Fermented hot sauce made with a brine/mash combo

 

FOR THE FERMENTING

Needed:

1 large STERILIZED mason jar + lid/elastic + piece of clean fabric big enough to go cover the top.

 400 grams of fresh chiles (any combo you like depending on the heat level you’re looking for). I usually make it with mostly medium heat chiles with a couple of super hots (habanero, fatalii, reaper) thrown in for good measure. You can also use a combo that includes some sweet peppers (say you’ve got only tiny aji charipita or only super hots – the sweet peppers bulk it out and add colour)

Garlic/Carrot/Berries/Other fruits etc.   if you want

1 Litre of filtered/uncholorinated water at room temperature

30g/3 tbsp of fine sea salt

How to:

Combine water and salt, making sure it all dissolves.

Stem and deseed the chiles. You can keep some seeds if you want a bit more heat. USE GLOVES and maybe even a mask and goggles to do this. 

Put chiles and garlic (and other ingredients if you’re using them) into a food processor and waz them up to a coarse puree.

Transfer the mash to a 1 litre mason jar making sure to leave an about 5 cm at the top. Tap the jar lightly to remove any air pockets.

Fill with brine and make sure the mash is covered. It tends to float to the top, so either use a fermenting weight in the top or take a small Ziploc bag and fill it with water (getting all the air out) and stuff it in the top of the jar so it pushes the mash down.

 

Cover with the piece of cloth using either the lid rid or an elastic band. If you have an airlock lid or other fermenting lid, then use that but you don’t really need one. The cloth lets it breathe. You can also just use a regular lid and burp it every day so the gas can escape.

Put a label on the jar that lets you know which chiles are in it as well as the date it was started.

Store the jar somewhere cool and dark. I usually put it in the basement laundry. Fermenting will take about two weeks but check up on it every day. The brine will start to go very cloudy I usually make a second batch of brine and fill up the jar if the chiles aren’t totally covered. You’ll definitely be smelling it.

(Measure for pH with a good pH meter to ensure the brine is below 4.6. This is the pH at which botulinum toxin can no longer form and is a good minimum acidity to target. Lots more details about fermenting, pH levels etc here.)

Note on kahm yeast (or that white stuff that you might see floating on the top of your ferment): It’s not harmful to eat but best to remove it when you see it. Scrape any visible yeast off of the top of your ferment with a clean utensil as soon as you see it form. Once it forms it usually continues to grow. Watch your contaminated ferment very closely and continue to clean away yeast everyday if needed. You many need to add more fresh brine to make sure your chiles are covered.

You can ferment for longer than two weeks to give it more of that funky/sour fermented flavour. You can leave it as long as you like as long as it doesn’t spoil or get moldy. I usually do about three weeks and then make sauce or pop them in the fridge for a few months.

MAKING THE SAUCE

Needed:

Bottles for putting the sauce in.

·       Woozy/sauce bottles – I like the 5 oz ones

·       Any other glass container you can find in any size.

·       Just be sure to sterilize all jars and lids with boiling water for at least 10 minutes before using them.

Small stainless steel funnel (it needs to be able to fit into the top of your sauce bottles)

Additional ingredients:

If you didn’t put garlic or fruit into your ferment, add them now. I use 2-3 cloves of garlic for 1 mason jar full of chile mash

1 tbsp honey

¾ cup cider vinegar

¼ cup water

Method:

Drain the chiles through a fine strainer, reserving the brine

Put drained chiles, ¾ of the brine, vinegar, honey, water and any other ingredients into the blender and waz it up until it’s very smooth. Maybe 2-3.  If it’s still very thick add a bit more of any of the liquids (brine will make it saltier, vinegar will make it more sour, water will just thin it).

Pour it into a stainless steel pot and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 15 minutes.

If you want a fairly runny sauce, you can strain this sauce but if you like it a bit thicker, just use as is.

Let the sauce cool a little, then pour it into a something with a spout so it will be easier to decant into the bottles. I just use a large glass measuring jug.

Using your funnels to avoid a mess, pour the hot sauce into the bottles. Seal them up. Put some pretty labels on and you’re good to go!

 ©️ Gail J. Cohen 2022

Chocolate-tinged red enchilada sauce

 This recipe makes a pretty traditional Mexican red enchilada sauce but the addition of some dark chocolate (I used the fantastic organic sea salt chocolate from Canadian chocolate company Xauxa) gives it a little more richness and depth.

Yield: 4 cups

Ingredients:

8 ancho chiles
2 pasilla chiles
3 guajillo chiles
1 medium onion quartered
2 plum or 1 large tomato
3 cloves garlic (skin on)
1/2 tsp Mexican oregano
1/2 tsp marjoram
3 tbsp canola or avocado oil
20 g Xuaxa sea salt dark chocolate, chopped
salt to taste

Method:

Wipe chiles clean and remove stems and seeds. Dry roast them in a hot pan or on a comal (no oil) for about 10 or 15 seconds each side. Don’t let them burn or your sauce will be bitter.  Soak chiles in a bowl of boiled water for about 20 minutes to soften.

Roast the onion, tomatoes, and garlic in the pan or on comal. Let the garlic cool and remove the skin.

Put the soaked chiles, onion, tomatoes, garlic, oregano and marjoram into a blender. (Save the chile soaking water). Blend all of it until smooth, about 3 minutes. It’ll feel like it’s a very long time but your patience will pay off with a silky smooth sauce. If sauce seems too thick add a small amount of the chile soaking water.

 

Heat two tablespoons of cooking oil in a medium sized pot.  Pour the sauce into the pot to fry it (be careful of potential spitting as the liquid hits the hot oil). Add the chopped chocolate and stir it into the sauce. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes until the sauce has thickened. It will also turn a deeper shade of red. Check and stir occasionally to make sure it doesn’t stick. The sauce is ready when it coats the back of a spoon.

Add salt to taste.

Allow the sauce to sit for at least 2 hours so that the flavours can marry.

Once your sauce is ready, use it to make your favourite enchiladas rojos. I pretty much guarantee no matter how you choose to make your enchilada that this sauce will be better than most. It will keep in the fridge for about 5 days or freeze it for use anytime.

 © Gail J Cohen 2020

Blow your socks off 7-pot chocolate chile and honey BBQ sauce

What's the point of growing chiles in your garden if you aren't going to experiment with crazy sauces? This one uses 7-pot chocolate chiles (aka: 7 Pot Douglah), which is one of the hottest peppers in the world coming in at about 2 million on the Scoville scale. It's got a fruity nutty flavour but mostly these chiles are just fiery - as is this bbq sauce.

If you like hot chicken wings, this is the sauce for you!

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Yield: About 500 ml or 2 cups.

Ingredients:

2 finely chopped 7-pot chocolate chiles/habaneros/carolina reapers etc
(use 1 if you are not in the mood to remove layers from inside your mouth and throat 😊)
2 cups ketchup
½ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp honey (raw is best)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
3-4 drops liquid smoke
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp onion powder
1 tsp kosher salt
¼ cup of water

Method:

Mix the black pepper, garlic and onion powders and the kosher salt in the ¼ cup of water and stir it up making sure there’s no clumps.

Stir chopped chiles, ketchup, honey, vinegar and brown sugar together in a pot over medium heat until it’s smooth.

Add the Worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, lime juice and water with the seasoning to the chile and ketchup mixture in the pot and stir thoroughly. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat to low. Simmer for about 20 minutes. If it’s too thick for your liking, add a bit more water.

Remove from heat and let cool. It will keep in the fridge for a few weeks if put into sterilized glass containers. Also freezes well.

© 2020 Gail J Cohen

 

Ancho-guajillo chile BBQ sauce

Ingredients
• 2 dried guajillo chiles
• 4 dried ancho chiles
• 2 cups boiled water
• 1 cup cold water
• ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup lime juice
• ¼ cup tomato paste
• ¼ cup mezcal
• 2 tbsp molasses
• 3 tbsp (30 mL) brown sugar
• 1 small finely diced onion (about ½ cup/125 ml)
• 4 cloves minced garlic
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles. The easiest was is to cut the top off and then make a slit down one side with a small, sharp knife then remove the seeds.

Heat a non-stick pan or comal on the stove. Lightly toast the chiles until they soften: no more than 30 seconds on each side. Be very careful not to char the chiles as it will make your sauce bitter.  Immerse the softened chiles into a bowl with the boiled water and let them sit for 20 minutes until they’re rehydrated.

In the meantime, prepare all the other ingredients so you’re ready to roll. Once the chiles are rehdryated, roughly chop them. Keep the soaking water.

In a medium saucepan, add all the ingredients including the chopped chiles plus ¼ of water or the soaking liquid if it’s not bitter. Bring to a boil then reduce to low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Your sauce will go from a bright red to a deep reddish/brown and thicken up slightly. You don’t want to reduce it too much though because the sauce has to be pourable.

Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes. Then pour it all into a blender and waz it up until you have a smooth sauce. Taste and adjust the seasonings. If it’s too thick, add a bit more of the soaking water. This sauce won’t be very spicy so if you want to add a bit more zing you can put in a pinch of chile powder.

This sauce is great on just about anything including grilled chicken, beef ribs, veggie burgers or whatever you feel like grilling up!

I'm smokin' hot (sauce)

Every year I plant hot peppers in my lovely little garden. I tend to have a bit of a variety but every year I put in cayenne peppers because they never disappoint. This year I only had one plant but supplemented it with some serranos and jalapenos, so had a good variety of hot peppers. And at the end of the season, there are always lots left over. So what to do with lots of fiery little chiles?  Well make them into hot sauce, of course! 

Here's my quite simple hot sauce recipe from the archives:

Yield: about 100 ml

Ingredients:

1 dozen cayenne peppers
2 heads of garlic
3/4 cup of vinegar
salt
pinch of sugar

I had a lot of cayenne peppers and the others that I also grew, so threw a few of those in the mix, and made 4x the recipe.

.

First cut off the stem, slit, and remove the seeds of each pepper. Please do this with gloves. And don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth while you're doing the deed. The burn is fierce.

The traditional Tobasco Sauce has "aged" peppers but in the age of instant gratification, I deepened the flavour by roasting the peppers a bit. I used my favourite Mexican style of dry roasting on the comal, but you can do it in a large non-stick frying pan or by broiling them in the oven until the skin turns a bit black. Some people suggest taking the skins off after the roasting but seriously, that's a bunch of fiddling around that takes up time I'll never get back. So I just tossed them, the garlic (which I also roasted but there's no need to), and the vinegar into the blender and wazzed it all up.

Once it's all lovely and liquidized, simmer the mix on the stove for about 20 minutes. At this point, the whole kitchen, if not house, will start smelling like hot sauce. There may be some burning eyes. It's all for a good cause.

Once the simmering of the flavours is done, run the whole thing through a sieve to clear out the pulp, seeds, and skin.

This, I would say is the time to add the salt, if you're not too busy forgetting to do it like I did, and sugar.

You need to prepare some jars to put this lovely concotion in. I didn't have any traditional style bottles so I used small jam jars (125 ml each). They need to be washed out with boiling water and new lids prepared in boiling water. Once that's all ready, pour the sauce in, seal and you're ready to go with some smokin' hot sauce!