Fermented Chili Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe
Spiced with cayenne peppers, bell peppers, fresh garlic cloves, and shallots, this recipe creates the perfect tangy hot sauce to add to any meal.
Hot Sauce is a popular condiment that is a focal ingredient in many meals across the world. Humans have been utilizing the Chili Pepper plant as a staple in diets and cuisines as far back as 7,000 B.C. As times have changed hot sauce recipes have been modified for all palates. Whether you crave sweet, mild, or spicy flavorings there is a delicious hot sauce for you!
Fermented foods like hot sauce are full of health benefits and probiotics. Studies have found that it is a great source of probiotics such as lactic acid bacteria which are linked with many health benefits. Harvard even noted that fermented foods have been linked to improved heart health as well as better digestion.
What Kind Of Peppers Can You Ferment
Thats entirely up to you. I like a mash-up of all the different chile peppers from my garden , but you can choose to ferment only one variety at a time.
This allows you to make a hot sauce that leans toward mild, fruity, or smoky, depending on what type you use. You can tone down the flavor even more by adding a sweet pepper to the mash.
For different styles of sauce you can create once the peppers have fermented, keep reading!
What Are The Best Peppers To Use For Homemade Hot Sauce
Jalapeños, reapers, Thai chilies, habanero, cayenne, ghost peppers, serranos, OH MY. Its easy to get lost in the world of chile peppers! Which hot peppers you use really depends on your personal heat tolerance, the flavor profile youre looking for, whats available nearby, and pepper color. Yup, color! Feel free to mix and match different types of peppers to get the flavors and heat levels you desire, but make sure you stick to the same color family. Why? Well, if not, youre going to end up with a brown hot saucewhich, trust me, doesnt look so appetizing when drizzled on your food. The two hot sauces in the photos here were made with these mixes:
- Red Medium Hot Sauce: Red bell peppers, red cayenne peppers, and red jalapeño peppers
- Green Mild Hot Sauce: Green bell peppers, green jalapeños, and poblanos
Whatever you choose, just remember that you can always add more spice in, but you can never take it out once its been blended. I tend to like a more mild hot sauce, so I start with a 3:1 ratio of sweet peppers to hot peppers. When using a milder hot pepper, like jalapeño, I cheat to more like 2:1 or 1:1. Some folks use nothing but hot peppersso it really is up to you to pick your poison here. Remember: you can always have an extra super spicy pepper nearby to drop into the blender if you want to up the ante. I recommend checking out a Scoville scale and making your plan based on that.
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How To Make Fermented Hot Sauce:
Step one: Fill a 2-quart jar with any type of fresh hot chili, onions, garlic and thinly sliced carrot. You can use bell peppers to temper the hot chilis if you want a milder version. Just stick with the same color palette so your fermented hot sauce stays colorful and vibrant.
In this recipe, I used Padrone Peppers, a Spanish variety that had turned red, which I found at our farmers market. But feel free to use any kind you want or a blend. Youll need about 1 pound in total.
Step two: Make a saltwater brine, using 1 1/4 teaspoons fine sea salt, per cup of warm water.
What To Do With Fermented Peppers
Well, the obvious next step is to make delicious hot sauce with your hot pepper ferments, so lets explore that.
If you have fermented your peppers using brine, the first step should be to strain the solids from the brine. Whatever you do, make sure you save the brine. If you need to thin out your hot sauce the leftover brine works better than adding water.
You can now add the fermented peppers to a blender along with the other ingredients from the hot sauce recipe. Now blend, and you should have an amazingly delicious fermented hot sauce.
Fermenting pepper mash is a little easier. Add the mash to a blender or food processor, and add any extra ingredients. Then blend to the consistency the hot sauce requires.
If you like, you can also store the hot peppers in the fridge for snacking or garnish. The cool environment of the fridge will stop the fermentation process and preserve the current flavour of the peppers. I do this at least every 2 weeks.
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Why Use Oak Barrels For Fermenting Hot Sauce
Tabasco is an extremely popular example of hot sauce thats been aged in oak barrels. And furthermore, its aged in oak barrels that have been first used to age whiskey or bourbon.
Why is this done? It creates a whole new flavor profile compared to regular, non-fermented hot sauce.
Once oak barrels have been used for aging whisky or bourbon, the wood holds on to those flavors. Then throw in a hot sauce blend and give it time to ferment. The whiskey-infused oak has time to interact with the hot sauce while it ferments and impart its flavor.
The end result? Bold, complex, and perfectly balanced flavors.
Compare this to regular, non-fermented hot sauce for which the base ingredients are hot peppers, vinegar, salt, and water. Remember how I said fermentation alone enhances the flavor? Now throw in whiskey-aged oak on top of that, and youve got a hot sauce thats going to develop so many more layers of flavor.
Believe it or not, it doesnt end there. You can even use charred oak barrels, which can give you even stronger flavors. Charring oak opens up the wood, so it can impart more of its flavor when used for aging whiskey.
Interested in giving this a try with your favorite hot sauce blend at home? Read on to the next two sections.
S To Fermented Hot Sauce With Wild Greens
Like hot sauce? Fermenting? Wild greens? This Fermented Hot Sauce with Wild Greens recipe from The New Wildcrafted Cuisine has it all!
Wild foods are becoming increasingly popular, as more and more people want to learn how to identify plants and forage for their own ingredients, but self-described culinary alchemist deeply explores the flavors of local terroir, combining the research and knowledge of plants and landscape that chefs often lack with the fascinating and innovative techniques of a master food preserver. This recipe is easy to make, and is an easy way to add a little wildcrafted flavor to your favorite meal.
Very often, after a private event or a foraging workshop, I have leftover wild greens in my refrigerator. During the summer, when all kinds of chilies are abundant, I like to create various fermented and spicy concoctions with them. You can use all kinds of wild greens and not be limited by what I used in this recipe. Other wild edibles to include might be watercress, ramps, thistles, wild radish leaves and pods, among others. Feel free to experiment and make you own hot sauces.
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Pros Of Fermenting Hot Sauce
That good good in your gut. Fermented hot sauce is rich in probiotic bacteria and has awesome enzymes for improved digestion.
No cooking required. The spicier the pepper you use, the harder it is to cook in a kitchen. We learned long ago that Carolina Reaper sauces should rarely be cooked in the home. It creates a mace-like effect that will have you and the other dwellers of your residence writhing in pain. Obviously, this is the worst-case scenario, but with fermenting, its not a concern at all.
No vinegar needed. By fermenting, you will get the same pH drop that you would typically get from using vinegar right away. Some like it, some dont. In some cases even after fermenting vinegar is still used to reduce pH further.
Fermented Vs Unfermented Hot Sauce: How Do They Differ
Fermented hot sauces have been a staple in the kitchen for generations. Fermenting sounds complex but really when done properly its very simple. Fermentation is the decomposition of the pepper mash for the hot sauce by healthy bacteria and enzymes. This is typically done by submerging the pepper mash completely in salt brine, sealing it with an airtight lid, and placing the jar in a shaded space for a week, at minimum.
An unfermented hot sauce is much simpler: pepper mash is combined with vinegar. A good starting point is a fifty-fifty mix of pepper mash and vinegar but you can play with the ratio to get something that suits your taste preferences.
Because of the time required for fermentation, a fermented hot sauce will take at least a week to be ready. Some recipes involve much longer fermentation periods. An unfermented hot sauce requires only the time it takes to measure and combine the ingredients. Check out our simple jalapeño hot sauce as an unfermented example.
Many super-popular staple hot sauces are fermented, including two household names: Tabasco and Sriracha. See this mango habanero sauce recipe for an example of a homemade fermented hot sauce.
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Peppers For Fermented Hot Sauce
This hot sauce starts with dried hot peppers. These were Red Rocket peppers from the Barking Moon Farm stand at the Ashland farmers market.
We had received them in a CSA box a few years prior and I had no idea what to do with them until I came across this recipe from Frugally Sustainable for fermented hot sauce.
Of course thats what I should do with them!
You can use any hot pepper you like for this recipe, fresh or dried. Each pepper variety will give it a totally different and unique flavor, so I recommend trying out whichever one you prefer.
If you are a hot sauce lover you can make a few batches using several different peppers to see which one you like best!
Does Fermentation Impact Taste
Fermented hot sauces are popular for having greater complexity in their flavor profiles when compared to unfermented ones. Fermentation has different effects on each hot sauce ingredient, resulting in a more layered and nuanced taste. Unfermented hot sauces tend to have all of the ingredient flavors up front and in your face, so to speak. There is not as much subtlety or complexity.
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How Long Will Fermented Hot Sauce Last
Most fermented foods will last for months or even years when refrigerated. Over time, the flavor of your fermented hot sauce will continue to develop, often becoming more and more delicious. However, some people think that over-fermented foods can be a bit too pungent. Others love it .
As a rule of thumb, homemade fermented hot sauce will last 2-3 months in the refrigerator. We are confident that they can last much longer, but it is always wise to be on the safe side.
Always be sure to inspect your fermented sauce for mold growth or odd smells. If you are uncertain whether anything has gone wrong, youre probably better off discarding.
S Of Making Fermented Hot Sauces
There are different strategies to make fermented hot sauces. You can ferment, then cook, then add live cultures, and then ferment again. Conversely, sauces like Gochujang are simply boiled and left outside in the sun to ferment for a few weeks.
The difference clearly lies in the ingredients being used. Certain ingredients like tomatoes are troublesome to ferment because they are higher in sugar. These sugary fruits do better with yeast fermentation than with bacterial fermentation.
We make wines and meads with yeast and not with bacteria. The same principle holds true for tomato-based fermented sauces.
Lacto-fermentation of tomatoes renders a bad taste and the flavor is certainly not something most of us would enjoy. There are two ways to work around this issue: either use sun-dried tomatoes or cook the tomatoes first and then ferment the sauce. Both these methods reduce the sugar content of tomatoes and the result can be seen in taste and flavor after fermentation.
With that premise, lets move on to the fermented hot sauce recipe with cooked tomatoes.
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Do You Have To Seed The Peppers
We tend to seed the peppers before fermenting hot sauce, but its not strictly necessary.
Fiery Ferments has some advice here:
For most sauces, its all right to ferment the mash without removing the pepper seeds, which add a little more heat . After fermentation, they will get strained out along with the tough skins for a smooth mouthfeel in your final product
On the other hand, if youre making a sweet pepper mash or using very thin-skinned peppers that wont require straining , removing the seeds from the fresh peppers is worth the effort.
She also recommends saving the strained seeds and skins, and dehydrating them for 8-12 hours at 105 degrees. Then blend in a spice grinder to make a really intense pepper powder that will kick up any dish.
How To Ferment Hot Peppers For Making Hot Sauce
The biggest way to up your hot sauce game is to learn how to ferment hot peppers. During fermentation, tiny microorganisms break down larger compounds into more flavourful smaller compounds. Thus, producing new flavours altogether and enhancing some of the existing flavours of the hot peppers.
Fermentation may sound scary but it is in fact really easy to do.
In short, this is how to ferment hot peppers for hot sauce:
Place hot peppers in a clean mason jar or similar vessel. Create a salt brine of at least 2.5-5% salt content and pour just enough brine to cover the hot peppers. Weigh down the peppers to help keep them under the brine, sometimes they can float. Rest the jar out of direct sunlight for 1 to 2 weeks, or however long you want.
Lets explore this process in a bit more detail. Also, there is an awesome Fermented Mango Habanero recipe at the bottom of this article so you can try fermenting at home!
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How To Store Fermented Peppers
Speaking of storing fermented peppers
If you arent going to make the hot sauce right away youll need to store the fermented peppers.
You can keep the jar on the countertop until you are ready to make hot sauce. Leaving the jar at room temperature might cause the flavour of the peppers to change. They could lose some of their funk so to speak.
Your best bet is to store them in the refrigerator until their date with the blender. The cool temperatures will stop the fermentation and preserve the current flavour of the fermented peppers.
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I hope you have fun experimenting with hot sauce making in your own kitchen! It is easy and the results are absolutely delicious. Enjoy!
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The Total Cost For A Bit Over A Half
LOVE this part..saving money!
The total cost to make this huge amount of delicious homemade hot sauce with probiotics for our health was about $7.50, and with some bags of peppers, it may be far less.
The bag of Chile de Arbol cost $5.99 at the grocery store, but you can probably buy them for less on Amazon.
The raw ACV came from Costco, and was about $3.00 a bottle, so for half a bottle, thats just $1.50. If I had used our own homemade raw apple cider vinegar, it would have been practically free.
Meanwhile, Tabasco sauce costs a whopping $8.00 for a medium jar, which is actually just a fraction of the amount of hot sauce I just made!
Amazing savings, and a big plus for health benefits too!
Yeah But I Still Want To Make Fermented Hot Sauce
Totally cool and who are we to stop you. We know many folks that ferment their hot sauces and the benefits in the bowels are well-documented. Good bacteria, a tangy, sometimes funky-flavored sauce can be a nice departure from cooked sauces. On top of that, this is supposed to be a fun thing for you to do. If fermenting is more fun, go for it, who are we to stop you?
We feel like curmudgeons, but the thing we want folks to know is fermenting is not the only way to make hot sauce. Both methods can make you sick if youre not careful or using sanitary tools, but both also have their benefits.
Go forth and make it however you want!
If youre looking for recipes for cooked hot sauce, head on over to our hot sauce recipes page to try some out!
Fermented by David Wong.
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