Fermented Hot Sauce with a Sweet Twist
Fermented hot sauce that rocks your socks off! It's sweet and spicy and it's awesome on everything! Well, just about everything! I love it on my breakfast sandwich, on egg dishes, meat, fish and more. And it's loaded with immune supporting properties and probiotics.
Equipment
- A large bowl
- Quart size mason jar or flip top jar.
- Fermentation weight
- Fermentation Lid or 2-piece canning jar lid.
- Scale (optional).
- Canning funnel (optional, but helpful).
- Blender.
- Tamper
Ingredients
- 1 cup peppers: habaneros, serranos, or jalapenos, thinly sliced - replace some with sweet peppers for less heat
- 2½ cups cantaloupe, chopped - about half a cantaloupe
- 1 med onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp sea salt, additive free!
- 1/2 bunch fresh cilantro or papalo (optional)
- 1 tbsp coriander seed, crushed (optional)
- 1/2 lime juice (optional)
Instructions
- If you have a scale, set your bowl on it and tare it on the grams setting. Then add your ingredients. Now place all your ingredients into the bowl as you chop them up.
- Chop the melon into small pieces. You'll want them small, so you can draw enough juices out of it to make a brine. More surface area will yield juices more easily.
- Add the chopped onions, garlic and coriander seed if you're using it.
- Thinly slice the hot peppers. You might want to wear gloves for this.
- Add the salt. Weigh your ingredients in grams and add 2% of the weight in salt.Without a scale, just add 2 tbsp of salt per one quart recipe.
- Mix everything and let it rest for a few minutes to draw out the juices.
- If you're adding herbs, put them in the bottom of the jar before adding all the other ingredients. Put your hot sauce ingredients into your jar, using a canning funnel. Then press down with your fist, a spoon, or a pickle packer, to get the juices to rise above the ingredients. If you need a little more to fill your jar properly, you can just chop a few more ingredients of your choice to fill it. I usually add a few more melon bits and peppers. When you press down on it, you should end up about an inch and a half below the rim.
- Place a fermentation weight on top. The purpose of this is to keep your ingredients submersed below the surface of the brine. To keep out oxygen
- If you have a flip-top jar, just put the seal in and close it up. Or put your 2-piece lid on the canning jar, or better a fermentation lid or airlock. Now let it sit for about three weeks to ferment at room temperature. The cooler it is, the longer it will take. The best temperature is about 72-80℉.
- Keep a casual eye on it, but don't intervene, except when you use a sealed lid, you'll want to quickly twist the lid open once a day to burp it, then tighten it again right away. Don't take the lid off the jar unless you have an issue to deal with.
- After 3 weeks, taste the brine. If it's nice and tangy, it's good to proceed. If it's not tangy enough, let it go a little longer. Once you like the taste, it's time to blend your sauce. If there is a lot of juice and you like the sauce thick and spreadable, pour off a little juice and drink it as a tonic or use in a smoothie or salad dressing. It's full of good probiotics and flu-fighting properties. I like to use an immersion blender for this step, right in my canning jar after dividing out half of it. But you can also pour it into a blender and give it a whirl.
- That's it. You've got hot sauce. I like to fill it into smaller jars at this point because I use only small amounts at a time and don't like to deal with a whole big quart jar each time I need just a spoonful. This sauce will keep in the refrigerator or a root cellar for a year or more. I've had some fermentations go for over two years in my root cellar and they are pretty tangy, but perfectly fine to eat.
Notes
This fermented hot sauce is full of vitamins, immune supporting properties and probiotics, so you can even use it as a medicinal food during cold and flu season.
Use it on crackers with cheese, top your steak or fish with it, top an omelette or scrambled eggs with it. Try it with some pulled pork or splatter a bit over a salad for some zing!
Here is my favorite way to eat this sweet and spicy fermented hot sauce: I love a piece of Kamut and einkorn sourdough bread topped with goat cheese and a thin layer of hotsauce. Then I sprinkle it with chopped basil and hopefully I'll find a garden-fresh tomato outside to eat with it. Yum!
What ever way you want to serve it or eat it, it will give you a great spicy and sweet treat.