Recipes

Fermented Hot Sauce

The single highest-value thing in this section for anybody who likes hot sauce. A lacto-fermented pepper mash does something vinegar cannot: it converts the raw, green, sharp notes of fresh chile into something rounded, fruity and savory. Tabasco is made this way. Once you have made it you do not go back.

Fermented · Sauces · Condiment

Fermented Hot Sauce
Prep 20 minutes
Cook 1 week to several months
Serves Makes about 2 cups
Level Easy

The single highest-value thing in this section for anybody who likes hot sauce. A lacto-fermented pepper mash does something vinegar cannot: it converts the raw, green, sharp notes of fresh chile into something rounded, fruity and savory. Tabasco is made this way. Once you have made it you do not go back.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb fresh chiles, stemmed (any kind, or a mix)
  • 6 garlic cloves (optional)
  • 1 litre water
  • 40 g salt (a 4% brine) — or salt a mash directly at 4% of its weight

Vinegar to finish, to taste

  • 1 carrot or ½ onion, chopped (optional, for sweetness)

Directions

  1. Key ingredients

Fresh chiles, a 3–5% brine, and time.

  1. Choose your method. Either submerge whole or roughly chopped chiles in a computed brine, or blend them to a mash and salt that mash directly at 3–5% of its own weight. The mash ferments faster and is easier to keep submerged.
  2. Keep it under the brine. Chiles float, so this one genuinely needs a weight. A brine-filled bag conforms to the surface and works well.
  3. Ferment 1 week to several months. One week gives a bright, hot, lightly funky sauce. A month or more gets deeper and rounder. Longer is not worse, just different.
  4. Blend, then add vinegar to taste if you want it thinner and sharper — the acid also stabilizes it for keeping.
  5. Strain or don’t, bottle, refrigerate.

Notes

PROVENANCE. Mine, and the ferment I have made most variations of.

WHY FERMENTED BEATS VINEGAR-ONLY: raw chile has a green, sharp, slightly harsh edge that acid does nothing about. Fermentation metabolises those compounds and generates fruity esters, so the heat arrives on top of something round instead of something raw. A vinegar-only sauce is chile plus acid; a fermented one is a new flavor.

LONGER FERMENTS WANT MORE SALT. At 3% and a week you are fine. If you plan on months, go to 5%.

SAVE THE BRINE — it is a fierce, delicious seasoning liquid in its own right.

WEAR GLOVES with anything hot, and be careful blending: the aerosol off a hot mash will find your eyes across a kitchen.

VARIATIONS: a carrot or a little onion in the ferment adds sugar and rounds it further. Smoked chiles make a chipotle-style sauce. A little fruit — mango, peach — is very good and ferments fast.