Fermented Hot Sauce.


 
Bob Bailey

Bob Bailey

TVWBB Guru
For anyone who's never made fermented hot sauce, it's ridiculously simple and tastes great.
All you need are hot peppers, filtered (Chlorine free) water, Kosher or canning salt and vinegar. You can add seasoning to the finished product if desired. For equipment: a Mason jar (about twice the size of your batch), a fermentation weight or zip lock sandwich bag and a blender or food processor.

Entering "fermented hot sauce recipe" into your favorite search engine will net a load of recipes using most any variety or combination of peppers you can think of. I'm partial to Jalapeños, and make both green and red with home grown peppers.

For my first batch I bought $1.25 worth of Jalapeños at Walmart and ended up with 4, 7 oz. hot sauce bottles full. YMMV, but it's great to make yourself and save money too. If you're anything like me, you won't stop with hot sauce. I went on to fermenting Kimchi and will be doing fermented dill pickles as soon as I get a few more ripe cukes on my vines. Kraut will soon be on my list too.
 
I've been trying to ferment Tabasco but keep failing. I have one plant that produces hundreds of peppers at a time. I found a good recipe but the peppers always smell horrible after letting them ferment so I toss them out. Are you fermenting in the fridge and can you explain the ziploc bag need please? I'm thinking mine are going bad because they are floating to the top and not staying under the fluid. Does the bag fix that some how?
 
Hmmmm, I've fermented beer, bread, cheese, meat, pickles, but never jalapeños......wish my jalapeño plant would get off its *** and produce some darned peppers! :( Thanks for the idea, sounds easy enough (until one falls down the slippery slope!) :)
 
Russ in CFL said:
I've been trying to ferment Tabasco but keep failing. I have one plant that produces hundreds of peppers at a time. I found a good recipe but the peppers always smell horrible after letting them ferment so I toss them out. Are you fermenting in the fridge and can you explain the ziploc bag need please? I'm thinking mine are going bad because they are floating to the top and not staying under the fluid. Does the bag fix that some how?
Click to expand...
You need to hold the fermentee under the surface of the liquid or smelly/weird things happen, you can use a bag filled with water, a plate, a stone, etc.
 
I've found that both of these work well with miso paste, Sauerkraut/kimchi, pickles, etc.

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Russ in CFL said:
I've been trying to ferment Tabasco but keep failing. I have one plant that produces hundreds of peppers at a time. I found a good recipe but the peppers always smell horrible after letting them ferment so I toss them out. Are you fermenting in the fridge and can you explain the ziploc bag need please? I'm thinking mine are going bad because they are floating to the top and not staying under the fluid. Does the bag fix that some how?
Click to expand...
You need to keep the peppers from floating. If they're exposed to oxygen, white mold will grow on them. That's why you use the sandwich bag to weight them down. Partially filling it with water makes it into a weight of sorts. Once you put it on top of the peppers, either remove any floaters or push them down under the bag. The off flavor you're tasting is likely from the mold. Room temperature is best for fermentation. Refrigerating will slow it down to a snails pace. Most any cabinet or other dark place should be fine unless your house is an oven.
 
I appreciate the replies. The plant is about to hit another harvest point so I'll give it a shot. Going to try it on some banana peppers I have too.
 
I am going to have to try this, as I have giant Thai peppers, Hot banana peppers, Hot Poblano peppers and Shoshito (sp) peppers growing.
 
I always wanted to make my own hot sauce but got worried when reading on the subject.
Seems the proper PH is crucial for safety.

HomeMade Hot Sauce - How to make the best Hot Sauce | Homemade Hot Sauce

Making your own Homemade Hot Sauce is easy and a great way of creating that exact Hot Sauce you’ve been searching for. With a Homemade Hot Sauce, you get to choose the ingredients, the type of chili pepper, and the number of chili peppers which in turn will have a big impact on the heat level.
thehotsauceaddiction.com thehotsauceaddiction.com
 
Does anyone remember “One Eyed Willies Peter Pepper Sauce”? It was made by a friend in Athens, GA. great guy, fantastic pepper sauce! Sadly, as far as I know, John hasn’t made any in several years. He showed me his set up once when I was visiting my parents years ago. I should have worked on being his northern Midwest distributor! Much fuller flavor than so many “burning scoville unit” stuff. I think about “flavor spectrum” more than the instant “Flash”. Some folks live for the burn more than any sort of flavor. I used to love hotter but, I’ve learned that “Better” is better.
Oddly enough some of these people say they want ridiculously expensive booze while they burn tastebuds, I don’t get it. But, that’s just me.
 
Bob Bass said:
My wife and eldest son are into fermenting. We use a couple 5 Liter fermentation crocks. Currently one has pickles in process. They just finished a Kimchi batch. The results exceed by far those found in stores....
Our crocks are sold by Loft & Haus
https://www.amazon.com/vdp/0d2c3770665a415f9cbc18c0beca928e
Click to expand...
Yup. Once you get the hang of it store bought doesn't make the grade anymore. Just put up a batch of garlic dill spears this morning (First time fermenting pickles) in a big Mt. Olive pickle jar:). Glad I saved a few of these, looks like we're going to have a bumper crop of pickling cukes.

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https://flic.kr/p/2mgjzfX
]
 
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