So this time we made some pretty sick hot sauce, to be honest I had no idea that hot sauce was part of the fermentation family, but you learn something new everyday right? So Ted kind of just made this up as we went, so hopefully this recipe is accurate ¯_(ツ)_/¯
1.5 lb (0.70 kg) - Tomatillos
Fresh Habanero Peppers (Substitute if you want it less spicy)
Fresh Jalapeno Peppers
Salt
Sugar
Brine: ¾ tbsp of salt for every 2 cups of clean water
- Slice up the tomatillos and fresh peppers. For every 2 lb of material in the final product, use 2 tbsp of salt.
We used a combination of knives and a slicing mandolin, which is super fun to use but also a pretty quick trip to the emergency room if you aren’t careful!
- smash all your peppers and tomatillos together. Add some soy sauce if you want.
- Put everything you have so far into a big clean jar. Or something else you can ferment stuff in.
- Add a lot of salt brine, it should be more than 50% liquid brine in the jar so that everything is floating.
- Shake it all up
We fermented this batch for about 2 days before deciding it would be better blended.
So it got blended up into a sauce. Add about 1 tbsp of sugar and a couple more pinches of salt and continue fermenting. Like 2 more days.
Fermentation:
Store the jar in a dark place, between 65 F and 75 F (18.3 C to 23.8 C). Bubbles may be hard to see since the mixture is mostly liquid. Mixture should turn brownish after a day or so. Shake the bottle up once a day to make sure material does not linger at the top, or if you can keep it submerged do that. Once you blend it and move it into a bottle more suitable for hot sauce and add the sugar, it should ferment better. After adding the sugar, I was able to see bubbles within a day and the mixture began to overflow my bottle. I fermented 4 to 6 days total. The final blend was salty enough and had enough fermentation going that it could have been left out indefinitely. I did move mine to the fridge so it would stop spilling over.
When it is complete, you have to be the final judge as to whether the batch fermented correctly or something went wrong. If you are concerned about tomato products and botulism, this here is a good read: https://www.fermentedfoodlab.com/is-there-a-risk-of-botulism-in-fermented-foods/
If you go online there are plenty of recipes for fermenting tomatoes in a salt brine so this is a fairly common fermentation method.
The end! You made hot sauce! Now put it on whatever you want and enjoy!