Fermentation isn’t a new idea here at Glibertarians; we’ve had excellent articles about mead and beer making.  In addition to making alcohol, fermentation can be used to preserve food by making things like sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, picallili, kosher pickles, hot sauce and other condiments. Today, I’ll focus on hot sauce and talk about sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables another time.

Science!

First, a little background.  Fermentation as a method of preservation has a long history.  Archaeologists have found evidence of fermented foods in the fertile crescent from at least three thousand years ago and kimchi has been made in Korea for about six thousand years.  Fermentation uses microbes (yeasts or lactic-acid bacteria) to eat the carbohydrates and sugars in foods and preserve it.  Lactic-acid bacteria give off lactic acid, which halts the growth of ‘bad’ bacteria and thus preserves the food and creates a sour, funky flavor usually associated with sauerkraut and kosher pickles.

Is it Safe?

Yep.  From Clemson’s extension office:

“According to Dr. Fred Breidt, Jr., a USDA microbiologist who specializes in the safety of fermented and acidic foods, the scientific literature has never recorded a case of food poisoning from raw vegetables that have been fermented properly. But he emphasizes that the key word is “properly,” which some people who quote him fail to include in that sentence.”

If you’ve done it ‘improperly’, you’ll know.  If it looks funny (has a colorful mold – blue, green, orange) or it smells wrong, throw it away. If it has white stuff on top, that’s either yeast or a white mold.  It’s fine, just skim it off.  It should smell funky.  It should not smell rotten or putrid – if it does, throw it away.  If it’s slimy, throw it away.

In general, just remember the mnemonic “below the brine, it’ll be fine”.  Lactic-acid bacteria are anaerobic, and the environment below the brine is anaerobic.  If something pokes up above the surface, it is exposed to oxygen and will go bad.  Pull that out and throw it away, then make sure the rest stays below the surface.  I explain how to do that below.

Equipment

Like any hobby, you could spend hundreds of dollars on equipment – fermentation crocks, mortars and pestles, weights, or airlock systems.  But if you just want to try it out all you need is a wide mouth jar and a Ziploc bag.  If you enjoy the process and result, you can get fancier equipment later.

You want everything to be clean.  You don’t need to sanitize or sterilize the jar, but you do need to wash it in hot, soapy water, just as you would for any other cooking project.

Ingredients

Vegetables + salt + (optional water) + time = tasty veggies.

The critical ingredient is salt.  Salt is necessary to make the correct environment so that the lactic-acid bacteria thrive, and other bacteria can’t get going.  If you have the environment right, lactic-acid bacteria are ferocious little buggers and will drive out all the other bacteria.  The amount of salt needs to range from 2% to 13% by weight.  Here’s a useful chart for determining the salinity of the water given the amount of salt . A rule of thumb for a small experiment is to use one to three tablespoons per quart of non-chlorinated water. I used my tap water, which doesn’t have much chlorine, but I would not have used the tap water when I lived in Columbus, OH.  The first week of every month was like showering in pool water.  If your tap water is chlorinated, just use bottled water. And make sure you use pickling salt with no iodine or caking agents.

Of course, in addition to salt and water, you will need peppers, along with anything else you want to use as flavorings for your hot sauce (onions, garlic, carrots, spices).  This is a place to experiment.  Fiery Ferments by Shockey has lots of recipes (and recipes for great condiments like mustard as well), but also encourages experimentation.

There are two methods to making fermented vegetables.  You can mash the vegetables with salt, or add a brine.  If you mash the vegetables with a brine, chop all of them fine, then add some salt.  Taste it – you should be able to taste the salt, but it shouldn’t be salty.  Then massage the vegetables until liquid appears – that’s the brine.  Pack it into a jar and add the weight and airlock.  Alternatively, you can roughly chop the vegetables and add a brine.  This is what I did – see below.

What I Did

This year I planted six different pepper plants: cayenne, jalapeno, habanero, two different bell and one sweet ‘frying pepper’.  All of my plants were prolific, and I decided to try making my own hot sauce.

I started off with a mix of peppers – red and green jalapenos, New Mexico peppers, cayenne peppers, onions, and carrots.  I added carrots for a little sweetness. I used two tablespoons of salt per 5 cups of water for the brine.  I put the chopped vegetables into the jar and poured in the brine.  I did two jars. I have glass weights that I can drop into the jar (and I have a cover and air-lock valves).  After adding the cover with airlock, I poured more brine into the airlock (following the directions). But, as mentioned above, you don’t actually need it.  You could just fill a Ziploc bag with brine and put it on top.

The main consideration (as above) is the mnemonic “below the brine, it’ll be fine”.  You want to keep the fermenting vegetables below the brine.  Anything that sticks up will just rot rather than ferment.   Just putting a Ziploc bag filled with brine on top will take care of it.  After a few days, you should be seeing bubbles in the jar.  That indicates that it is fermenting.  Now, if you are using the Ziploc method, then you should also watch for any air bubbles in the ferment.  If one shows up, push the fermented vegetables down to bring the bubble to the surface and make sure that all the vegetables stay below the surface.  In the picture, if you look at the airlock, you can see a few bubbles.

One developed a green mold, so I threw it out.  I let the second ferment for two weeks, but it looked and tasted muddy, so I threw it out.

Finally, I did habanero peppers, orange bell pepper and some onion.  After a few weeks, I made it into sauce.  First, I drained it and then put it in the food processor.  I kept the brine, because I wanted a thin sauce and planned to use the brine to thin it out.  But the food processor wasn’t doing a good enough job of pulverizing it, so I put it through my food mill (and forgot to take pictures.)

Then I brought it to a boil.  I did this to stop the fermentation, but it isn’t necessary, and probably wasn’t necessary in my case either.  In general, once activity seems to stop, you should transfer your ferment to the fridge.  It should last about 12 months in the fridge.  I added some apple cider vinegar to the sauce and poured it into the bottle.

I like this hot sauce.  It isn’t especially hot (fermentation will mellow out the peppers a bit) but it has a nice flavor and a lingering heat.  There’s still pulp in the sauce and next year I will put it through a sieve to take that out.

I had my neighbor taste test it and he asked to put in an order for next year.  Next year, I’ll make more hot sauces.  I plan to do one based on just green jalapenos, one based on red jalapenos and cayenne and another based on habaneros again (maybe several – neighbor is serious about wanting some)[1]. I plan to try a bunch of other ferments.  The Fiery Ferments book by Shockley has lots of different condiments (mustards, curries, etc.) that I want to try.  In addition, I want to make a sauerkraut and probably fermented carrots.  I’ll let you know how they turn out.

 

[1] Westernsloper – he also loves your candied jalapenos.  I gave him your recipe and now he thinks I’m a culinary genius. I did tell him it wasn’t my recipe.