The final haul of peppers for the season. We had picked all these in the rain before our the first freeze in late October so we didn’t lose everything. 
Helios Habanero – One of our favorite and best yielding peppers. 
Labeled and dated peppers ready to ferment. 
We kept our fermentation station in plain sight so we could monitor our ferments. 
Sanitized bottling supplies. 
Wash your dishes with COLD WATER to avoid aerosolizing capsaicin into the air. 
Save the separated hot pepper brine in the fridge to use for cooking. 
Dehydrate the pepper mash for around 5 hours at 140 degrees to make spice blends. 
Bottled and labeled – Not Your Average New Englander’s Hot Sauces!
Below you’ll find the simple, easy to follow base recipe that we used for our ferments. We had 10 quarts set up in our fermentation station and experimented with the pepper ratios. All the peppers, onions and carrots came from our garden while the garlic and ginger were sourced from local farmers here in Central MA.
Ingredients
- Filtered water
- Kosher or sea salt
- 3 cups habanero peppers chopped
- 1 small onion chopped
- 1 carrot thinly sliced
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon fresh ginger
Fermentation Procedure
Supplies: quart sized mason jar, fermentation kit or fermentation weight and airlock lids, Woozy bottles, funnel, blender, Star San, heat gun or hair dryer, rubber apron, gloves
- Roughly chop peppers, onions, carrots, garlic and ginger. Pack into a quart size mason jar. Tamp mixture down and allow for 1-2 inches of headspace. Place fermentation weight on top of pepper mix.
- Mix 1 1/4 teaspoon salt per 1 cup water (3 grams of salt per 100g of water) to create a 3% brine.
- Pour brine over peppers so they are fully submerged.
- Cover with an airlock lid and store out of direct sunlight for at least a week.
- Stop the fermentation by putting the jar in the fridge once the peppers taste to your liking.
- There are many ways to finish the hot sauce. The simplest being to blend all the ingredients together for a chunkier sauce with all the probiotic benefits.
- Spray all your equipment (bottles, utensils, bowls, blender, caps, etc.) with Star San to sanitize. Leave on for at least 1 minute. Do not rinse. Pour any excess out.
- Pour the sauce into sterilized bottles through a funnel. Cap bottles and refrigerate for up to 1 year.
Notes
- Taste! Be sure to taste throughout the process and alter the ingredients as you find fitting.
- Use any combination of peppers that you enjoy! Adding bell peppers will tame the heat.
- Keep your fermentation jars somewhere you can see them every day. We cleared a shelf off in the kitchen so we could monitor the activity and prevent mold growth. Otherwise, out of site, out of mind.
- You may have to “burp” the jars. Remove the lid to let out some of the gases. If you don’t it’ll bubble over and you’ll have a sticky mess. This airlock fermentation lid kit vents the air without the mess.
- Our ferments lasted between 1-2 months. The longer you let it go, the cloudier it will become and the more intense the flavors will be.
- We aimed for a pH of 3.5 or below for all of our sauces.
- 1 quart jar filled approximately 4 5 oz woozy bottles or 6 3 oz woozy bottles.
- Save the separated hot pepper brine in the fridge to use for cooking.
- Keep the pepper mash to dehydrate for around 5 hours at 140 degrees to make spice blends.
- Check out more Hot Sauce Recipes for alternative ways to finish your hot sauce.
Safety Tips
- Wear gloves at all times when handling hot peppers.
- Wash everything that comes in to contact with hot peppers with cold water.
- When sending sauces to friends and family, opt for creating a shelf stable hot sauce and stop the fermentation otherwise the sauce may keep bubbling and break the bottle.
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