Yikes! Good to know.
Recipe is called Bajan Pepper Sauce from The Fermented Hot Sauce Cookbook by Kristin Wood. It is on Kindle Unlimited. There is also a Trini one with carrots, garlic, thyme, mustard powder and curry powder mustard I want to try, although maybe not with all of that.
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If one is concerned about possible after-bottling fermentation, either by bacteria or yeasts, the bottle top can be unscrewed a little to let out any pressure buildup. A loosely corked bottle will usually blow the cork out.
Not quite a sauce, but I started some yuzu kosho yesterday. It’s supposed to sit at room temperature for a week before refrigerating. It’s a 10% salt mix, so I doubt bacteria will be a problem, but since it’s a first for me, I’ll be looking forward to trying it when ready.
Not sure it qualifies as “fermented hot sauce” but Sami Tamini’s recipe for shatta in his cookbook, Falastin, is terrific. I just started a batch today by slicing/chopping a half pound of red finger chiles and fresnos (including membrane and seeds) finely , mixing a tbsp of kosher salt in and spooning into a pint mason jar.
It will go into the fridge for a couple of weeks then its drained, food processed to desired texture and mixed with 3 tbsp of cider vinegar and 1 tbsp of lemon juice, then packed in jar, with olive oil to cover and stored in frig.
Looking forward to its relatively fresh chile flavor with felafels, shawarma , grilled fish dishes and similar.
Cool! Do the peppers need to be red?
I was wanting to try something like that I found here, but called “salted chilies “; it is described as traditional for some “Hunanese” recipes, and seems to be just the salt part.
I wanted to use these “Thai” peppers (apparently there are different ones) , but wonder if they are fleshy enough.
Woks of life has a recipe them but suggests Anaheims for the right heat, and that these would be too hot!
Doesn’t draining get rid of much of the heat?
I think I will “pickle” them, adding vinegar which I think is an alternative to fermenting. Recipe says lasts 2-3 weeks.
Similar, but claiming to last for months
This one has fish sauce, a household favorite! No garlic, so hopefully it will keep for a long time.
My wife is the main gardener in our house. She started a ghost pepper plant earlier this year which is still going gangbusters. I harvested about a pound of them yesterday, and will soon start a ferment of ghost peppers, carrots and garlic…the carrots to dilute them some and give some sweetness. I’ve already bottled a big batch and have yet another batch of ghost peppers mixed with red Fresno chiles fermenting…they’re about 3 weeks into their fermenting.
I’ve done a mix of fermenting with a brine in a jar with an airlock, and the batch with Fresnos is with a 3% salt in a vacuum sealed bag that over the course of a week filled up with CO2 quite impressively. Enough that the bag was taut, but didn’t need to be vented.
The batch I made with ghost peppers and Hawaiian chile peppers was VERY hot, I tempered it by diluting with some vinegar when I finished it. We like it hot, but it only takes a few drops of this hot sauce to make things pretty darn hot.
In the past, I just made non fermented hot sauces. These 3 batches, (of which only one is bottled) is my first foray into fermented sauces, and I am enjoying the ride and the results.
Ghost peppers are very flavorful, aside from being hot.
You might want to try steeping just one or two to access the flavor and not just the heat — in oil, in vinegar, and in honey — the former two are how they’re most often consumed where they originate.
They also dry well for later use.
All about fermentation lids.
you can make the shatta with green chiles as an alternative. hopefully you can find some flavorful not too hot chiles, jalapenos in our markets here have become large and flavorless
Bajan hot sauce from the meager harvest of Scotch Bonnets.
The heat is perfect, but a bit harsh right now, and the aroma is changed from that of the Scotch Bonnets. I’m hoping it will mellow a bit.
Directions were “combine the chiles, onion, horseradish, and garlic… Once the ferment is complete (two weeks) combine the ferment, reserved brine, vinegar, mustard powder, sugar, turmeric, and salt.”
Looks good! With Scotch Bonnets, it’ll be zippy. My experience with mustard powders is they are harsh and have an acrid property that diminishes very slowly over time. Most online recipes say it mellows in a few days, which is bs. That may be true in your application, since there are other ingredients and mustard is not the main ingredient.
When I make prepared mustard, I always cook it a bit, to get rid of the acridity. Got the straight scoop from an old Ball Blue Book.
