How to: Fermented Hot Sauce

Yes, yet another kitchen post, but fear not my friends, crafty subjects will be back very soon. In the meantime, let me share with you this yummy experiment of mine.

Three weeks ago, I told you I was overwhelmed with the productivity of my spicy pepper plants. I made a drying string with a bunch of them but I had still many more to use. Sooooo, today, I'm going to share with you my technique to make Fermented Hot Sauce. What I like with this recipe (It's actually more of a technique then a recipe) is that it can really be customized to suit your tastes. Depending on the peppers you use it can range from a little spicy to blown-out-of-your-mind-spicy! You can also play with the texture, starting from the chunky kind to a smooth sauce of even a runnier product similar to tabasco. 

Why fermented you may ask. Well fermented foods are more nutritious than cooked ones, keep for far longer, have health benefits and taste delicious. (I plan on eventually, dedicating a post on all the benefits of fermented foods, and talk more about why I love them.)

Without further ado, here is what you need to make fermented hot sauce:

 

The sauce is basically composed of peppers and a bit of garlic (which is optional) that are let to ferment in brine. For my sauce, I use the cheyenne peppers growing on my balcony and some mild peppers I bought at the farmer's market.

 I have two advice about the kind of peppers to choose. 

First, go for local and organic as much as possible. I have read that imported and/or treated peppers would not ferment as well (or even ferment at all) because they may lack the bacterias responsible for lacto fermentation.

 Secondly, if you mix different colors you may end up with an odd looking sauce, which is perfectly fine if you don't mind (think poblanos and cherry bomb...brownish sauce!).

Now, how to prepare for the fermentation. The first thing you want to do, is to prepare you brine. One tablespoon of salt for two cups of water is a good ratio.

 Bring some water to a boil and pour over your sea salt. Stir to dissolve completely.

 Depending on the volume of peppers you have, you will need more or less brine. Two cups was just enough for my amount of pepper. Set the brine aside to cool.

While your brine is cooling down (never pour hot brine over your fruits or vegetables as it may kill the good bacterias), prepare your peppers. 

Slice the peppers. You can keeping the seeds and membranes, your choice.

And then, chop them roughly. They don't need to be minced, as they will be pureed once fermented. Look at these crunchy peppers!

Fermentation is best done in glass or ceramic containers as they are non-porous materials. Mason jars are perfect for the job. I filled one jar with the mild peppers, hoping that if the cheyenne were too pungent for my taste, I could mix them later to dilute the spiciness. More on this later.

Same preparation step with the cheyenne peppers. 

The garlic cloves only need to be peeled.

Again, keep the seeds or not depending on the spiciness and texture you like.

Fill the jars, adding a garlic clove in each, if you choose to use some.

They're not that visible, but on top of the peppers, I added glass weights. These weights are food safe and are made to keep the vegetables submerge in brine at all time. Floating vegetables can cause spoilage as they are exposed to air bacterias and not protected by the salty brine. I've seen people use other types of weight (ziploc bag filled with more brine, cabbage leaves, ceramic weights or even small plates in the case of bigger jars) just make sure they are food safe and clean.

Press the vegetables, crushing them as much as possible. You want a bit of headspace as the fermenting process will make things bubbling and expending a bit.

Pour the cooled brine on top of that and ensure there is enough to cover everything entirely.

Then, you need to cover the jar so nothing gets in them. Some people use pieces of fabric and rubber bands or an airlock device made to fit on mason jar covers. I use Pickle Pipes from Mason Tops and I like how simple and easy they are to use. They keep things out of the jar and still let gas/pressure escape so I don't have to remember to open the jar occasionally.    

Place the jars in a dark spot and forget about them for a while. It could range from a week to a month depending on the climate you live in. Colder temperatures make for a slower progress in fermentation. Taste the peppers after a week and see if you want to wait longer. The more you let them ferment, the more tangy they get.

This is what they looked like after a week and a half. Sadly the one on the right had molds on the inside top of the jar. Some seeds weren't submerged! I had to throw it out, not wanting to take any risks.

See all the bubbles and the sediments at the bottom? These are all good signs of a thriving ferment. 

I let the remaining jar ferment for another week or so. I removed the glass weight and gave it a stir before taking this picture to show you the peppers.

Poured out of the jar. Once fermented to your liking, you could just pop the jar in the fridge and eat the peppers, just like pickles. This could totally be your final result. 

If you want to make it into a sauce, carry on reading.

Drain the peppers, keeping the brine aside.

Puree in a blender or a food processor, adding brine a little at a time. Stop adding brine when you like the consistency.

This is a close up to show the texture I got. I added maybe 25% of the brine in my puree. For more liquid product, you could add all the brine and even strain the sauce in a fine sieve. You would end up with a texture closer to tabasco sauce. This sauce will keep for months if not years in the fridge. The fermentation process having acidified the peppers.

That's it for my hot sauce technique! What fermented food do you like? Do you make it yourself? I would like to hear from you!

How to dry hot peppers on a string

At the end of may, I bought some hot pepper plants at the market. I thought it would be nice to have some fresh peppers to cook with this summer and fall. Little did I know, I would end up with many many more peppers than expected!

These are cheyenne peppers. As you can see, when ripe, they turn a bright orange. About their spiciness, I would say they're a bit more intense than the well known jalapeno peppers. The flesh is a bit thinner too. 

This is only one of my plants. I have 6 crazy productive plants like this one. You can imagine, I've been searching for ways to preserve these little gems.

I've plan to make some fermented hot sauce with a bunch of them, but today's harvest is going to hang in the kitchen to dry. Dried peppers can be used whole (I would split them first) in slow cooked meals or crushed into flakes. You could even turn them in a fine powder with a food processor or a coffee grinder. 

On the pictures, you can see that I also picked a little onion and some blooming oregano from the balcony. 

My first idea was to make a ristra but I didn't have enough peppers for that. So I kept looking for some more ideas. That's when I came across pictures of espelette peppers. Espelette is a french town where they grow a specific pepper since the mid sixteen hundreds. Traditionally, the red peppers were picked when ripe and threaded on strings to dry on the south facing side of homes. 

I liked how these pepper garlands look so I made something similar with my little cheyenne peppers. If you want to try it too, here is how to proceed.

All you need for that quick project is a biggish needle, cotton thread (I used the kind you can crochet with), scissors and fresh hot peppers. Try to find really fresh peppers, with long stems. This will prevent the stems from splitting or breaking and letting out the thread. 

 What I like about the espelette peppers arrangement, is the way the peppers are aligned in a flat way. The trick to insure you get that nice and tidy look, is to place the curve of the pepper stems all upwards. You see how they all point towards the top? That's what makes all the difference! It keeps the pepper above from spinning on the thread.

To thread your peppers, start by pre-arranging all of them. Cut a piece of cotton thread of two or three times the length of your garland. Starting with the bottom pepper, pierce the very base of the stem and pull the thread to three inches for it's end.

Wrap the end around the stem a couple times and make a knot. This pepper is the one keeping all the others from slipping, you want it to stay in place.

 You can cut the thread end shorter if you want, just make sure it won't undo the knot.

Continue threading the hot peppers one after the other. Always pierce the stem in a way that makes the curve go upward.

 Push them delicately on the thread, too much pressure or too fast a move could split or break the stem (the pepper would still be good! But you couldn't thread it back).

Once all the peppers are on the thread, knot a little loop at the end and suspend your garland somewhere dry and well ventilated. Check it from time to time for molds and take out any suspicious pepper. You can use the peppers at any stage of dryness, to your liking. 

Give it a try, and send me a picture! I would love to see your garland!