ChefDave Time for preserving the super hot chilies from this years crop, because the frost is just around the corner. This prompted trying out making a fermented hot chili sauce. In the past a quick and easy way to make a Chile Sauce was by using just chili vinegar and selection of wonderful chilies, then blending them into a sauce. But using the fermented hot chili mixture allows for lactic acid to form, giving the sauce a more complexity of flavors. But this takes a lot of time and extra effort in the process. The waiting is well the worth of time as the flavors develop through fermentation process.
The key to an excellent chili sauce is balancing of flavors with different levels of heat, along with a good amount of garlic. Pairing the right chilies for the fermented sauce is very important. Choosing ripe red jalapeños for flavor and sweetness, along with the red ripe scotch bonnet peppers that has the fruity sweetness, yet somewhat hot profile makes a perfect match. Using just a few super hot chilies like red ghost pepper, and red 7 pot brain chilies have lots of heat, they all have over a million Scoville heat units.
Making sauce is a simple task, the chilies need to be chopped up into slices, with lots of minced garlic. This builds the flavor and also helps with the fermentation process. The most important part of this process in to make the right brine. Reading many articles about fermentation all agree the salt level needs to be at 5%. To achieve a accurate measurement use grams. Weighting the purified water in grams then multiply by 5% to get the exact weight of the salt. The Brine needs to come to full boil for 1 minute then cooled to room temperature. Note do not pour boiling hot brine over chilies and garlic this will kill all micro organisms that need to develop lactic acid.
Next thing is to make the right growing environment for the chilies fermentation, this means clean and sterilized jar, lid and vapor lock.
Using a vapor lock used to make beer and wine works perfectly. By drilling 1/2 inch hole in wide mouth caning lid and sealing vapor lock with silicon, was the hardest task of process. Next it’s a matter of filling 1/2 gallon Ball Jar with alternating chilies and garlic about 2/3 full. Followed by pouring room temperature brine over chili mixture. Pushing down chili mixture with sterilized spoon to cover chili mixture with brine. This is almost impossible because of the buoyancy of the chilies and garlic. The important thing is to get brine well covering chili mixture.
Finally sealing the jar with vapor lock lid. And pouring purified water into vapor lock to the max level. Now it’s time to let the micro organisms do there thing. Keeping this fermentation system in dark cooler area about 65 to 70 degrees to ferment slowly. In 1 to 2 months the process should be completely ready for blended into awesome super hot chili sauce.
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