilizing.
We are in the cooking room and you can see
autoclaves which are big pressure cookers.
Depending on the product, cooking times are different
and every product has its own scale of sterilization.
When we receive the ducks we can cook some confit,
garbure and even some meat stew and rillettes.
Every product stored here has already been sterilized.
Between this afternoon and tomorrow morning,
products will be labelled (tag).
We are now in the room where the Sakari sauce is made.
We cook it with herbs, garlic, vinegar, oil,
salt, pepper and chilli pepper.
We produce different sizes.
I'm glad I found those plastic bottles in PET
because they're more ecologic than glass bottles;
they're recyclable and produced in Europe to lower pollution.
Plus it's less heavy and more convenient during transport.
The recipe is originally from Argentina
and was given to my great-grandmother's husband by some cousin
who was coming back from Argentina, where he was living.
The original recipe is between the soft and the spicy sauce.
Our sauce is used in some restaurants
and they even mix the soft one and the hot one
because the only difference comes from the addition
of the Espelette chilli pepper (this ingredient gives
its colour to the sauce and the sauce is very natural because
there is no tomato purée that you may find in other sauces).
"With Sakari, add spice to your life!"
The range is pretty wide. As regards condiments,
the Sakari sauce can be found in lots of stores
and we were asked to extend the range.
We took this opportunity to be creative and have fun,
so we created mustard, mayonnaise, hot pepper jam and jelly.
We usually cook with soft pepper and
we spice our products with Espelette chilli pepper.
The company's turnover reached
about 1.3 or 1.4 million euros.
It's almost always the same figures of sale
from January until September-October.
Actually, the turnover of the year depends on the last quarter.
We are tributary of some external effects:
strikes from the mail delivery services, transportation…
The question is always : Will we be able to deliver our customers on time ?
Sometimes, work councils order and
sometimes they don't, it's an unpredictable business.
We have 10 employees, one apprentice
that we are probably going to hire
at the end of the training contract,
myself and also my father who runs the shop
and started painting since he retired.
Come visit our website : www.petricorena.com