Ferment Peppers for Hot Sauce

Fermented peppers are the foundational ingredient for your hot pepper sauce. Photo by Arlie Sommer

Fermenting peppers for your favorite hot sauce recipe is easy, though if you are fermenting for the first time it can be intimidating. Here’s a simple recipe to try.

Any pepper can be fermented and turned into a hot pepper sauce. Try a mix of sweet and hot peppers. Here’s a list of peppers we grow in order from sweetest to hottest : Sweet Italian, poblano, Anaheim, jalapeño, serrano, lemon drop, Thai chili, or habanero. Trinidad scorpion, ghost and Carolina reaper chilies are extremely hot so proceed with caution.

In all cases, use rubber gloves when processing peppers to prevent burns from capsaicin, the chemical in chilies that makes them spicy.

Once you get the hang of fermenting, remember that it can be fun to try different combinations of vegetables and get creative with your hot sauce. Maybe add carrots or celery, or try a new pepper. Just keep the brine at 5% as you experiment.

INGREDIENTS

1 quart of a mix of peppers

3-6 garlic cloves

1 medium onion

1 tbsp of pepper corns

3 tbsp of fine salt

3 tbsp of fine grain sugar

1 quart of non-chlorinated or filtered water

DIRECTIONS

Step 1

Make the brine. Combine the water, salt and sugar in a quart jar and shake to completely dissolve the granules. You are making a 5% brine mixture. The brine inhibits mold and bacteria growth and encourages fermentation.

Step 2

Process the vegetables. Select a mixture of peppers sweet to hot according to your heat meter. Wash and remove stems. Seeds contain the heat and can be included or removed. Cut into bit size chunks.

Wash and cut onion into similar size chunks as peppers. Peel and smash the garlic cloves.

Step 3

Fill clean wide-mouth quart jar with peppers, onions, garlic and pepper corns. Then pour the brine over the peppers. Peppers will float to the top so add a weight to make sure peppers stay submerged.

We like to use quart jar-sized glass weights and widemouth jar-sized silicone airlock lids. You could also use plastic bag filled with water as a weight and a tight lid. You could also fill a half-pint jar with water, which fits nicely in a widemouth quart jar, then cover the combination in plastic wrap to keep out fruit flies.

Step 4

Set aside the jar of peppers and brine to ferment, out of direct sunlight and somewhat cool for 21 days or more. Check the chilies regularly to make sure your weight is working and that the peppers remain submerged. It’s normal to encounter a little scum from yeasts; you can leave undisturbed.

Step 5

The final step is to add the mixture to a blender with 1/2 cup of the fermentation liquid. Blend until smooth and then add 1/4 cup of white vinegar. If hot sauce is too spicy, add more vinegar to taste. Hot sauce will keep refrigerated for at least 2 months.