> If you are careless, you could end up with botulism, one of the deadliest toxin known to man! So make sure the fermentation vessel is airtight and everything is clean.
I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard about botulism, that's recklessly irresponsible advice. (Do your own research before taking the advice below.)
The whole point is that:
1. Botulism spores are everywhere.
2. They only reproduce when the conditions are right. Guess what those conditions are? a) Not too acidic b) NO OXYGEN.
3. Soap doesn't kill them. Boiling at at STP doesn't kill them. The only way to kill them is to boil them at a high enough pressure that the temperature.
Therefore, "make sure everything is clean" is useless advice; and "make sure everything is airtight" just helps you make sure the conditions are right to be poisoned.
Two ways to counter botulism. Either:
1. Boil things at the right pressure for long enough (with a pressure gauge to make sure it's actually at the specified pressure) to kill the spores
2. Make sure it's acidic enough to keep the spores asleep.
EDIT: My point wasn't "Don't bottle things like hot sauce at home". I bottle things at home myself. And I bet his recipe is perfectly safe -- not because he keeps things airtight and clean, but because it's acidic.
If he had said, "Watch out for botulism but this is safe because it's acidic", then people using his recipe will make sure to keep things acidic as well, and if they dilute the acidity, they'll be warned to look up the pH required to be safe.
But instead he said, "Watch out for botulism, make sure everything is airtight and clean"; which means people might take his recipe and reduce the acidity, believing themselves still to be safe because they're keeping things airtight and clean. That is what's reckless about the advice.
Also, another condition botulism requires is to be above 5C. So what I actually do myself is bottle things that are acidic, and then keep them in the fridge. I don't typically make more than a few jars a year, so that's sufficient for me; if I was going to can things properly, I'd get pH testers and/or a pressure cooker with a gauge.
sph 154 days ago [-]
While botulism is a terrible illness, its actual incidence is very rare compared to how many scary warnings about its dangers are made to amateur cooks at any chance possible. In fact, I have never made my pickles and hot sauce because I am now irrationally and deathly terrified of botulism.
Here's some real numbers: between 1976-2009 there have been 3618 confirmed cases of botulism in the USA. 100 per year. You have one in 3,400,000 chances to get botulism if you live in US in any given year. And I bet the vast majority are from eating spoiled or contaminated industrial tinned food, rather than people making hot chili sauce.
EDIT after rereading the research: of 3618 cases of botulism, 109 were fatal. Of these fatal cases, 61 were due to foodborne botulism. In 33 years. That's a probability of ~1/170,000,000 per year to die of botulism in the US.
krisoft 154 days ago [-]
> In fact, I have never made my pickles and hot sauce because I am now irrationally and deathly terrified of botulism.
Don't be. Read up the facts, and make sure to prepare things right.
This is the point of the warning. Botulism is not some cosmic horror which reaches out and grabs you randomly. It is like a knife. If you do things right it is perfectly safe. If you do things wrong it can kill you. The point of the warnings is to learn where the "edge of the knife" is and how to behave to keep yourself safe.
The point of the comment is that the provided "safety precautions" are wrong. It is as if someone said "to avoid knife injuries make sure to always put your fingers under what you are cutting. That way you will know when your knife is getting blunt." The advice provided is that obviously bad.
> here's some real numbers:
We are not talking about national averages. If you make chilli sauce which is not sufficiently acidic then you bottle it up and close oxygen away from it you created a science experiment to grow botulism bacteria. If you do that you suddenly increased your personal probabilities from those nice and low national numbers to alarmingly high.
The warning is there because people are bad at following instructions. And that is usually fine. When someone is making a cupcake and they forgot the chocolate chips out the cupcakes will be less delicious but won't kill them. With chilli sauce this is not the case. It can literally kill you if you adjust the recipe such that it is not acidic enough anymore. So we warn people about that.
gwd 154 days ago [-]
> Botulism is not some cosmic horror which reaches out and grabs you randomly. It is like a knife. If you do things right it is perfectly safe. If you do things wrong it can kill you. The point of the warnings is to learn where the "edge of the knife" is and how to behave to keep yourself safe.
In a way botulism reminds me of stories about vampires or other mythical creatures of evil: They're potentially powerful and scary but have simple weaknesses which, if you know them, render them powerless.
calfuris 154 days ago [-]
That's the rate for a population that almost entirely follows appropriate precautions. I suspect that the rate among people who _don't_ follow those precautions is rather higher.
sph 153 days ago [-]
We have been canning and fermenting food before we even knew about the existence of bacteria. The "savages" are doing alright.
flkiwi 153 days ago [-]
Our family just found a stray kitten in a storm drain. She is feisty in ways I've never seen in a kitten. The amount of time I've spent thinking some variation of "our whole family is going to get rabies and die horribly" is absurd, especially since the vet just thought she was funny.
ssl-3 153 days ago [-]
Indeed. Botulism is one thing that scares the bejeezus out of me (it's up there with rabies in the dark place in my mind where I keep things like that), but it's vanishingly unlikely to occur in this context.
I'd hazard a guess that about zero of those 3618 total cases were related to the consumption of food that was preserved through fermentation.
resource_waste 154 days ago [-]
Have you considered the cases are rare because people are extremely scared of it and take precautions?
solaris152000 154 days ago [-]
Yes but you assume that 100 per year is a fair sample of the population, when in fact it's possible that of the 10,000 Americans making their own hot sauce each year, 100 of them get bubonic chilli plague or whatever it is and die. So your chance of death is 1 in 100. Stick with Tabasco folks!
indoordin0saur 154 days ago [-]
Doesn't botulism give food a terrible and overpowering smell?
fader 154 days ago [-]
Nope. We didn't evolve the ability to detect botulism in food because it's really, really rare unless you have the right conditions. Most of the stuff you'd find in nature has been exposed to oxygen, which prevents its growth. It's really only when you start putting things in jars (or in oil, or fermenting them in ways that use up all the oxygen) that it can thrive.
Ah, thanks for the useful info. When I have tried to ferment peppers I usually end up throwing them out 50% of the time because something ends up smelling off.
On a side note, I see that botulism toxin (but not the spores) is destroyed by heating at 185F (84C) for a period of a few minutes. I've always boiled my fermented sauces as a final step because it stops the fermentation from progressing and makes the sauce last longer without developing any further "off" tastes.
gwd 154 days ago [-]
If I've understood things right, boiling as a last step won't protect you from botulism. My understanding is:
1. The botulism spore can only be killed by heating to something very high, like 250C, which can only be achieved at a higher pressure
2. If the conditions are right, the botulism spore spawns to be a botulism bacteria inside your sealed container; and this bacteria creates the botulism toxin.
3. It's the toxin that kills you, not the bacteria. The botulism toxin can be broken down by heating for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, your "boiling fermenting sauces as a final step" happens between 1 and 2, but not between 2 and 3; so the botulism toxin isn't present yet, only the botulism spore, which won't be fazed at all by 85C. If you want to use boiling to protect yourself from the botulism toxin, my understanding was that you'd need to boil it after you open the can for the first time.
Again, I'm not an expert, so make sure to do your own research.
indoordin0saur 154 days ago [-]
Ah, I forgot a step. I think this is very common when it comes to making hot sauces but after boiling/pasteurizing, you add a lot of vinegar. This should raise the PH well beyond what botulism can handle and just generally preserves the hot sauce. By volume it has to be at least like 20% vinegar. Some people leave their sauces "live", meaning they don't boil and might not even add much vinegar (common with sriracha) but I don't trust myself to leave out those two steps. Plus, I'm usually going for a tabasco type sauce and vinegar is a key part of the flavor.
ohthatsnotright 154 days ago [-]
Adding acid lowers the pH.
indoordin0saur 154 days ago [-]
I should have said raises the acidity
ipsento606 154 days ago [-]
Botulism is a risk in the home canning of low-acidity foods. It is virtually unheard of in the lacto-fermentation of foods not containing animal products. I'm not aware of a single confirmed case in the US, ever.
If anyone is concerned about it, the simplest thing to do is buy an inexpensive pH tester and confirm the brine's pH is below 4.6
tristor 154 days ago [-]
Specifically in the context of fermentation, if you manage to get fermentation started correctly /prior/ to the formation of bacteria colonies, that food will be safe to eat because fermentation creates an environment of competitive exclusion. Essentially, yeast colonies and bacteria colonies want the same things, whichever forms first will prevent the other from forming. This is even true for bacterial fermentation like lacto-fermentation, which is even safer since it produces an acid as an output and creates an acidic environment as well as one in which they outcompete other bacteria.
It's not like you can just seal up a jar and it's going to form botulism, it's necessary that the botulism spores have the necessary resources to multiply, just as it's important that yeast or other fermenting agents require the necessary resources to multiply and colonize. I definitely appreciate your point, but I also think your concern, in the context of fermentation, is overblown.
In fact, I generally assume anything that's fermented properly is safe to eat. If you ferment it, and it doesn't taste bad, it's basically good to go for the human body. This is part of why we now use the term "probiotics" which are mostly bacterial or yeast growths that are involved in fermentation and can help to fight off illness causing bacteria. Beer, wine, kimchi, sour kraut, and pretty much anything else you ferment is safe exactly because of this competitive exclusion.
user_7832 154 days ago [-]
As someone interested in making and eating fermented foods (kimchi, “panta bhat/rice” etc) do you have any beginner level reading recommendations? For example the fermented rice thing - it doesn’t use external bacterial/yeast cultures, and fortunately no one at home’s fallen sick yet - but what’s the difference between “this rice has gone bad because it was out overnight” and “this rice is super healthy”? Thanks a lot!
kxyvr 154 days ago [-]
If anyone is interested in safely preserving food, the USDA provides the USDA's Complete Guide to Home Canning, which has recipes and canning guidance when using a pressure canner. Their current webpage is here:
These recipes do include things like salsas. The point being is that safe canning practices have been well-studied, documented, and already paid for by tax payers. It's a good resource to use as opposed to just winging it.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
The bacteria (but not the spores) are killed by boiling. I probably have conflated mould and botulism in the line you quoted. But I did also say:
"If your sauce has a sufficiently high salt and/or acid level it shouldn’t grow anything nasty."
I probably should have said.
"If you are careless, you could end up with botulism, one of the deadliest toxin known to man! But if your sauce has a sufficiently high salt and/or acid level it shouldn’t grow anything nasty. ... To avoid mould and other issues make sure the fermentation vessel is airtight and everything is clean."
Anyway, I'm not trying to tell anyone the detailed process of how to make hot sauce here. Just encouraging them to find out more from someone who is more expert.
lq9AJ8yrfs 154 days ago [-]
Thank you.
Botulism in food is a well-studied subject.
Even particular foods like garlic, notwithstanding aspersions cast in other comments, have empirical studies e.g. [1] that look pretty plausible. Several more reports from reputable sources turn up in the first few pages of internet searches around just garlic.
It is true that there are a lot of traditions and implicit knowledge around food safety, but it seems like a strawman fallacy to ignore what is explicitly known.
Tangential but interesting tidbit: Botulinum toxin messes with your motor neurons, which is bad news for your heart. For the same reason (but at lower dosage) it eases wrinkles and causes the infamous expressionless Botox look.
nope-prime 154 days ago [-]
[flagged]
jerrysievert 154 days ago [-]
I lacto-ferment hot sauce on a regular basis (and give most of it away).
my go-to brine is by weight, which eliminates a bunch of issues:
* 400g water
* 26g salt
this makes for a great brine without trying to estimate or "taste" it to see if it's ok.
in addition, I sometimes use adjuncts:
* garlic - this adds a lot of flavor to the sauce, but could add yeast if you're not careful
* carrots - adds some vegetable flavor and a little bit of sweetness without adding sugar directly
I also don't pasteurize it (heat it up after it's done, or add vinegar), since I prefer the natural change that the sauce has over time. I also don't "thicken" it, you can get a better sauce by using the correct amount of brine when you go to blend it at the end, if all else fails, any leftover brine can be used for other things (I have some great pickles that were started with a partial batch of brine).
it's a fun hobby, but make sure that you can find a home for the extras if you aren't an avid hot sauce eater!
editing to add some tips:
1. if you're dealing with hot peppers, use gloves - they help a lot!
2. the seeds and the pith add a lot of heat - you can remove them and get yourself delicious flavor without the pain.
dhosek 154 days ago [-]
> if you're dealing with hot peppers, use gloves - they help a lot!
In my 20s I on more occasions than I’m prepared to admit, rubbed my eye while cooking with peppers. Then I ran to the bathroom, cupped my hands under the water and splashed water in both eyes. This (obviously, in retrospect) left me painfully blind for about half an hour.
I’d note that gloves would have helped in this scenario only if I was smart enough to take them off before splashing water in my eyes. Which branch of that if statement would have been more likely is left as an exercise for the reader.
chias 154 days ago [-]
In my 30s on EXACTLY ONE occasion I was chopping a bunch of peppers and then went to the bathroom to pee.
I have worn gloves each and every time since, when dealing with more than 2 or 3 peppers at habanero heat or above.
nbk_2000 154 days ago [-]
Rinsing your eye(s) with milk will alleviate the pain far quicker than water.
Something I learned googling with one eye open while the other was burning from being touched with a habanero contaminated finger :/
nox101 154 days ago [-]
That might be true for eyes but, ... I cut a bunch of peppers from Sichuan with bare hands. My fingers burned for 3 days. I tried everything multiple times, milk, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, cold water, hot water. Nothing got rid of the burn.
They also tasted hot for 3 days
richardw 154 days ago [-]
I had contacts when I was younger. I never figured out how to not have them hurt when putting them in the day after working with chili. Gloves are a good idea but this was usually some random place I’d be cutting them with friends.
indoordin0saur 154 days ago [-]
I cut ghost peppers once by hand and the cuticles around my finger nails were burning for days afterwards. It was more annoying than painful though.
ricketyricky 154 days ago [-]
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cshimmin 154 days ago [-]
Have you ever made “hot” sauce with bell peppers? My wife has literally zero tolerance for spicy food, wondering if I could make some kind of capsaicin-free sauce that gives some of the flavor of eg sriracha or tapatio, etc.
Modified3019 154 days ago [-]
A mild tomatillo sauce (“green sauce”) is what you should look into. Try some commercial stuff (which is generally medium heat) to see what range of flavors is achievable.
Note that when self made it can be accidentally end up with too much “vegetal” taste to it. It’s been a very long time since I’ve made it so I forgot what my resulting recipe was that addressed that.
sberder 154 days ago [-]
You can look into ajvar, a Serbian sauce with grilled peppers and eggplant. You can make it as spicy as you want by adding hot peppers if you want.
_a_a_a_ 154 days ago [-]
Is known in a wider area eg. ajver in Turkey. It's okay, the texture can be a bit glooey sometimes. (Sidenote: in Turkish they have different words for heat from temperature and heat from hot peppers - anyone chip in here?)
On heat tolerance, do some genetic thing where people get one, two or three receptors[1] which give different sensitivity to different people. I had a GF who would struggle with the level of capsaicin I literally wouldn't even notice. I knew a guy who would snack on scotch bonnet peppers straight, which would be impossibly agonising for me.
[1] from memory, doubtless incorrect as well
Sanctor 154 days ago [-]
Turkish word for heat when related to temperature is "sıcak", when related to peppers is "acı".
But "acı" can also mean bitter. You have to look at the context to understand. However things can both be spicy and bitter. In that case it gets complicated :)
Symbiote 154 days ago [-]
English has hot, spicy and piquant.
cshimmin 154 days ago [-]
The problem is all of those can be ambiguous. "Hot" can mean high temperature, "spicy" can mean e.g. lots of garlic or cumin, or any other spices, and "piquant" can mean tart like citrus.
Perhaps the lack of a dedicated mapping to "capsaicin sensation" stems historically from England's reputedly bland cuisine...
Symbiote 153 days ago [-]
The Turkish word is also ambiguous. Chili peppers were only brought from South America in the 16th century.
England's bland food is a relatively recent development, much more recent than the language.
Okay, in light of recent UK events I get the subtext :-)
But I don't think it's fair to call UK food bland. Done properly it's very good, but what it's not (usually) is heavily seasoned. In no way does that require it to be tasteless, and done properly it isn't.
hermitcrab 153 days ago [-]
My understanding is that UK food was on a par with other European countries in medieval times. By the 1950s to 1970s, it was pretty bad though. No doubt some of this was down to wartime rationing. Perhaps some of it was due to protestant fear of anything too enjoyable.
There is a reason there are thousands of Indian restuarants in England and approximately zero English restaurants in India. ;0)
Thankfully, food has improved vastly in the UK since the 70s.
jerrysievert 154 days ago [-]
peppers are a fruit and there are a ton of varieties that add slightly different flavors, ranging from vegetable, chocolate, peach, pineapple, etc - you just need a good combination of peppers that work well together, they don't have to be spicy.
personally, I'd add a little more than bell peppers, which tend to have a more vegetable flavor. there are some Italian peppers that have a nice sweetness without heat, for instance.
if you're looking for more of a sriracha flavor, add some garlic in there! there's just as much of a world of peppers to explore that isn't burning hot as there is super hot varieties.
ibejoeb 154 days ago [-]
Yes, generally. It won't have the flavor of either of those, but you will be able to adjust that with with flavors that don't impart heat. For something like tapatio, probably garlic, cumin, and a more neutral vinegar like a greek white wine vinegar. Maybe even bay leaf. Stick with green bell peppers, because riper ones are going to be much fruitier.
A “super mild” line of sauces to introduce kids to hot sauce without overwhelming them. They might be a good starting point to see if she likes it.
copperx 154 days ago [-]
The better bet would be to use green tomatillos instead of peppers as the main flavor.
burke 154 days ago [-]
parent knows what they’re doing here but a helpful thing to know is that you generally want at least 3-5% salt by weight for safety (though less can be okay, depending on other factors)… but if you’re not building in a margin of safety, you need to weigh the peppers and water together to calculate 5% against, not just the water.
sendfoods 154 days ago [-]
That's 6.5% salinity. I am wondering how you settled with that number, I have always stuck to 3% and have never seen recommendations higher than 4%! Just curious
IanCal 154 days ago [-]
That is not including the weight of the veggies though, which I think is really missing a trick in terms of control. Just weigh things at the end, the ratio that seems important is the total salt %.
I do all my ferments at about 2.5%, maybe 3 for sauces where saltier isn't a problem. I do it all in a vac bag, but the concept is the same, just use the final weight of everything.
sendfoods 154 days ago [-]
2.5% of veggie weight? Or water weight?
I always use 3% of water weight, which in more consistent than weighing the veggies, because the amount of water can vary.
Very unusual to see food-related content on HN. I love it!
Hikikomori 154 days ago [-]
Jalapenos are like 90% water. So if you take 1kg of water and 1kg of Jalapenos you'll have 1.9kg of water, 2.5% of that if you want to have 2.5%.
sendfoods 154 days ago [-]
Ah, I see!
IanCal 153 days ago [-]
For the vac bag I just do total weight, since things are almost entirely water anyway I think it'll work out about the same.
> Very unusual to see food-related content on HN. I love it!
:) me too. I really love lacto fermenting things, it's a nice old technique that's very forgiving and rewarding. The flavour you get out of it makes so many things pop, and the noma book is full of ideas (even if I'll never make them quite as fancy)
I'm doing a bunch of kefir now, and someday I'd like to do koji.
sendfoods 152 days ago [-]
Water kefir is fun during summertime to have something a bit more healthy than soda. (Until a bottle flavored with raspberry explodes and turns your kitchen walls pink....)
Hikikomori 154 days ago [-]
Veggies are mostly water, so you'll need to account for that. Same when brining meat.
baxtr 154 days ago [-]
What do you add as “hot ingredient”? And when…
jerrysievert 154 days ago [-]
what I add depends entirely on what I am able to find at the moment. depending on the flavor profile I'm going for, I'll either start with a base of Fresno or jalapeño, and adjust with other peppers from there. I find that Thai peppers or habanero give a decent heat, but using something like sugar rush peach can give you both heat and additional flavor if you are careful with your amount used.
as for "when" - put them in the brine with the rest of the peppers, wait your couple of weeks, then blend.
MarkMarine 155 days ago [-]
I make my own hot sauce, but they were all kind of blah until I started growing my own chilis.
I grow the bird’s eye chilis (piri piri) that is an important part of a number of Portuguese dishes that I like, including wonderful piri piri oil that I drizzle on many things. I always have extra chilis at the end of the year so I make sauce.
There is a Portuguese sauce made from fermented red (sweet, large) peppers that I’ve never been able to get right though. Finding a recipe online is tough because this is a family recipe that gets passed down, many families have their own take on it, and I’m in California and don’t have any Portuguese relatives. If anyone makes massa de pimentão and has a recipe please share
silisili 155 days ago [-]
If you haven't already tried them, take a look at siling labuyo. They are a little smaller and hotter, and IMO better tasting. I've had tons of luck growing them in the US, even indoors over a winter once(light lamp).
I like them so much I picked my username after them :)
MarkMarine 153 days ago [-]
Thanks for the recommendation, where did you get seeds for them?
I bought my last batch from that link and they tasted perfect.
I used to just get them from local Filipino stores/communities, if you have any. A lot of people grew them when I was in Florida.
My last house was in the desert, and wasn't able to find any locally so bought those off ebay.
vram22 154 days ago [-]
>started growing my own chilis
I thought / have observed that the spelling "chili" (single letter l) was used for the US / Mexican dish called "chili con carne", and the spelling "chilly/chillies" was used for the hot pepper that came from the Americas and spread to much of the world.
Edit: Wikipedia says both spellings are used for the hot pepper:
It does not mention the y ending, but I have seen it in India.
harrisi 154 days ago [-]
I've never seen or heard of anyone using "chilly" to mean anything other than cold. I'm from Portland, but I've also lived in San Francisco and Tucson.
vram22 154 days ago [-]
I think in India it is the commonly used spelling, and maybe in Britain and Australia too. But not sure about the latter two, need to check.
metaphor 154 days ago [-]
A few relevant points made by Govindarajan in this 1985 paper[1]:
> Chilli or Chili, a name now commonly used in Asia and Africa, is said to have come from the Nahautl dialect of Mexico and Central America.
> The U.S. Government Standard divided Capsicum into types corresponding to commercial types; paprika, red pepper, ground and crushed. The term "chilli" is not generally used in the U.S., but is used in Britain, India, Africa, and the countries in the East.
> The British Standard Specifications, however, differentiate between chillies and capsicum, obviously based on the degree of pungency. It gives no values but describes "chillies" as pungent small fruits of certain forms of the species C. frutescens L. and describes Capsicum as of varied sizes, generally big, of the species, C. annuum L.
Can confirm I have never seen "Chilly" as a spelling for the pepper in either country!
OJFord 154 days ago [-]
Chilli/chillies in the Britain, but chilly/chillies is certainly a more typical looking pair, logic's on your side!
fuzztester 154 days ago [-]
Cool, er, hot! ;)
harrisi 154 days ago [-]
Interesting! I worked in an Indian food truck - owned by an Indian family - in Tucson, and we had "chili chicken" (with that spelling) on the menu. I wonder if they spelled it differently at some point.
vram22 153 days ago [-]
Was it an Indian or Chinese style dish?
In India, chili chicken (probably spelled chilli chicken) is an Indianised-Chinese dry starter or appetizer kind of dish, of small pieces of chicken stir-fried with a tangy dry coating / sauce that includes ginger, garlic and red chillies. You can get vegetarian versions too, like paneer chilli. That coating / sauce is really good. It has tiny solid bits and pieces of ginger and garlic which adds to the taste.
You get it in (Indian) Chinese or multi-cuisine restaurants.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
usually "Chilli" in the UK.
zem 154 days ago [-]
usually chili or chilli in India, though I've seen chilly used on occasion
robertlagrant 154 days ago [-]
Here in the UK we say chilli.
silisili 154 days ago [-]
For more fun, in NM they spell it chile, and pronounce it like the country. They're convinced they're right and everyone else is wrong.
trepanne 154 days ago [-]
Your NM friends have better Spanish than anyone else in this thread.
Meanwhile, my fellow Texans have famously bastardized “chile con carne” to refer to spicy beef stew, and would tend to specify “chili pepper” to refer to the actual fruit itself.
odshoifsdhfs 154 days ago [-]
Massa de pimentao has various recipes (as pretty much any sauce here). You can even buy in store different brands that have different flavour profiles. I guess you will have to tweak a more generic recipe to match the flavour you are looking for (or if you have some brand/restaurant you like, I can try and see if I can find it).
MarkMarine 153 days ago [-]
The recipe from “My Lisbon” had two versions, one that you ferment, one that you make with wine vinegar and don’t ferment.
Both of the recipes calls for roasting the peppers under low heat (my oven min is 170F) for an hour or so to drive off some water… every time I do that I think I kill off the lacto. I get mold every time I try the fermented version.
If you know of any family recipes I would love to hear them!
Also I’d love to hear about the tech scene in Portugal, my wife and I have been thinking of moving the family there
hermitcrab 153 days ago [-]
>every time I do that I think I kill off the lacto.
I have seen some people recommend to put some fresh chillis in with the roasted ones for this reason.
>I get mold every time I try the fermented version.
It is airtight? Is the brine salty enough (2-3% salt to water usually recommended)?
MarkMarine 153 days ago [-]
I’m following the same process I use for other fermentation without issues in the other ones, 2% salt to water, mason jar with a bubbler, I actually go over and above with this one because I’ve had problems… I double clean everything, I use acid sanitizer from beer brewing to make sure the jars and lids and everything is clean, I don’t leave it uncapped unless I’m working next to a candle (a technique to keep falling spores out of yeast samples from home brewing)
I’ll try adding some fresh peppers in just for the lacto and try again.
annoyingnoob 154 days ago [-]
I like to mix Malagueta with good olive oil.
MarkMarine 153 days ago [-]
The piri piri oil recipe from Nuno Mendes’s book is amazing.
Cook down lemons, spices with Piri Piri (dry and fresh both) and throw some uncracked pepper corns in with the dry peppers directly into the jar with great quality olive oil, it’s my favorite condiment
meroes 154 days ago [-]
I usually go for a quick and dirty start-to-finish in a day recipe when I’m craving hot sauce. I don’t have much patience or long term storage or want to gamble with botulism, so I don’t ferment.
A very very rough recipe is:
- 4 lbs of dried chiles de arbol (no seeds or stems)
- 1.5 lbs each of Serranos and Jalapeños
- 1 lb of habaneros
- 4 large carrots
- half cup of garlic
- about 2 gallons of white vinegar
- a little salt and maybe a cup of water
I like the idea of adding some
mangoes from the link so maybe add 2-3?
Rough chop everything and take out stems and the majority of seeds. Start heating the arbols in a very large boil pot outside (on a grill or its own propane burner). Then after 15 mins add the other peppers and salt. 15 mins later add the veggies, 5 mins later pour the vinegar and water if needed in so that it just covers the chiles. You might not use all the vinegar. Heat to a low boil for 2 hours. Let it cool for 20 mins, blend it in batches till smooth. Then transfer the blended batches back to the pot and reboil for 10 mins. Then pot directly into mason jars. Stir occasionally throughout so nothing burns, but some color is good at the beginning.
It feels pretty safe. It’s very very hot but that’s how I like it and makes it last longer. It’s not as smooth as the off the shelf hot sauces, but not quite as thick as the chile hot sauce in Asian restaurants.
Oh and don’t touch your eyes or sensitive areas.
Maybe it’s just me but chiles have decreased in hotness in the past decade. Like a habanero or jalapeño is not as hot as they used to be. For jalapeños, there used to be like 1/5 that would floor you, so their average hotness was quite higher. Now it seems like all jalapeños I buy are the same, which reduces the average heat so I have to add more habaneros.
cyb_ 154 days ago [-]
The article below claims that milder store-bought peppers are the result of growers using different varieties, which is driven by larger (factory) consumers of the peppers.
Ah that makes sense. Seems to be in large part because there are varieties that are lower heat but higher flavor, and ceteris paribus, getting away with less jalapeno for same or greater flavor saves money. I wonder if anyone's weighed the amount of actual jalapeno in a jar of tostito's queso. Probably like a quarter gram.
lukasb 154 days ago [-]
There are even quicker hot sauces;
1. Chop up bird's eye chilis, add fish sauce and lime juice - boom, prik nam pla. If you don't have fish sauce, bird's eye chilis and white vinegar.
2. White vinegar, sugar and salt, garlic and/or ginger, bird's eye or jalepeno, some bell pepper to cut the heat - stick it in a blender, done. Super delicious.
somnic 154 days ago [-]
Prik nam pla is great. Thin garlic slices are a good addition.
meroes 154 days ago [-]
Thank you that sounds fun and less of an undertaking
digitalsin 154 days ago [-]
As it relates to gambling with botulism and fermentation, it's a non-issue.
hansvm 154 days ago [-]
A few notes:
1. Botulism is nearly a non-issue in lacto fermentation. As the article mentions, salt and acid inhibit its growth. For an extra layer of protection, you can add a bit of vinegar at the start of the process to further encourage the growth of safe microorganisms. Botulism only starts becoming an issue when you have low-salt, low-acid preparations, or when you start the process like you would in traditional canning (boiling the fermentation mixture ahead of time -- getting rid of all competition for the botulism). If you cook the peppers you should make sure to pitch in a significant quantity of yeast and/or lactic acid producing bacteria.
1a. Botulism is a lot higher risk if you stabilize the mixture (the "simmering it in a pan to thicken" step) before storing it. That kills any safe microorganisms and again opens up the door for an infection from something dangerous (though, as the article mentions, it's less risky because of the accumulated salt and acid in the final product).
2. Mold requires a stable, aerobic environment to grow. Completely submerging the peppers suffices, as does using some form of air-lock, but you can also almost always get away with just stirring it twice each day.
3. Sugar can make the fermentation work better. The suggestion of fruit to achieve that is a great idea. As a side-note, mango is particularly delicious fermented on its own (halves or other large chunks, fermented just till there's a lot of CO2 bubbles, making them fruit chunks sparkly, no longer or it gets mushy).
> kills off the fermentation.
4. That has pros and cons. Fermented foods "keep" better while still fermenting (in terms of food safety), but the texture and flavor can degrade (it varies, look at how fantastic kimchi is as an example of longer fermentations being beneficial). Once hybrid strategy if you still want the improved texture from cooking is to reserve some of the pre-cooked sauce and re-introduce after cooking, re-innoculating it with yeast and bacteria. It'll tend to keep a lot longer if you do so. The flavor changes can be good or bad. It'll build up pressure over time though, so don't seal it air-tight.
tptacek 154 days ago [-]
Just for what it's worth, for all the talk about botulism in all these stories, the US had just nineteen cases of confirmed food-borne botulism in 2019 (the last year I can see data for); about half were commercial, and 4 were an outbreak linked to "home-prepared fermented beluga flipper".
I don't think fermented hot sauce is taking anybody out. At least, not that way.
(I'm fascinated by this because it's an article of faith that you can't store garlic confit or garlic oil in the fridge, but it's very difficult to find a case of anyone contracting botulism from cooked garlic, and when I get taken out by a case of garlic botulism, you all have my permission to write your dunks directly onto my gravestone).
hansvm 154 days ago [-]
> garlic
It's right up there with storing cooked rice in the fridge. Garlic you're at least able to cook long enough to kill the botulism spores, but typical fluffy white rice preparations are nowhere close, and if you had enough spores to start with (this being quite rare, hence why illness and death are rare) you'll have a very dangerous concoction brewing in your fridge.
> beluga flipper
That story's especially wild because it was just a dead whale of unknown age they then processed. Generally though, meats are less safe to ferment than vegetal matter (lower sugar and acid content, higher initial bacterial loads and other parasites). It can be done safely, but where I'm comfortable telling just about anyone veggies and fruits are safe, I'd not want to recommend meat to somebody with the wrong background.
kevinmchugh 154 days ago [-]
> fermented beluga flipper
A traditional native Alaskan dish, for anyone else as curious as I was
idlewords 154 days ago [-]
looks over at jar of garlicky beluga flipper. Uh-oh.
OJFord 154 days ago [-]
Botulism is nearly a non-issue full stop, but American food writing always needs FDA recommendations and general fearmongering, for some reason.
It's nasty and can be fatal yes, but in terms of risks in life it just doesn't warrant mentioning, and yet it is so often. (And I do not believe it's bloggers feeling the need to warn about it that's suppressing the numbers!) You're probably more likely to get run over on your way to the shop for whatever you want to can/ferment.
gwd 154 days ago [-]
> but American food writing always needs FDA recommendations and general fearmongering, for some reason.
Maybe fearmongering is one of the reasons the deaths are so low?
That, and the fact that the recipes that have become a part of the culture in many cases happen to be recipes that prevent botulism (i.e., things that are sour).
OJFord 154 days ago [-]
Maybe, but I don't believe it:
> (And I do not believe it's bloggers feeling the need to warn about it that's suppressing the numbers!)
As for safe recipes being established part of the culture (no puns intended?) - yeah, well that's somewhat the point, C. botulinum spores can't be seen, but other things can, we've developed preservation techniques that work for both, it's rare anyway, it doesn't warrant worrying about specifically. It's the nastiest thing that almost certainly isn't going to happen.
twic 154 days ago [-]
I made fermented hot sauce once, and i don't think it was sufficiently different to other kinds to be worth doing again. But then, i have only done it once!
I think my favourite hot sauces have started by drying the chillies, then toasting them in a pan. This adds a lovely smoky, rich flavour.
In terms of other additives, i recently made a rather long winded rum and coke themed hot sauce, the main lesson from which is that orange peel goes amazingly with chilli. I am now thinking about a chocolate orange hot sauce, built around toasted chillies, orange peel, and cocoa powder perhaps. Can i make an orange peel oleo saccharum using citric acid, and use that instead of vinegar? Should i make it oil-based? Use crème de cacao?! Much to ponder.
If you're going to grow your own chillies, i can highly recommend NuMex Bailey:
It's a pequin pepper, so very small, but hot and with good flavour. This particular strain grows like the clappers, forming a compact, dense bush, which is covered in flowers and then fruit, which as the paper says, are very easy to pick when ripe. The productivity in terms of mass of fruit per unit of pot area is far better than anything else i've grown. It seems to be impossible to kill, too.
shadytrees 154 days ago [-]
> I made fermented hot sauce once, and i don't think it was sufficiently different to other kinds to be worth doing again. But then, i have only done it once!
+1. I spent hours lovingly sanitizing and prepping and waiting for habaneros to ferment; in the end, they added a bit of funky tang, but I didn't feel like it was worth the time. I realized that vinegar-based hot sauce recipes are quicker to iterate on and perfect and taste closer to what I prefer.
However, it's all subjective! Watching something ferment in a container is inherently fun, in the way a terrarium with a small creature in it can be. YMMV.
fullspectrumdev 154 days ago [-]
This has given me some wonderful ideas for my next attempts at hot sauce.
I wonder if I could get a nice flavour profile from using some smoked/toasted (dried) peppers and some untreated ones in a fermentation? Would there be a nice flavour combination of the Smokey and Tangy aspects that I enjoy?
My last efforts at growing my own chilli’s were going extremely well until I went away for a month, forgot to leave instructions for their care, and they died off beyond recovery.
linsomniac 154 days ago [-]
Don't underestimate making a fresh rather than fermented sauce. Years ago at work I made a green chili sauce, basically just blended some peppers, vinegar, salt, and spices. I think it was 4-6 anaheims, a couple jalapinos, and garlic. Pretty simple and quite delicious.
I'll also second the article's recommendation for Ring of Fire, the Habanero variety (they have a lot of varieties).
cnity 154 days ago [-]
I did this with mango and scotch bonnet peppers (with garlic and carrot, vinegar and seasoning) and it is very delicious.
Dunati 154 days ago [-]
If you blend this with some neutral vegetable oil, the sauce forms a creamy looking emulsion and is quite tasty.
Sohcahtoa82 154 days ago [-]
I've been kind of wanting to try to make a super-smokey pepper sauce. Thinking of getting poblanos, hatch, and/or jalapeno, smoking them on the pellet grill for 24+ hours using mesquite, then blending with vinegar, salt, and some spices.
dmoy 155 days ago [-]
Didn't see it mentioned in the article or picture, but you often get better results if you weigh down the stuff you're fermenting so it's always underneath the brine. Glass weights, literal rocks, or just an excess of brine, either way.
If you do that, then the "fuzzies" the article mentioned basically never make an appearance.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
Author here. Fair comment. I did think about mentioning that. But I didn't want to get too much into the weeds. Better to watch some videos for all the details.
throwup238 155 days ago [-]
> Glass weights, literal rocks, or just an excess of brine, either way.
Alternatively, ziplock bag filled with water and a little air for buoyancy.
bsilvereagle 154 days ago [-]
> ziplock bag filled with water
You’ll often see this done with brine instead of water so if the bag develops a leak the salt concentration of the ferment stays the same.
MathMonkeyMan 154 days ago [-]
Or the top of an onion, pushed down. Saw that on youtube and it's the idea I like best.
And you can't get botulism from fermenting. That is only in canning foods, since all the microbes are competing with each other. Good old C. botulinum can't hang.
throwup238 155 days ago [-]
You don’t have to make a brine. I ferment my chilis in a vacuum sealed bag like those used for sous vide. Just pulse the ingredients a few times in a food processor and add 2% salt by weight. Since they don’t have much sugar I’ve never had to burp the bags.
Makes it really easy to just have tons of bags fermenting without taking up lots of space or reusable containers. The Noma Guide to Fermentation has a lot more info.
ssl-3 154 days ago [-]
Vacuum bags and 2% salt by weight are the easiest way to get it done, for sure. It doesn't get much simpler.
I've had pepper ferments that got a little carried away and tightly filled the bag with CO2.
There's a lot of ways to deal with this problem, but I just poke a tiny hole in the bag, let the bug farts out, and cover the hole with a strip of clear tape.
(A lazier method is to plan better and use a bigger bag to begin with.
And for those who aren't familiar, vacuum bags can be huge: They're available as continuous uncut rolls.)
IanCal 154 days ago [-]
That's an excellent book, and I do the same. I err on the side of just over for the 2% as iirc the safe limit isn't too much lower. Most things are totally fine at 2.5% too, particularly sauces (berries is probably where you may want to be on the lower side).
Vac bags for me have worked every time for me, I like to make these things with my kids, let them pick things to lacto ferment. Strawberries is the most recent that was excellent (and we'd picked several kilos), the liquid was fantastic for a dressing and the strawbs themselves worked great on meringues.
SmellTheGlove 155 days ago [-]
Do you vacuum the bag and get all of the air out, or do you just kind of flatten it with your hand and seal it with space at the top for expansion? I assume it puffs up a lot. Do you have to vent and reseal it or can those bags handle it, assuming name brand food saver bags or something else that’s decent quality?
throwup238 155 days ago [-]
I vacuum the bag with a Foodsaver but the displacement method with a ziplock bag probably works too.
I’ve only ever had to vent ferments with lots of fruit sugars like blueberry habanero. I just cut the bag, force some of the air out, then fold it over and use a binder clip. I don’t reseal them because the salt pulls out their liquid and I don’t have a chamber vacuum sealer.
dunham 154 days ago [-]
Good to know it can be done with a food saver. I have the book on my shelf, but never got around to reading it.
I've used a ziplock of water as a fermentation weight. I didn't know I could use a chamber sealer, and I have one (the "cheap" model VP112S - at $600 and only 57 lbs. - but I bought it 7 years ago and it's still going). I think I need to try this with some chilis.
SmellTheGlove 151 days ago [-]
Thanks! I’m going to give this a try. I have a food saver I just wasn’t sure if I should leave space in the bag or not. Sounds like not and just vent the bag if it inflates too much.
doctorhandshake 155 days ago [-]
Can confirm most of this but I disagree with the advice to stop fermentation by any means. To the contrary I like to keep my lacto hot sauces fermenting in the fridge for a year before using them - much deeper, more complex flavor.
dunham 155 days ago [-]
I also disagree with their lack of oxford comma. :)
I did lacto once because I had a bunch of habanero from the farmers market and wanted something that could sit around for a while. But I usually don't plan ahead, so typically it's habanero and a garlic clove under the broiler and then blended with some lime juice - a bottle at a time, as needed. A recipe I got from Rick Bayless.
The grocery store has been out for a few weeks, so I may need a different strategy. And I should branch out more.
waldothedog 154 days ago [-]
Rick Bayless is my hero
Duanemclemore 155 days ago [-]
Same. I have a fermented ghost pepper sauce that's been working in the fridge for almost a decade. I pretty much only use it to start other sauces these days but when I taste it, it's freaking fantastic.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
I took a batch and A/B tested it. Simmering one half, but not the other. I preferred the simmered batch. Not much of a sample size though...
Dylan16807 154 days ago [-]
Did you test it right away, or after some amount of time?
If it improves the flavor right away, you can try option C of simmering not quite the entire batch, so that fermentation resumes after you recombine.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
I tested it right away.
Won't leaving it fermenting cause pressure to build up in the bottle? And the contents to exit when you open it?
doctorhandshake 154 days ago [-]
I’ve never had that issue but I can’t say you wouldn’t. My experience is that the fermentation that goes on in the fridge, for nearly anything but the most active Tepache, is pretty gentle. You should be ok if you leave a little headroom and/or don’t seal the bottle all the way.
shepherdjerred 155 days ago [-]
Anything home preserved makes me anxious. Canning, bottling, etc. It just sounds way too easy to poison yourself.
That being said, this does sound really fun.
bagels 155 days ago [-]
Botulism is the biggest concern, and even still, it is pretty rare and avoidable. Mold is generally visible, and if found, you can just discard.
As long as you're following good practices (cleaning, temperature, proper salt ratios, verifying acidity, following researched recipes), it's pretty safe.
edit: I'd add to this, I don't preserve meats, that's the risky stuff.
vram22 154 days ago [-]
All the videos I have seen say that sterilizing all the vessels you use is one of the good practices.
bagels 154 days ago [-]
Yes, I boil my equipment.
ssl-3 154 days ago [-]
Botulism is invisible and odorless and deadly.
Please do not do people the disservice of conflating botulism with mold. They are not even close to being the same fucking thing.
kataklasm 154 days ago [-]
You should reread parent's comment before posting such agitated commentary.
ssl-3 154 days ago [-]
I did.
Twice.
Please kindly go white knight somewhere else. Your additional agitation is unnecessary, and is not helpful for anyone.
bagels 154 days ago [-]
I don't think I did?
_heimdall 154 days ago [-]
In my experience a ton of it really does come down to quality of the ingredients you use. We actually ferment quite a few things here and have never had an issue. Though, whether we're making sauerkraut, kambucha, pickles, or cheese it always starts with ingredients we either grew ourselves or bought from a local CSA.
I was a bit nervous the first time we salt cured our own bacon, but it turned out way better than any bacon I've bought from a store!
eric-hu 154 days ago [-]
Can you share more about what you did for salt curing bacon? That sounds intriguing
_heimdall 154 days ago [-]
I came across a recipe [1] for salt curing without doing a water rinse after curing. The idea of using only enough salt to cure the meat made a lot of sense to me, most recipes end up with way too much salt that you have to wash off afterwards.
I stuck with the 2.5% by weight ratio of salt to bacon. We have a nice chamber vacuum sealer so I used that to seal the meat while curing it. I don't have a slicer unfortunately, but partially freezing the slab right before slicing made it easy enough. Slicing soft pork fat is no fun, getting the meat a bit stiff and icy works wonders when slicing!
On the first batch I used maple syrup basically the same as the recipe. The author noted wanting to double the amount of syrup - I stuck with 2% by weight and it was almost too sweet for me, I wouldn't do more.
I actually just sliced and packaged another slab tonight. For this one I did half as much syrup and did a pretty strong costing of cracked black pepper. No clue how it will turn out, but it smelled great when slicing it! I'll probably try a few slices tomorrow morning before freezing most of it for later.
I wonder if your experience with maple syrup is different from the author’s because of differences in pork belly size. My recent food experiences lead me to believe that sugar doesn’t penetrate solid foods deeply even when left over days or weeks. If that’s true, your unwashed bacon and the author’s could vary from the author’s by surface area. Or it could be a subjective matter of taste.
dathery 155 days ago [-]
You can use a pH meter to monitor the sauce while it's fermenting if you'd like some extra assurance. Hot sauce is one of the safer things to do at home (in terms of things like botulism risk) due to the acidity and saltiness.
fitsumbelay 155 days ago [-]
ahhhhh, this is what I was looking to read about; some kind of sensor to make sure no one dies. though I also imagined a sensor for the air around the fermenting container as well?
dathery 155 days ago [-]
The bacteria behind botulism can't grow in oxygen-rich environments, so I think the makeup of the solution is the main thing to worry about. That's why botulism is mainly a concern with canning, oil suspensions, etc.
candiddevmike 155 days ago [-]
Not sure what you mean by air, I use pH test strips instead of a meter and just drop some of the liquid on them.
fitsumbelay 154 days ago [-]
I see, so at some interval you take a sample and directly test it on a meter. Thanks.
By 'air' I'm meant air leak from stuff you're trying to can or preserve, as others began mentioning preserves and canning
hermitcrab 153 days ago [-]
Isn't the sauce quite strongly coloured and doesn't that make it difficult to read the pH?
throwup238 155 days ago [-]
In this day and age, you’d have to show some gross negligence to poison yourself from ferments. Either by ignoring some basic guidelines or doing something stupid like eating a clearly contaminated batch.
In decades of canning and fermenting across four generations, my family has never gotten food poisoning from it. Mushrooms on the other hand…
155 days ago [-]
namdnay 155 days ago [-]
Anything that’s salty or acidic or sweet or fermented enough isn’t dangerous. So no risk for jams, hot sauces, beers, pickles etc. Canning fruit or vegetables requires more care
candiddevmike 155 days ago [-]
There's a lot of steps you're missing. Just by virtue of having those qualities does not mean it's safe, there is probably a lot of prep, cleaning, and boiling involved.
namdnay 155 days ago [-]
Even without those steps the worst you’ll get is fur on the top. As long as you’re putting the correct weight of salt There’s no danger
__mharrison__ 154 days ago [-]
Canning was pretty common when I was growing up. The Ball Blue book of canning walks you through it. If you follow the directions, you shouldn't have to worry about safety.
If you go off script, that's on you.
Etheryte 154 days ago [-]
This, to me, is an interesting take, since where I'm from (Europe) nearly everyone has grandparents or such who make home made jams and canned foods of all kinds. Similarly foraging is common here. I wonder if there's a link between the two, although I could be wildly extrapolating.
candiddevmike 155 days ago [-]
Agreed... I can never find a hot sauce ferment recipe that has weights and measurements like sauerkraut or kimchi. Everything is too eyeball-ey and makes me super paranoid about not getting the right salt and ph. Botulism scares the shit out of me.
ssl-3 154 days ago [-]
There's only a few things to do with pepper ferments. It's not at all like baking a cake is. And it's far easier to accomplish safely than canning is.
Only one ingredient
must be measured before it is added: Salt.
There is just not anything here that could be improved by adding specificity:
1. Use pure-ish water, if any water is used at all. Chlorine is bad. Buffering from dissolved minerals is also bad. (Distilled water is cheap; use that.)
2. Weigh water, if any, along with the peppers.
3. Add 2% non-iodized table salt, by weight. (Kosher salt works here, and has other uses.)
4. Mix it up in a suitable vessel (I prefer vacuum bags because the results are both flawless and easy), and put in a dark-ish place that is not cold.
That's persuasive-enough data to make me convinced. Thanks.
I'll still use kosher salt in my ferments because...well, just because. For one thing, the larger salt corns dissolve more slowly, and this gives me a longer period to work before chunks of chili pepper react with salt and start producing liquid. I've been surprised before by how quickly this can happen.
(Slower/less-liquid-ey is easier for me to handle with my particular (cheap, Aldi special) vacuum sealer.)
But if I get to that point in the process and discover that I don't have any kosher salt today for some reason, then: I'll have no reservations about using regular iodized table salt instead.
I have been making my own hot sauce for almost a decade and have chosen to skip fermentation, taqueria-style. I tend to make a blender-full at a time, use dried chiles, use a small amount of salt and vinegar and refrigerate what I make in a few dishwasher cleaned mason jars. We use it quickly enough that I have never noticed any unwanted mold or growth. I have commonly noticed such growth from opened store-bought salsa which is undoubtedly less acidic (and spicy).
abrugsch 154 days ago [-]
Congrats on the hot sauce results! I made my own last summer too (first time making a sauce, I previously made Chilli Jams from my home grown peppers) and last summer I had a very productive Wraith chilli plant which produce pods far too hot to do much else with so I found a recipe I wanted to try.
I didn't lacto-ferment them but I did make one similar to your mango one (I used a fresh pineapple and fresh mango plus some honey and IIRC cumin) and like yourself, found it one of the most amazing sauces I've ever had.
It was sweet and tangy, super flavourful and HOT AS HELL! I put it on everything and because of the "chilli high" I was getting from it decided to nickname it Pineapple Express.
I was hoping to make another batch this season but the plant, despite over-wintering well, has barely grown and is only just now producing flowers which I'm pretty sure will produce very small pods if they are even successful...
smallerfish 155 days ago [-]
I get my chili ferments going with live kombucha. I used to use my own, but no longer maintain a running kombucha batch, so I just buy some ultra hippy kombucha whenever I'm ready to start a new chili ferment.
Basic recipe: blend together chilis, kombucha, and some filler (e.g. carrots, or fruit).
twic 154 days ago [-]
I did the same. From my notes:
"frozen chillies (30 g), machine-chopped, boiled up with spring water (35 ml) and Himalayan salt (2.5 g), left to cool, mixed with ginger live kombucha (35 ml), left for a week (i was in a rush). Future versions could use twice as much chilli. Tolerably hot, with a heat that plateaus and then lasts."
The chillies would have been Numex Bailey which i grew myself. I pick the fruits when they're ripe and freeze them until i have enough for a batch of sauce, hence using frozen chillies. Should work fine with fresh too.
dzhiurgis 154 days ago [-]
Unsure if this is going to hit right spot, but if you can't be bothered with fermentation and prefer storing your chilli in freezer - try making Thai chilli dipping sauce - Nam Jim Jaew. Takes few minutes and stores for few weeks in fridge. Works well on avocado toast.
ANarrativeApe 155 days ago [-]
I love that this has climbed to a medal position on the hacker news podium!
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
It dropped from 9th position to 85th position in about 30 minutes. So it appears that the mods or the HN algorithm weren't so happy about this.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
Now back to position 17.
imp0cat 154 days ago [-]
It's still fermenting. ;)
shever73 154 days ago [-]
...without even a recipe! I bookmarked it to read later, and was kind of disappointed that it was just a "I've learned how to make hot sauce" post.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
I didn't feel expert enough to be telling people what to do in detail. I just wanted people to understand that it was pretty straighforward to do and the results could be excellent. For more details watch a Youtube video by someone who knows a lot more about it (e.g. the Chillichump channel linked in the article).
sowbug 154 days ago [-]
Last year I tried making a Sriracha recipe, but had to use green jalapeños because I couldn't find red ones. I hear that a red jalapeño is simply a green one that was allowed to ripen, so I can see why farmers might not have the time to produce red ones.
I'm now patiently growing some jalapeños in my backyard. Meanwhile, anyone know a source for red jalapeños?
HeyLaughingBoy 153 days ago [-]
Depending on your zone, they may not live long enough to turn red. I'm in MN and when growing serranos, I had to bring them inside before I got any red ones. Happily, though, they continued to fruit indoors throughout the winter.
sowbug 150 days ago [-]
I hadn't thought of that. Fortunately, they're growing in a fabric pot, so I can take them in when the weather turns.
SimianLogic 154 days ago [-]
My favorite DIY hot sauce is manzanos and dragonfruit. The little black seeds make it look awesome and manzanos are a nice slow burn.
seanwilson 154 days ago [-]
For botulism, how risky is making jam? It's not that acidic, not salty, the fruit isn't heated to a high temperature, and the jam is put in a sealed container after so there's risks? I've seen white/green mold in homemade blueberry jam before but never figured out what went wrong there.
ipsento606 154 days ago [-]
most jam is very acidic so botulism is not a concern
woile 154 days ago [-]
I've also started preparing my own fermented hot sauce, you can find it here:
It's delicious, I just recently started experimenting with fermentation
MisterBastahrd 154 days ago [-]
If you're worried about sanitizing your gear to prevent infections in your product, do yourself a favor and buy some starsan from a homebrew shop. It's a food-safe sanitizer you use on the gear (bottles, spoons, etc) to ensure that it's safe.
fitsumbelay 155 days ago [-]
the fermentation step is a new one to me. I've always been vinegar, chillies, garlic/onions in the blender and call it a day but the result was always a bit south of satisfactory. excellent post
r0s 154 days ago [-]
Hot take about fermentation in these recipes.
> Lacto-ferment chillis with your choice of veg and/or fruit in a brine solution for a couple of weeks at room temperature.
Room temperature is no kind of standard. Optimal fermentation is up to about 75f max. I live in the south and most of the year room temp for me is at least 76. I've ruined several batches of lacto-fermented experiments before making that connection.
Don't get me started on vague salt measurements like "seawater" taste.
janandonly 154 days ago [-]
It so happens that a few months back a friend of mine started to make his own hot sauces.
Shop bought hot sauces are pretty 'meh' in my experience.
samstave 154 days ago [-]
I love all hot sauces, and my GF brings me random hot sauces often. Most recently gave me a bottle of https://i.imgur.com/f7o1FT9.png TRUFF -- and my goodness, its my favorite one yet. Its amazing - and it pairs well with Wasabe Mayo...
I rally need to make my own, but I mix raosted paprika into a lot of cooking I do with hotsauces...
namdnay 155 days ago [-]
I think it depends on the store. In Montreal there’s a “micro-saucery”, I love the concept (and their sauces are great)
willcipriano 155 days ago [-]
I like Cholula.
upon_drumhead 155 days ago [-]
Cholula is a fine hot sauce, but if you haven't expanded beyond it, there are sauces with a much deeper level of interesting flavors.
Don't get me wrong, I'll douse a chicken wing in franks quite happily, but when it comes to my bacon and eggs in the morning, I prefer something smoked and fuller.
foobarian 154 days ago [-]
I wish I could find how to make Frank's. The recipes on the Internet use the actual Frank's hot sauce as an ingredient.
upon_drumhead 154 days ago [-]
I tried a copy-cat recipe one and it was underwealming. Later, I came across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHlk4GviDXk which talks about their process. I think a key difference between the copy-cat recipes and real Franks is purely the fermentation. It's likely worth giving it a try with the fermentation advice going on here.
ngai_aku 155 days ago [-]
What’s your recommended hot sauce for eggs?
upon_drumhead 154 days ago [-]
I've been enjoying La Posta Hatch Smoked Chile the past month. It's nice and smoky with a decent kick. My last bottle was African Rhino Peri-Peri, which is a much brighter sauce then the smokey ones.
Is that the stuff you get in lots of US restaurants? If so, think it is quite bland. Subjective obviously.
nemo44x 154 days ago [-]
I think you're thinking of Tabasco. Which is supposed to be bland as it doesn't exist to impart new flavors so much as rather make the thing you're eating hot and slightly acidic. Serves a purpose. Hot sauce is a spectrum of intensity and flavors and Tabasco is definitely on the subtle side of the flavor spectrum.
hermitcrab 154 days ago [-]
It might have been Cholula brand tabasco. I don't remember.
michaeldh 154 days ago [-]
Most of the time that's Tabasco sauce.
shaklee3 154 days ago [-]
Tabasco, tapatio, and Cholula are very common in Mexican restaurants in CA
krs_ 154 days ago [-]
Cholula is okay but of the big brands I think El Yucateco is my favorite.
willcipriano 154 days ago [-]
I like that as well, don't have it in my store.
__mharrison__ 154 days ago [-]
I prefer Valentina to Cholula. Also cheaper.
oldpersonintx 155 days ago [-]
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155 days ago [-]
VoodooJuJu 154 days ago [-]
>So make sure the fermentation vessel is airtight and everything is clean
Making it airtight would actually increase the risk of botulism, because the bacteria is anaerobic.
Also, the botulism bacteria wouldn't survive such an acidic and salty fermentation environment anyway. Have a better chance of getting both struck by lightning and winning the lottery multiple times in a row than dying from botulism, even in an environment that's ideal for it.
I wonder why botulism even gets a mention in modern discussions of traditional fermenting and food preservation.
It's unbelievably rare and really only occurs in modern preservation methods, like canning, and commercially-prepared food.
I just don't understand why it gets a mention at all. When I see it pop up in tutorials about traditional curing and fermenting, it's an immediate red flag about the quality of the tutorial. It's one of those common misinformation things that won't die because of all the momentum behind it.
And the misinformation ought to stop, because it's giving us cancer, because industry and home-curers think they need to load nitrites into their meat to make it safe, which is terrible for you.
bsder 154 days ago [-]
> I wonder why botulism even gets a mention in modern discussions of traditional fermenting and food preservation.
Because too many "natural health" people don't understand actual health risks.
Botulism pops up because "<flavor> infused oils" became a thing and people started dumping uncooked garlic into them. And then a bunch of people got sick with botulism because a low salt, neutral pH, anerobic (the oil blocks oxygen) environment is practically tailor-made for incubating botulism.
"Classic" recipes for preservation generally make sure to have salt, nitrates, low pH and little oil/fat (and generally a combination of them). Guess why? Most pathogens don't like salts (curing) or acid (most canning). Some of the worst (like botulism) don't like oxygen and oil/fat can block oxygen.
You can even see the ignorance in the comments here. Some people were talking about putting non-acidic things in a vacuum seal without a pressure boil (240-250F). No. Bad. Very Bad.
Take a look at things playing out in "raw milk" right now. "Pasteurization" was hailed as a breakthrough for a reason--it is.
I hate the "industrialization" of our food chain as much as anybody (I simply cannot find a tomato that doesn't suck). However, you solve that by breaking up the cartels--not by wiping out food safety.
As for nitrates, a lot of the problem is the fact that the "industrial" process pumps the meat with a LOT more nitrates than people would use at home. When properly cured, most of the nitrates in meat have chemically reacted and there is very little residual. Industrial processes worry more about running out and so pump the meat so full of them that there is a ton of nitrate still left in the meat even after curing. It is this unreacted nitrate residue that seems to "cause problems".
Nursie 154 days ago [-]
> I simply cannot find a tomato that doesn't suck
Are you in Australia?
If so I feel your pain. The tomatoes available here taste of basically nothing. In the UK it was the same for most cheap/ordinary/mainstream tomatoes, but you could at least buy the fancy ones from the better/more expensive supermarkets and get something good.
Here in Aus that's not really even an option, the brown ones marketed as "Kumato" are the only thing I've found with really any flavour at all, when they're available. I can't really even find good ones at farmers markets or upmarket grocers, just the same "Truss", "Vine Ripened" and "Roma" varieties that are like crunchy water.
sakerbos 154 days ago [-]
Ooh I felt the same after moving to Australia from South Africa. We found that the veggies tasted blander in general and I have no idea why. Keen to plant some heirloom tomatoes in the spring.
bigstrat2003 154 days ago [-]
> Take a look at things playing out in "raw milk" right now. "Pasteurization" was hailed as a breakthrough for a reason--it is.
Unfortunately, it also makes the milk taste awful. I cannot stand the taste of pasteurized milk, it makes me almost throw up. Raw milk is at least tolerable, if not the tastiest thing in the world.
Nursie 154 days ago [-]
I think that's a very personal take.
I find pasteurised milk quite tasty. I'm probably unusual in that I also don't mind UHT, and am quite fond of Soy, oat and hazelnut milks as well. But lots of people get on with 'normal' milk just fine.
vibrio 153 days ago [-]
I like my chances with raw oysters (vibrio) over raw milk (listeria), and as an infectious disease geek, vibro vulnificus terrifies me. In both cases it’s crucial to be comfortable with the source, processes, and supply chain.
Rendered at 05:57:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard about botulism, that's recklessly irresponsible advice. (Do your own research before taking the advice below.)
The whole point is that:
1. Botulism spores are everywhere.
2. They only reproduce when the conditions are right. Guess what those conditions are? a) Not too acidic b) NO OXYGEN.
3. Soap doesn't kill them. Boiling at at STP doesn't kill them. The only way to kill them is to boil them at a high enough pressure that the temperature.
Therefore, "make sure everything is clean" is useless advice; and "make sure everything is airtight" just helps you make sure the conditions are right to be poisoned.
Two ways to counter botulism. Either:
1. Boil things at the right pressure for long enough (with a pressure gauge to make sure it's actually at the specified pressure) to kill the spores
2. Make sure it's acidic enough to keep the spores asleep.
EDIT: My point wasn't "Don't bottle things like hot sauce at home". I bottle things at home myself. And I bet his recipe is perfectly safe -- not because he keeps things airtight and clean, but because it's acidic.
If he had said, "Watch out for botulism but this is safe because it's acidic", then people using his recipe will make sure to keep things acidic as well, and if they dilute the acidity, they'll be warned to look up the pH required to be safe.
But instead he said, "Watch out for botulism, make sure everything is airtight and clean"; which means people might take his recipe and reduce the acidity, believing themselves still to be safe because they're keeping things airtight and clean. That is what's reckless about the advice.
Also, another condition botulism requires is to be above 5C. So what I actually do myself is bottle things that are acidic, and then keep them in the fridge. I don't typically make more than a few jars a year, so that's sufficient for me; if I was going to can things properly, I'd get pH testers and/or a pressure cooker with a gauge.
Here's some real numbers: between 1976-2009 there have been 3618 confirmed cases of botulism in the USA. 100 per year. You have one in 3,400,000 chances to get botulism if you live in US in any given year. And I bet the vast majority are from eating spoiled or contaminated industrial tinned food, rather than people making hot chili sauce.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460764/
EDIT after rereading the research: of 3618 cases of botulism, 109 were fatal. Of these fatal cases, 61 were due to foodborne botulism. In 33 years. That's a probability of ~1/170,000,000 per year to die of botulism in the US.
Don't be. Read up the facts, and make sure to prepare things right.
This is the point of the warning. Botulism is not some cosmic horror which reaches out and grabs you randomly. It is like a knife. If you do things right it is perfectly safe. If you do things wrong it can kill you. The point of the warnings is to learn where the "edge of the knife" is and how to behave to keep yourself safe.
The point of the comment is that the provided "safety precautions" are wrong. It is as if someone said "to avoid knife injuries make sure to always put your fingers under what you are cutting. That way you will know when your knife is getting blunt." The advice provided is that obviously bad.
> here's some real numbers:
We are not talking about national averages. If you make chilli sauce which is not sufficiently acidic then you bottle it up and close oxygen away from it you created a science experiment to grow botulism bacteria. If you do that you suddenly increased your personal probabilities from those nice and low national numbers to alarmingly high.
The warning is there because people are bad at following instructions. And that is usually fine. When someone is making a cupcake and they forgot the chocolate chips out the cupcakes will be less delicious but won't kill them. With chilli sauce this is not the case. It can literally kill you if you adjust the recipe such that it is not acidic enough anymore. So we warn people about that.
In a way botulism reminds me of stories about vampires or other mythical creatures of evil: They're potentially powerful and scary but have simple weaknesses which, if you know them, render them powerless.
I'd hazard a guess that about zero of those 3618 total cases were related to the consumption of food that was preserved through fermentation.
Per https://www.cdc.gov/botulism/prevention/index.html: "You cannot see, smell, or taste the toxin that causes botulism. But taking even a small taste of food containing the toxin can be deadly."
On a side note, I see that botulism toxin (but not the spores) is destroyed by heating at 185F (84C) for a period of a few minutes. I've always boiled my fermented sauces as a final step because it stops the fermentation from progressing and makes the sauce last longer without developing any further "off" tastes.
1. The botulism spore can only be killed by heating to something very high, like 250C, which can only be achieved at a higher pressure
2. If the conditions are right, the botulism spore spawns to be a botulism bacteria inside your sealed container; and this bacteria creates the botulism toxin.
3. It's the toxin that kills you, not the bacteria. The botulism toxin can be broken down by heating for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, your "boiling fermenting sauces as a final step" happens between 1 and 2, but not between 2 and 3; so the botulism toxin isn't present yet, only the botulism spore, which won't be fazed at all by 85C. If you want to use boiling to protect yourself from the botulism toxin, my understanding was that you'd need to boil it after you open the can for the first time.
Again, I'm not an expert, so make sure to do your own research.
If anyone is concerned about it, the simplest thing to do is buy an inexpensive pH tester and confirm the brine's pH is below 4.6
It's not like you can just seal up a jar and it's going to form botulism, it's necessary that the botulism spores have the necessary resources to multiply, just as it's important that yeast or other fermenting agents require the necessary resources to multiply and colonize. I definitely appreciate your point, but I also think your concern, in the context of fermentation, is overblown.
In fact, I generally assume anything that's fermented properly is safe to eat. If you ferment it, and it doesn't taste bad, it's basically good to go for the human body. This is part of why we now use the term "probiotics" which are mostly bacterial or yeast growths that are involved in fermentation and can help to fight off illness causing bacteria. Beer, wine, kimchi, sour kraut, and pretty much anything else you ferment is safe exactly because of this competitive exclusion.
https://www.nifa.usda.gov/about-nifa/blogs/usdas-complete-gu...
This page refers out to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, which is a web resource with similar guidance and recipes:
https://nchfp.uga.edu/
These recipes do include things like salsas. The point being is that safe canning practices have been well-studied, documented, and already paid for by tax payers. It's a good resource to use as opposed to just winging it.
"If your sauce has a sufficiently high salt and/or acid level it shouldn’t grow anything nasty."
I probably should have said.
"If you are careless, you could end up with botulism, one of the deadliest toxin known to man! But if your sauce has a sufficiently high salt and/or acid level it shouldn’t grow anything nasty. ... To avoid mould and other issues make sure the fermentation vessel is airtight and everything is clean."
Anyway, I'm not trying to tell anyone the detailed process of how to make hot sauce here. Just encouraging them to find out more from someone who is more expert.
Botulism in food is a well-studied subject.
Even particular foods like garlic, notwithstanding aspersions cast in other comments, have empirical studies e.g. [1] that look pretty plausible. Several more reports from reputable sources turn up in the first few pages of internet searches around just garlic.
It is true that there are a lot of traditions and implicit knowledge around food safety, but it seems like a strawman fallacy to ignore what is explicitly known.
We're in a golden age of knowledge, people!
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4348254/
my go-to brine is by weight, which eliminates a bunch of issues:
* 400g water
* 26g salt
this makes for a great brine without trying to estimate or "taste" it to see if it's ok.
in addition, I sometimes use adjuncts:
* garlic - this adds a lot of flavor to the sauce, but could add yeast if you're not careful
* carrots - adds some vegetable flavor and a little bit of sweetness without adding sugar directly
I also don't pasteurize it (heat it up after it's done, or add vinegar), since I prefer the natural change that the sauce has over time. I also don't "thicken" it, you can get a better sauce by using the correct amount of brine when you go to blend it at the end, if all else fails, any leftover brine can be used for other things (I have some great pickles that were started with a partial batch of brine).
it's a fun hobby, but make sure that you can find a home for the extras if you aren't an avid hot sauce eater!
editing to add some tips:
1. if you're dealing with hot peppers, use gloves - they help a lot!
2. the seeds and the pith add a lot of heat - you can remove them and get yourself delicious flavor without the pain.
In my 20s I on more occasions than I’m prepared to admit, rubbed my eye while cooking with peppers. Then I ran to the bathroom, cupped my hands under the water and splashed water in both eyes. This (obviously, in retrospect) left me painfully blind for about half an hour.
I’d note that gloves would have helped in this scenario only if I was smart enough to take them off before splashing water in my eyes. Which branch of that if statement would have been more likely is left as an exercise for the reader.
I have worn gloves each and every time since, when dealing with more than 2 or 3 peppers at habanero heat or above.
Something I learned googling with one eye open while the other was burning from being touched with a habanero contaminated finger :/
They also tasted hot for 3 days
Note that when self made it can be accidentally end up with too much “vegetal” taste to it. It’s been a very long time since I’ve made it so I forgot what my resulting recipe was that addressed that.
On heat tolerance, do some genetic thing where people get one, two or three receptors[1] which give different sensitivity to different people. I had a GF who would struggle with the level of capsaicin I literally wouldn't even notice. I knew a guy who would snack on scotch bonnet peppers straight, which would be impossibly agonising for me.
[1] from memory, doubtless incorrect as well
But "acı" can also mean bitter. You have to look at the context to understand. However things can both be spicy and bitter. In that case it gets complicated :)
Perhaps the lack of a dedicated mapping to "capsaicin sensation" stems historically from England's reputedly bland cuisine...
England's bland food is a relatively recent development, much more recent than the language.
https://edmundstanding.wordpress.com/2020/05/28/hot-peppers-...
Thank goodness for immigration.
But I don't think it's fair to call UK food bland. Done properly it's very good, but what it's not (usually) is heavily seasoned. In no way does that require it to be tasteless, and done properly it isn't.
There is a reason there are thousands of Indian restuarants in England and approximately zero English restaurants in India. ;0)
Thankfully, food has improved vastly in the UK since the 70s.
personally, I'd add a little more than bell peppers, which tend to have a more vegetable flavor. there are some Italian peppers that have a nice sweetness without heat, for instance.
if you're looking for more of a sriracha flavor, add some garlic in there! there's just as much of a world of peppers to explore that isn't burning hot as there is super hot varieties.
Also, check out Habanada peppers.
https://heatonist.com/collections/hot-ones-jr-hot-sauces
A “super mild” line of sauces to introduce kids to hot sauce without overwhelming them. They might be a good starting point to see if she likes it.
I do all my ferments at about 2.5%, maybe 3 for sauces where saltier isn't a problem. I do it all in a vac bag, but the concept is the same, just use the final weight of everything.
I always use 3% of water weight, which in more consistent than weighing the veggies, because the amount of water can vary.
Very unusual to see food-related content on HN. I love it!
> Very unusual to see food-related content on HN. I love it!
:) me too. I really love lacto fermenting things, it's a nice old technique that's very forgiving and rewarding. The flavour you get out of it makes so many things pop, and the noma book is full of ideas (even if I'll never make them quite as fancy)
I'm doing a bunch of kefir now, and someday I'd like to do koji.
as for "when" - put them in the brine with the rest of the peppers, wait your couple of weeks, then blend.
I grow the bird’s eye chilis (piri piri) that is an important part of a number of Portuguese dishes that I like, including wonderful piri piri oil that I drizzle on many things. I always have extra chilis at the end of the year so I make sauce.
There is a Portuguese sauce made from fermented red (sweet, large) peppers that I’ve never been able to get right though. Finding a recipe online is tough because this is a family recipe that gets passed down, many families have their own take on it, and I’m in California and don’t have any Portuguese relatives. If anyone makes massa de pimentão and has a recipe please share
I like them so much I picked my username after them :)
I bought my last batch from that link and they tasted perfect.
I used to just get them from local Filipino stores/communities, if you have any. A lot of people grew them when I was in Florida.
My last house was in the desert, and wasn't able to find any locally so bought those off ebay.
I thought / have observed that the spelling "chili" (single letter l) was used for the US / Mexican dish called "chili con carne", and the spelling "chilly/chillies" was used for the hot pepper that came from the Americas and spread to much of the world.
Edit: Wikipedia says both spellings are used for the hot pepper:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper
Edit 2: See the Spelling and usage section.
It does not mention the y ending, but I have seen it in India.
> Chilli or Chili, a name now commonly used in Asia and Africa, is said to have come from the Nahautl dialect of Mexico and Central America.
> The U.S. Government Standard divided Capsicum into types corresponding to commercial types; paprika, red pepper, ground and crushed. The term "chilli" is not generally used in the U.S., but is used in Britain, India, Africa, and the countries in the East.
> The British Standard Specifications, however, differentiate between chillies and capsicum, obviously based on the degree of pungency. It gives no values but describes "chillies" as pungent small fruits of certain forms of the species C. frutescens L. and describes Capsicum as of varied sizes, generally big, of the species, C. annuum L.
[1] https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/10408398509527412
Can confirm I have never seen "Chilly" as a spelling for the pepper in either country!
In India, chili chicken (probably spelled chilli chicken) is an Indianised-Chinese dry starter or appetizer kind of dish, of small pieces of chicken stir-fried with a tangy dry coating / sauce that includes ginger, garlic and red chillies. You can get vegetarian versions too, like paneer chilli. That coating / sauce is really good. It has tiny solid bits and pieces of ginger and garlic which adds to the taste.
You get it in (Indian) Chinese or multi-cuisine restaurants.
Meanwhile, my fellow Texans have famously bastardized “chile con carne” to refer to spicy beef stew, and would tend to specify “chili pepper” to refer to the actual fruit itself.
Both of the recipes calls for roasting the peppers under low heat (my oven min is 170F) for an hour or so to drive off some water… every time I do that I think I kill off the lacto. I get mold every time I try the fermented version.
If you know of any family recipes I would love to hear them!
Also I’d love to hear about the tech scene in Portugal, my wife and I have been thinking of moving the family there
I have seen some people recommend to put some fresh chillis in with the roasted ones for this reason.
>I get mold every time I try the fermented version.
It is airtight? Is the brine salty enough (2-3% salt to water usually recommended)?
I’ll try adding some fresh peppers in just for the lacto and try again.
Cook down lemons, spices with Piri Piri (dry and fresh both) and throw some uncracked pepper corns in with the dry peppers directly into the jar with great quality olive oil, it’s my favorite condiment
A very very rough recipe is:
- 4 lbs of dried chiles de arbol (no seeds or stems) - 1.5 lbs each of Serranos and Jalapeños - 1 lb of habaneros - 4 large carrots - half cup of garlic - about 2 gallons of white vinegar - a little salt and maybe a cup of water
I like the idea of adding some mangoes from the link so maybe add 2-3?
Rough chop everything and take out stems and the majority of seeds. Start heating the arbols in a very large boil pot outside (on a grill or its own propane burner). Then after 15 mins add the other peppers and salt. 15 mins later add the veggies, 5 mins later pour the vinegar and water if needed in so that it just covers the chiles. You might not use all the vinegar. Heat to a low boil for 2 hours. Let it cool for 20 mins, blend it in batches till smooth. Then transfer the blended batches back to the pot and reboil for 10 mins. Then pot directly into mason jars. Stir occasionally throughout so nothing burns, but some color is good at the beginning.
It feels pretty safe. It’s very very hot but that’s how I like it and makes it last longer. It’s not as smooth as the off the shelf hot sauces, but not quite as thick as the chile hot sauce in Asian restaurants.
Oh and don’t touch your eyes or sensitive areas.
Maybe it’s just me but chiles have decreased in hotness in the past decade. Like a habanero or jalapeño is not as hot as they used to be. For jalapeños, there used to be like 1/5 that would floor you, so their average hotness was quite higher. Now it seems like all jalapeños I buy are the same, which reduces the average heat so I have to add more habaneros.
https://www.dmagazine.com/food-drink/2023/05/why-jalapeno-pe...
1. Chop up bird's eye chilis, add fish sauce and lime juice - boom, prik nam pla. If you don't have fish sauce, bird's eye chilis and white vinegar.
2. White vinegar, sugar and salt, garlic and/or ginger, bird's eye or jalepeno, some bell pepper to cut the heat - stick it in a blender, done. Super delicious.
1. Botulism is nearly a non-issue in lacto fermentation. As the article mentions, salt and acid inhibit its growth. For an extra layer of protection, you can add a bit of vinegar at the start of the process to further encourage the growth of safe microorganisms. Botulism only starts becoming an issue when you have low-salt, low-acid preparations, or when you start the process like you would in traditional canning (boiling the fermentation mixture ahead of time -- getting rid of all competition for the botulism). If you cook the peppers you should make sure to pitch in a significant quantity of yeast and/or lactic acid producing bacteria.
1a. Botulism is a lot higher risk if you stabilize the mixture (the "simmering it in a pan to thicken" step) before storing it. That kills any safe microorganisms and again opens up the door for an infection from something dangerous (though, as the article mentions, it's less risky because of the accumulated salt and acid in the final product).
2. Mold requires a stable, aerobic environment to grow. Completely submerging the peppers suffices, as does using some form of air-lock, but you can also almost always get away with just stirring it twice each day.
3. Sugar can make the fermentation work better. The suggestion of fruit to achieve that is a great idea. As a side-note, mango is particularly delicious fermented on its own (halves or other large chunks, fermented just till there's a lot of CO2 bubbles, making them fruit chunks sparkly, no longer or it gets mushy).
> kills off the fermentation.
4. That has pros and cons. Fermented foods "keep" better while still fermenting (in terms of food safety), but the texture and flavor can degrade (it varies, look at how fantastic kimchi is as an example of longer fermentations being beneficial). Once hybrid strategy if you still want the improved texture from cooking is to reserve some of the pre-cooked sauce and re-introduce after cooking, re-innoculating it with yeast and bacteria. It'll tend to keep a lot longer if you do so. The flavor changes can be good or bad. It'll build up pressure over time though, so don't seal it air-tight.
I don't think fermented hot sauce is taking anybody out. At least, not that way.
(I'm fascinated by this because it's an article of faith that you can't store garlic confit or garlic oil in the fridge, but it's very difficult to find a case of anyone contracting botulism from cooked garlic, and when I get taken out by a case of garlic botulism, you all have my permission to write your dunks directly onto my gravestone).
It's right up there with storing cooked rice in the fridge. Garlic you're at least able to cook long enough to kill the botulism spores, but typical fluffy white rice preparations are nowhere close, and if you had enough spores to start with (this being quite rare, hence why illness and death are rare) you'll have a very dangerous concoction brewing in your fridge.
> beluga flipper
That story's especially wild because it was just a dead whale of unknown age they then processed. Generally though, meats are less safe to ferment than vegetal matter (lower sugar and acid content, higher initial bacterial loads and other parasites). It can be done safely, but where I'm comfortable telling just about anyone veggies and fruits are safe, I'd not want to recommend meat to somebody with the wrong background.
A traditional native Alaskan dish, for anyone else as curious as I was
15 episodes (62 patient cases) in the UK between 1922 and 2005. https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/28/4/337/1622732... Mostly not home-prepared, and of those that were only one was canned vegetables (mushrooms).
It's nasty and can be fatal yes, but in terms of risks in life it just doesn't warrant mentioning, and yet it is so often. (And I do not believe it's bloggers feeling the need to warn about it that's suppressing the numbers!) You're probably more likely to get run over on your way to the shop for whatever you want to can/ferment.
Maybe fearmongering is one of the reasons the deaths are so low?
That, and the fact that the recipes that have become a part of the culture in many cases happen to be recipes that prevent botulism (i.e., things that are sour).
> (And I do not believe it's bloggers feeling the need to warn about it that's suppressing the numbers!)
As for safe recipes being established part of the culture (no puns intended?) - yeah, well that's somewhat the point, C. botulinum spores can't be seen, but other things can, we've developed preservation techniques that work for both, it's rare anyway, it doesn't warrant worrying about specifically. It's the nastiest thing that almost certainly isn't going to happen.
I think my favourite hot sauces have started by drying the chillies, then toasting them in a pan. This adds a lovely smoky, rich flavour.
In terms of other additives, i recently made a rather long winded rum and coke themed hot sauce, the main lesson from which is that orange peel goes amazingly with chilli. I am now thinking about a chocolate orange hot sauce, built around toasted chillies, orange peel, and cocoa powder perhaps. Can i make an orange peel oleo saccharum using citric acid, and use that instead of vinegar? Should i make it oil-based? Use crème de cacao?! Much to ponder.
If you're going to grow your own chillies, i can highly recommend NuMex Bailey:
https://cpi.nmsu.edu/_assets/documents/Bailey.full_.pdf
It's a pequin pepper, so very small, but hot and with good flavour. This particular strain grows like the clappers, forming a compact, dense bush, which is covered in flowers and then fruit, which as the paper says, are very easy to pick when ripe. The productivity in terms of mass of fruit per unit of pot area is far better than anything else i've grown. It seems to be impossible to kill, too.
+1. I spent hours lovingly sanitizing and prepping and waiting for habaneros to ferment; in the end, they added a bit of funky tang, but I didn't feel like it was worth the time. I realized that vinegar-based hot sauce recipes are quicker to iterate on and perfect and taste closer to what I prefer.
However, it's all subjective! Watching something ferment in a container is inherently fun, in the way a terrarium with a small creature in it can be. YMMV.
I wonder if I could get a nice flavour profile from using some smoked/toasted (dried) peppers and some untreated ones in a fermentation? Would there be a nice flavour combination of the Smokey and Tangy aspects that I enjoy?
My last efforts at growing my own chilli’s were going extremely well until I went away for a month, forgot to leave instructions for their care, and they died off beyond recovery.
I'll also second the article's recommendation for Ring of Fire, the Habanero variety (they have a lot of varieties).
If you do that, then the "fuzzies" the article mentioned basically never make an appearance.
Alternatively, ziplock bag filled with water and a little air for buoyancy.
You’ll often see this done with brine instead of water so if the bag develops a leak the salt concentration of the ferment stays the same.
I typically just skim it off.
And you can't get botulism from fermenting. That is only in canning foods, since all the microbes are competing with each other. Good old C. botulinum can't hang.
Makes it really easy to just have tons of bags fermenting without taking up lots of space or reusable containers. The Noma Guide to Fermentation has a lot more info.
I've had pepper ferments that got a little carried away and tightly filled the bag with CO2.
There's a lot of ways to deal with this problem, but I just poke a tiny hole in the bag, let the bug farts out, and cover the hole with a strip of clear tape.
(A lazier method is to plan better and use a bigger bag to begin with. And for those who aren't familiar, vacuum bags can be huge: They're available as continuous uncut rolls.)
Vac bags for me have worked every time for me, I like to make these things with my kids, let them pick things to lacto ferment. Strawberries is the most recent that was excellent (and we'd picked several kilos), the liquid was fantastic for a dressing and the strawbs themselves worked great on meringues.
I’ve only ever had to vent ferments with lots of fruit sugars like blueberry habanero. I just cut the bag, force some of the air out, then fold it over and use a binder clip. I don’t reseal them because the salt pulls out their liquid and I don’t have a chamber vacuum sealer.
I've used a ziplock of water as a fermentation weight. I didn't know I could use a chamber sealer, and I have one (the "cheap" model VP112S - at $600 and only 57 lbs. - but I bought it 7 years ago and it's still going). I think I need to try this with some chilis.
I did lacto once because I had a bunch of habanero from the farmers market and wanted something that could sit around for a while. But I usually don't plan ahead, so typically it's habanero and a garlic clove under the broiler and then blended with some lime juice - a bottle at a time, as needed. A recipe I got from Rick Bayless.
The grocery store has been out for a few weeks, so I may need a different strategy. And I should branch out more.
If it improves the flavor right away, you can try option C of simmering not quite the entire batch, so that fermentation resumes after you recombine.
Won't leaving it fermenting cause pressure to build up in the bottle? And the contents to exit when you open it?
That being said, this does sound really fun.
As long as you're following good practices (cleaning, temperature, proper salt ratios, verifying acidity, following researched recipes), it's pretty safe.
edit: I'd add to this, I don't preserve meats, that's the risky stuff.
Please do not do people the disservice of conflating botulism with mold. They are not even close to being the same fucking thing.
Twice.
Please kindly go white knight somewhere else. Your additional agitation is unnecessary, and is not helpful for anyone.
I was a bit nervous the first time we salt cured our own bacon, but it turned out way better than any bacon I've bought from a store!
I stuck with the 2.5% by weight ratio of salt to bacon. We have a nice chamber vacuum sealer so I used that to seal the meat while curing it. I don't have a slicer unfortunately, but partially freezing the slab right before slicing made it easy enough. Slicing soft pork fat is no fun, getting the meat a bit stiff and icy works wonders when slicing!
On the first batch I used maple syrup basically the same as the recipe. The author noted wanting to double the amount of syrup - I stuck with 2% by weight and it was almost too sweet for me, I wouldn't do more.
I actually just sliced and packaged another slab tonight. For this one I did half as much syrup and did a pretty strong costing of cracked black pepper. No clue how it will turn out, but it smelled great when slicing it! I'll probably try a few slices tomorrow morning before freezing most of it for later.
[1] https://tasteofartisan.com/how-to-cure-bacon/
I wonder if your experience with maple syrup is different from the author’s because of differences in pork belly size. My recent food experiences lead me to believe that sugar doesn’t penetrate solid foods deeply even when left over days or weeks. If that’s true, your unwashed bacon and the author’s could vary from the author’s by surface area. Or it could be a subjective matter of taste.
By 'air' I'm meant air leak from stuff you're trying to can or preserve, as others began mentioning preserves and canning
In decades of canning and fermenting across four generations, my family has never gotten food poisoning from it. Mushrooms on the other hand…
If you go off script, that's on you.
Only one ingredient must be measured before it is added: Salt.
There is just not anything here that could be improved by adding specificity:
1. Use pure-ish water, if any water is used at all. Chlorine is bad. Buffering from dissolved minerals is also bad. (Distilled water is cheap; use that.)
2. Weigh water, if any, along with the peppers.
3. Add 2% non-iodized table salt, by weight. (Kosher salt works here, and has other uses.)
4. Mix it up in a suitable vessel (I prefer vacuum bags because the results are both flawless and easy), and put in a dark-ish place that is not cold.
5. Wait.
That's really all there is.
https://www.openagrar.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/openagr...
I don't think you need to worry about iodine.
I'll still use kosher salt in my ferments because...well, just because. For one thing, the larger salt corns dissolve more slowly, and this gives me a longer period to work before chunks of chili pepper react with salt and start producing liquid. I've been surprised before by how quickly this can happen. (Slower/less-liquid-ey is easier for me to handle with my particular (cheap, Aldi special) vacuum sealer.)
But if I get to that point in the process and discover that I don't have any kosher salt today for some reason, then: I'll have no reservations about using regular iodized table salt instead.
I didn't lacto-ferment them but I did make one similar to your mango one (I used a fresh pineapple and fresh mango plus some honey and IIRC cumin) and like yourself, found it one of the most amazing sauces I've ever had.
It was sweet and tangy, super flavourful and HOT AS HELL! I put it on everything and because of the "chilli high" I was getting from it decided to nickname it Pineapple Express.
I was hoping to make another batch this season but the plant, despite over-wintering well, has barely grown and is only just now producing flowers which I'm pretty sure will produce very small pods if they are even successful...
Basic recipe: blend together chilis, kombucha, and some filler (e.g. carrots, or fruit).
"frozen chillies (30 g), machine-chopped, boiled up with spring water (35 ml) and Himalayan salt (2.5 g), left to cool, mixed with ginger live kombucha (35 ml), left for a week (i was in a rush). Future versions could use twice as much chilli. Tolerably hot, with a heat that plateaus and then lasts."
The chillies would have been Numex Bailey which i grew myself. I pick the fruits when they're ripe and freeze them until i have enough for a batch of sauce, hence using frozen chillies. Should work fine with fresh too.
I'm now patiently growing some jalapeños in my backyard. Meanwhile, anyone know a source for red jalapeños?
https://www.reciperium.com/woile/fermented-chili-sauce
It's delicious, I just recently started experimenting with fermentation
> Lacto-ferment chillis with your choice of veg and/or fruit in a brine solution for a couple of weeks at room temperature.
Room temperature is no kind of standard. Optimal fermentation is up to about 75f max. I live in the south and most of the year room temp for me is at least 76. I've ruined several batches of lacto-fermented experiments before making that connection.
Don't get me started on vague salt measurements like "seawater" taste.
Shameless plug for his Dutch website here: https://lavasaus.nl/
I rally need to make my own, but I mix raosted paprika into a lot of cooking I do with hotsauces...
Don't get me wrong, I'll douse a chicken wing in franks quite happily, but when it comes to my bacon and eggs in the morning, I prefer something smoked and fuller.
https://lapostachileco.com/products/hatch-smoked-chile-hot-s...
https://www.hotsauce.com/african-rhino-peri-peri-hot-sauce/
https://cantinaroyalhotsauce.com/collections/frontpage/produ...
The runner up (and my favorite sauce for beans and rice) is The Brinery’s Aura Solanales. It’s like a fresher, more vibrant version of Franks/Crystal.
https://www.thebrinery.com/our-products
Making it airtight would actually increase the risk of botulism, because the bacteria is anaerobic.
Also, the botulism bacteria wouldn't survive such an acidic and salty fermentation environment anyway. Have a better chance of getting both struck by lightning and winning the lottery multiple times in a row than dying from botulism, even in an environment that's ideal for it.
I wonder why botulism even gets a mention in modern discussions of traditional fermenting and food preservation.
It's unbelievably rare and really only occurs in modern preservation methods, like canning, and commercially-prepared food.
I just don't understand why it gets a mention at all. When I see it pop up in tutorials about traditional curing and fermenting, it's an immediate red flag about the quality of the tutorial. It's one of those common misinformation things that won't die because of all the momentum behind it.
And the misinformation ought to stop, because it's giving us cancer, because industry and home-curers think they need to load nitrites into their meat to make it safe, which is terrible for you.
Because too many "natural health" people don't understand actual health risks.
Botulism pops up because "<flavor> infused oils" became a thing and people started dumping uncooked garlic into them. And then a bunch of people got sick with botulism because a low salt, neutral pH, anerobic (the oil blocks oxygen) environment is practically tailor-made for incubating botulism.
"Classic" recipes for preservation generally make sure to have salt, nitrates, low pH and little oil/fat (and generally a combination of them). Guess why? Most pathogens don't like salts (curing) or acid (most canning). Some of the worst (like botulism) don't like oxygen and oil/fat can block oxygen.
You can even see the ignorance in the comments here. Some people were talking about putting non-acidic things in a vacuum seal without a pressure boil (240-250F). No. Bad. Very Bad.
Take a look at things playing out in "raw milk" right now. "Pasteurization" was hailed as a breakthrough for a reason--it is.
I hate the "industrialization" of our food chain as much as anybody (I simply cannot find a tomato that doesn't suck). However, you solve that by breaking up the cartels--not by wiping out food safety.
As for nitrates, a lot of the problem is the fact that the "industrial" process pumps the meat with a LOT more nitrates than people would use at home. When properly cured, most of the nitrates in meat have chemically reacted and there is very little residual. Industrial processes worry more about running out and so pump the meat so full of them that there is a ton of nitrate still left in the meat even after curing. It is this unreacted nitrate residue that seems to "cause problems".
Are you in Australia?
If so I feel your pain. The tomatoes available here taste of basically nothing. In the UK it was the same for most cheap/ordinary/mainstream tomatoes, but you could at least buy the fancy ones from the better/more expensive supermarkets and get something good.
Here in Aus that's not really even an option, the brown ones marketed as "Kumato" are the only thing I've found with really any flavour at all, when they're available. I can't really even find good ones at farmers markets or upmarket grocers, just the same "Truss", "Vine Ripened" and "Roma" varieties that are like crunchy water.
Unfortunately, it also makes the milk taste awful. I cannot stand the taste of pasteurized milk, it makes me almost throw up. Raw milk is at least tolerable, if not the tastiest thing in the world.
I find pasteurised milk quite tasty. I'm probably unusual in that I also don't mind UHT, and am quite fond of Soy, oat and hazelnut milks as well. But lots of people get on with 'normal' milk just fine.