My Citizens, amongst the more than 30,000+ of you, there are many, MANY talented home chefs – I have featured several of your recipes in the past and it is high time to do so again!
My dear friend Owen is a truly remarkable man – a ridiculously talented writer, bon vivant and erudite to a fault! His kitchen skills are beyond refute, as evidenced by this remarkable hot sauce he has created! Redolent with several kinds of spicy peppers, a hint of lemongrass and a bit of ginger, this elixir achieves truly magical properties through the mystical arts of lacto fermentation!
Lacto fermentation is a microbial process using beneficial bacteria including Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium spp. and other lactic acid bacteria (LAB) (commonly known as probiotics), which thrive in an anaerobic fermenting environment. Sauerkraut, many pickles and kefir are all examples of the lacto fermentation process. The process of fermentation adds a wonderful flavor and aroma complexity to a recipe!
Citizens, you must sample Owen’s hot sauce triumph for yourselves! 🙂
Battle on – The Generalissimo
PrintOwen’s Green Fermented Hot Sauce
- Total Time: 0 hours
Ingredients
- 8 jalapenos
- 4 serranos
- 4 padron peppers (or shishito if you can’t get padron)
- 4 green Thai birdseye peppers (these come both red, orange and green, but use green for this)
- 1 poblano pepper (get the best quality you can – preferably from a farmers market and definitely not imported since they are sometimes irradiated which will spoil the ferment process.)
- 1 stalk of green garlic
- 1 stalk of lemon grass
- 1 inch of peeled ginger (optional)
- Make a brine by boiling 1 tbsp of salt in two cups of water and let it cool
- A lacto fermentation culture (You can buy a culture or you can do what I do and use the milky yellow clear liquid that has settled on the top of a large fresh pot of whole organic yogurt. Or some liquid from a jar of raw unpasteurized sauerkraut. You don’t need a lot – even a tablespoon will do.)
Instructions
- You are going to want to do a lacto ferment for this sauce, which means if you have a jar with an airlock you will want to use that. Otherwise, you can give it a shot with a loosely fitting lid but there are no guarantees that way – you can look up lacto fermentation and recipes to get an idea of the procedure. I have an airlock that fits on a mason jar for doing this.
- Remove stems from the peppers and roots from the garlic and lemongrass. Chop everything roughly and dump it and the brine into a powerful blender and blitz the heck out of it all until as smooth as you can get it.
- Mix in the fermentation liquid and pour it all into your fermentation vessel. Set this aside either with the airlock or with a lid that is loose which can let gas through for a week or even two. It should get a bit fizzy and create bubbles – this is good. If it doesn’t you may have some just fine chili puree but you don’t have fermented hot sauce.
- Once the ferment is good and done, push the sauce through a fine sieve or food mill – you need to do this because the lemongrass will have very woody fibrous bits that will spoil the sauce. Rebottle or jar the sieved sauce and keep it in the fridge. It can last for at least six months – maybe longer. You can and should experiment with other chilis and other additions. Once fermented the addition of a little vinegar and or sugar can be a good thing.
- Prep Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
Nutrition
- Calories: 77.98 kcal
- Sugar: 7.67 g
- Sodium: 680.62 mg
- Fat: 0.63 g
- Saturated Fat: 0.19 g
- Trans Fat: 0.0 g
- Carbohydrates: 18.0 g
- Fiber: 5.33 g
- Protein: 3.13 g
- Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
fantastic colour… i have always made a fermented red chile sauce… i would like to add one detail: the stalks of the chiles have a heap of beneficial organisms, best not to leave them out…they can even be used, on their own, to kick start other fermentations.