Fermented Hot Sauces (Introduction)
Description
Welcome, my friends, to our unique cookbook focused on the world of lacto-fermented hot sauces, including recipe combinations and methods that haven’t been fully explored previously.
This fermented hot sauce recipe book is based on the principles of lacto-fermentation described in our Ferment cookbook, where we offered you a limited view into fermented hot sauce methodology.
Speaking as a culinary school graduate, I recognize the unique heat and flavors provided by hot sauces. These sauces are difficult to re-create on-the-fly from scratch in a limited period of time in a professional kitchen.
Like most specialty products, I always figured that hot sauces were outside the realm of my culinary wheelhouse. Given my uninitiated perspective, I spent the majority of my adult life buying pre-made hot sauces, including many of the familiar brands you see on supermarket shelves.
It wasn’t until I started fermenting foods that I realized I could easily make delicious hot sauce varieties in my home kitchen, with ease! All it takes is patience, hot peppers, whatever else you want to add, a kitchen scale, and some salty water.
My lacto-fermented hot sauce obsession started for me with a homemade experiment with lacto-fermented vegetable-based giardiniera with a half a head of cauliflower that I had mixed with some habanero peppers and let sit out for about three months at room temperature (checked on regularly, of course).
I proceeded to blend this vegetable and hot pepper mix, and quickly realized that this blended cauliflower-heavy habanero puree had turned into one of the most amazing, thick hot sauces I had ever tried…Granted it smelled like cooked, funky cauliflower the whole way through.
It’s like fish sauce—if you only smell it and never taste it, you don’t get the point.
If you are a hot sauce enthusiast, this mini-cookbook series will provide you will the requisite skills and knowledge needed to begin lacto-fermenting your own epic hot sauces at home. It might even provide you with the inspiration to create some unique flavors that no one has discovered before!
The twenty recipes we have provided in this Fermented Hot Sauce Cookbook include ingredients such as fermented jalapenos, habaneros, Carolina Reaper peppers, blood oranges, raspberries, watermelon, strawberries, mangoes, pineapples, peanuts and other mixed nuts, vegetables, miso, fresh herbs, dried whole spices, and a variety of vinegar choices—the sky is the limit here!
You want something more or less spicy? No problem—adjust the quantity and ratios of your added chiles. Looking for an added burst of garlic flavor? Add more raw garlic cloves to your ferment! Looking for a version without added sugars? Skip the sugar!
As with all recipes, these twenty hot sauce blends are meant to serve as guidelines and inspiration—please adjust the listed ingredient mix to your liking!
I can personally guarantee that if you follow the steps outlined in this cookbook, and proceed to make a half dozen of these recipes at home, you will quickly develop the confidence to start making your own unique hot sauce combinations that will make your neighbors jealous.
Are you thinking about showing up to a BBQ or food-centric gathering where you know no one, and aren’t exactly sure how to wow the crowd? This cookbook will enable you to bring over a twelve-pack of hand-crafted fermented hot sauces organized in baby squeeze bottles, where you can sit back and watch the hot sauce enthusiasts flock to your sampler sauce offerings like moths to a flame.
And any extra sauce you have available can be given away as tiny bottled hot sauce gifts to provide to friends and family on birthdays or holidays. Surprise someone you know who loves food with a bottle of your favorite homemade fermented hot sauce blend, and watch your friendship grow. I like to give out small bottles to chefs and workers at my favorite restaurants.
So, are you finally ready to dive into your hot sauce journey? OK, Let’s first talk some fermented hot sauce basics…
Instructions
Lacto-Fermented Hot Sauces – Five Choices to Make:
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There are five major considerations when picking your overall flavors and heat profile for lacto-fermented hot sauces:
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Choice of non-spicy ingredients and overall flavor profile: You can use a mix of vegetables and/or fruits for your fermentations—the possibilities are endless. You want a sauce flavored with mangoes and pineapple and passionfruit? Add it in there! Note that some ingredients to avoid with lacto-fermentation include chlorophyll-heavy leafy greens such as kale or spinach, and some fruits like bananas, which don’t taste particularly amazing when fermented. For some guidance here, the ingredients we have included in our recipes tend to lend themselves well to lacto-fermentation and can serve as a useful baseline.
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Choice of hot and/or sweet peppers: The desired quantity and type of peppers is up to you. I enjoy using a mix of peppers in a given fermentation, and will typically use fewer of the incredibly-spicy peppers compared to the less-spicy peppers. Jalapeno peppers are my go-to pepper for hot sauce, as I find they offer amazing flavor with a relatively mild heat profile on the Scoville Scale (the scale used to measure the relative heat-levels of different types of peppers). Some folks add sweet (non-spicy) peppers into the mix with the hot peppers, such as Italian sweet peppers, Gypsy peppers, or even the classic bell pepper varieties.
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Choice of salinity level for fermentation: Most lacto-fermentations tend to aim for a salinity percentage (the weight of added salt as a percentage of the total weight of ingredients and liquid) of roughly 2.0%-4.0%. My recipes are generally between 2.0-3.0% salt by weight. Too little salt will create an unsafe fermentation environment, and too much salt will result in a final product that is simply too salty!
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Choice of added vinegars/sweeteners to finish: You can blend your sauces and serve them as-is, although I prefer to add some vinegar with some sugar when I finish fermenting the sauces. The vinegar helps increase the shelf-life of the blended sauce, and also provides some added tang and acidity. The sugars help to balance out the acidity and salt in the final sauce itself, although the quantity to add is up to your discretion.
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Choice of roughly blended vs. strained and thinner sauces: I personally enjoy a mix of strained and blended sauces. If you are looking for a thicker-consistency product, feel free to bottle your sauce right after blending. If you are looking for a thinner-style sauce with a longer shelf-life, consider blending and then straining your sauce through a fine mesh strainer before bottling.
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Note that with traditional homemade hot sauces, because they don’t include added commercial emulsifiers, the ingredients tend to separate over time. When you are ready to use, gently open the bottles up to make sure they don’t have any built-up gas, and give them a shake to mix the contents before serving!
Note
Seven Fermentation Tips When Getting Started:
- Keep it clean! Make sure to use clean hands, and glass or ceramic fermentation jars that have been cleaned with very hot, soapy water.
- Scale your recipes according to desired batch size, but avoid overfilling your containers. Fermented hot sauces are a great way to utilize extra fruits and vegetables—just make sure your containers are big enough!
- Use a glass or ceramic weight to press the ingredients down beneath the surface of the liquid brine and keep them submerged throughout the fermentation process.
- Carefully open the jars to release the built-up CO2 pressure at least once per day. Some ferments are more active than others—be especially wary of the high activity levels seen in hot sauce fermentations that include added pineapple or other fruits with high levels of natural sugars!
- As you check on each fermentation at least once per day, make sure to re-submerge any ingredients that are floating on the surface above the liquid brine.´
- Taste the brine as the sauces ferment, and then blend the contents and add a sugar and vinegar to the mixture after the fermentation is done, if desired.
- To store, cool the sauces down in individual jars, and make sure to mix the contents before serving, as the ingredients have a tendency to settle over time.
General Notes on these Recipes:
When making these hot sauces recipes at home, you will notice that the methodology and ingredients described for each recipe might seem familiar--You are right!
With most of the recommended hot sauce blends here, there are a few items that I try to include in each fermented hot sauce, including, but not limited to:
(a) hot peppers,
(b) onions,
(c) a salt water brine,
(d) vinegar and sugar, if desired, to blend
You don’t need to include all of these components here to make a hot sauce. For instance, with regards to the onions, I simply love the way that onions and alliums ferment and contribute flavors to the overall sauce. This allium category includes garlic, onions, leeks, ramps, ramsons, chives, etc.
You can adjust all of the recipes you see below to fit your desired hot sauce profile, based on what ingredients you have available to you and your desired hot sauce flavors.
Note that some of the ingredients in the recipes below are charred or cooked prior to fermentation. Also, some ingredients are removed prior to blending, such as whole star anise.
User Reviews
Super helpful intro to lacto-fermented hot sauces here! It’s easier than you might expect!