this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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I make my own fermented hot sauces. It is so easy to make. Use them in anything from curry's, bami or nasi, omelettes, or just on the side.
Oh now come on! "It's so easy" but no details?! You're killing me here. Do tell me your secrets please!
Woops.
Basically. Bunch of peppers, put them in a clean jar, fill with water with 6 procent of salt, so 1 liter water + 60 grams of salt. You can vary from 3 to 10 procent. Make sure the peppers are under the brine, so they don't come in contact with air. Turn lid every day to let CO2 escape and close again, don't take the lid off the jar. After a week you already have a nice fermented hot sauce if the jar is in a warm place, but you can ferment way longer. I like 2 to 3 weeks. Blender or a stick blender the peppers with some of the brine. You can use the left over brine to marinate meat, make other sauces or gravies, salad dressing and so on.
I like to add onions, lots of garlic and herbs like thai basil too in the fermenting process.
I make a big batch of fermented hot sauce every year around the holidays and give them out as gifts; it seems to always be a hit.
I pretty much follow the same recipe and process that you mentioned, but I never have gone above 3% salt. I wouldn't have expected up to 6% (let alone 10%) to allow the acid producing bacteria to survive, but I guess they're pretty tolerant.
I'm on 2%. And 2% of the weight of the produce, not water! Also add some other stuff in there. Mango this time round. Some spices at any point of the process too
Not the original poster, but hopefully still helps: I chopped the peppers very roughly. Essentially, I made sure that the liquid could reach the insides easily. For small peppers, I just halved them. For the larger ones, I took out the seeds. But I didn't do it perfectly. Some people say the seeds will make the sauce bitter. I didn't have that problem.
I have used a wild mix of peppers. A friends sent some from his garden, we had some on our plants, so we just threw them all together. I only used yellow, orange, and red in the batch, because I didn't want puke-colored hot sauce but technically, the color doesn't matter. I've used cayenne, habanero, elephant, thai, lila luzy, and another one I don't remember the name of. For a milder sauce, you can also add some non-spicy bell peppers.
You should have at least 1/2 of them fresh but can add dried ones to bulk things up. You need some fresh ones to get the fermentation going, though. Definitely, no moldy ones!
It's a lactic acid fermentation. Don't overthink it. There is a shitton of salt in hot sauce that keeps most things in check. The fact that the fermentation happens under brine (i.e. not in air) takes care of the rest. Of course, do your own research, but hot sauce is rather easy. I just clean the jars under hot soapy water, then again to get rid of any and all remnants of soap, and then fill with tap water. But I'm in Europe, so there's no chlorine in the water where I live. You might need to use another kind of water or do some water treatment (chlorine evaporates if you leave the water open somewhere).
After the fermentation, we used a blender to mix it all together with some vinegar. The brine is great for chicken. We didn't filter the final sauce, so ours had some seeds in it. It was great on egg and toast or in cooking. You can filter again at the end to get a smoother, more liquid hot sauce.
Have you ever tried anything other than peppers? I know you said extra stuff to add to peppers earlier, but I mean things that are not peppers as the base ingredient.