Fermented Hot Sauces

[358156 hp]

We had an unexpected hard freeze kill off almost everything. My herbs, and my tabasco plant were inside, and so survived. So I move them indoors and out, depending on the weather. The tabasco seems to like this game, I picked the ripe peppers and am making a vinegar base sauce, but I had plenty of green tabascos still on the plant so I kept watering and feeding it. It is rewarding me with more flowers, and more peppers. Since it's in a 5 gal. bucket I can play this game as long as it can. It's sitting in the middle of the kitchen at this moment. Tomorrow will be warm enough for it to spend most of the day outdoors soaking up sun, and I'll water it really good as well.

 

[fiver]

chuckle.
it's almost laughable what we go through to not spend 1.49 for a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

every year it's wins and losses.
this year was a struggle to grow 3 decent soft ball size eggplants, last year nobody wanted to even hear the word egg after july let alone eggplant.
this year it was cucumbers, i had 3 different types take off and go insane, i'll be eating pickles from them for the next 3 years.
probably won't get any next year... LOL.
it was also the best year i've ever had for winter squash, but the summer squash was hit or miss all over town.
Littlegirl got one anemic zucchini, i was putting straight neck squash in the neighbors mail boxes, but my golden zucchini's hit hard for about 2 weeks then went into slow motion for the rest of the year.

the hot peppers had a good growth spurt and hung on in the covered boxes all the way up until the first week of October, then blap done and getting smoked.
the bell peppers i experimented some.
i started 3 in each pot and transplanted at least 1 from each set.
i kept the transplanted ones inside or in the green house for about 10 days longer even though i had the others in a covered box.
the early ones got peppers sooner, but they were smaller and took longer to mature.
the late ones took longer to put peppers on, but they got a lot bigger, and i got a second cut of slightly smaller ones later.

i have to focus on one plant at a time every year and try a few things to see what works for what, then try to duplicate it again.
sometimes it works, sometimes i'm left scratching my head.

 

[RicinYakima]

Those of us who live north of 45*, are at the luck of the draw. If you can, you can get by because you don't have every year growing seasons. This was a cherry tomato year for us, but no Early Girls and Beef Steaks didn't even get to full size before frost. May snows wiped out most of everything.

 

[hporter]

The wife's most productive Habanero plant is the only one that survived the heat of summer. It has started producing again, she picked a few small orange ones this past week. There are a lot of green Habaneros on the plant, they are just not as large as the spring crop the plant produced last year.

I was hoping my Birdseye pepper would survive, but we had a brutally hot summer with very little rain. I of course watered it periodically, but that intense heat puts a lot of stress on the plants. If our evenings would have cooled down a little more, I think I would have saw a better recovery of the plants this fall. It is barely hanging on, but I haven't had the heart to compost it yet. I miss fresh Birdseye peppers in my morning eggs.

But I managed to rebuild the in-ground garden, tilled in my finished compost and the wife planted cabbages and broccolini. The composted peppers from last Spring are popping up in the bed by the hundreds. Makes me curious which ones they are. Going to let a few mature, and see!

 

[358156 hp]

My tomato plants got planted late because of the May snow, Then we we went to scorching hot temps by mid July, making pretty much everything go dormant. I watered daily, but nothing would set fruit. So I ended up covering everything during the day with a reflective tarp in mid-August and saved most of the plants, but tomatoes were pretty much done by September. They rallied in Mid Sept and started setting fruit, but none of it ever ripened. I ended up buying tomatoes at a Farmers Market to can. Ironically, we had some sales on canned goods locally in October and I also stocked up with commercially canned food as well.

A friends wife slaved over their whoop-ass huge American Canner, putting up a huge amount of tomato sauce. When her canning was done and in storage the price on canned tomatoes dropped to about 50 cents a can. She said she looked at her husband and said only one word "really?". My jalapenos did really well, and ended up freeze-dried. Anahiems and poblanos did mediocre, and got smoked with cherrywood, then freeze dried. Zucchini was stillborn. I got one zucchini before heatstroke killed it. Herbs got moved indoors every other day.

I'm just glad we had those two back to back canned food sales.

 

[L Ross]

I pulled my fermented Fresno chilis today and went looking for this thread. Glad I did because I didn't know it was still active, as I have gotten no notification of new posts.

So 3 weeks into lacto-fermented Fresno chiles and I strained them out of the brine. I used a water salt brine of about 3% salt, submerged the chunks of peppers, held them down with a bag of glass things that look like flattened marbles. I used the Pickle Pipe fermentation silicone lids and got a perfect ferment, no yeast , no mold. Picked a piece of pepper out of the strainer and ate it straight. It was good, but the skins are tough.

Got out the blender and dumped in the chunks, 1/4 cup of brine and 1/4 cup of Brag's Apple Cider Vinegar. Blended for a while, added another 1/4 cup each of the brine liquid and vinegar, blended some more. Added another 1/4 cup of the brine and blended until it was as smooth as I can get it. The skins are unpleasant so I strained it, using a spoon to force the liquid out of the mash. I ended up with a velvety smooth, mild hot sauce that I think is going to be very useful.

I can see this is going to be as addictive as salsa making. My next batch is already in the fermenting jar. I took two pounds of red ripe jalapeños and smoked one pound and chopped both the smoked and the raw remaining pound into the fermentation jar and submerged in brine. I threw in 3 smashed cloves of garlic with this batch.

Holy crap, I learned how to add a tilde to jalapeño.

 

[L Ross]

My next ferment will be the mash style like RockyDoc started this thread over a year ago and using JW's yogurt whey tip to jack up the ferment. Darn this is fun.

Whatever happened to the idea of starting a food/recipe section? Hell we all eat more'n we shoot.

 

[358156 hp]

Vitamix blenders can pulverize the skins, seed, and everything. I'm really feeling the need for one this year. We'll see what Santa thinks.

 

[hporter]

Vitamix blenders

If you have a local Costco, they have good prices on the basic Vitamix blender. I used mine the last time I did a pepper ferment. They do work very well.

 

[Rockydoc]

chuckle.
it's almost laughable what we go through to not spend 1.49 for a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

It’s because Tabasco sauce is too hot and I don’t like the flavor.

 

[L Ross]

It’s because Tabasco sauce is too hot and I don’t like the flavor.

Yup, I find it to be better than nuthin' which aint high praise. The stuff I made is leaps and bounds better, (for my taste), than Tabasco.

 

[JWFilips]

Well guys hate to say this but The original 3 year ferment Tabasco and even Frank's Red hot, is a great goal to shoot for.
Not for the heat, mind you, but for the subtile flavors in their ferments! They are exceptional! Tabasco only one drop...Frank's since it is only age Cayenne, wel I can use that a a swirling sauce!
Rocky's Cowhorn fermented sauce is pretty close in complexity! I like that very much and it isn't biting!

 

[L Ross]

Well guys hate to say this but The original 3 year ferment Tabasco and even Frank's Red hot, is a great goal to shoot for.
Not for the heat, mind you, but for the subtile flavors in their ferments! They are exceptional! Tabasco only one drop...Frank's since it is only age Cayenne, wel I can use that a a swirling sauce!
Rocky's Cowhorn fermented sauce is pretty close in complexity! I like that very much and it isn't biting!

JW, I can see I need to develop my palate when it comes to hot sauces.To me, regular Tabasco had a dry flat taste and too much vinegar. I like Frank's but haven't had it in awhile. Part of my prejudice against Tabasco was developed when I learned motorcycles weren't allowed onto he island by the McIlennys. That got my back up and I can be stubborn and unforgiving. That said, I really like Tabasco Sriracha sauce. Stumbled over that in a local cafe one morning looking for something to drizzle over my Mexican omelette.

But, even though it took over a year from Rockydoc's original post I have finally and successfully made a batch of fermented pepper sauce and I can see that first success is only going to encourage me to dabble more. I am enjoying learning and understanding the use of peppers in flavoring my food. The whole concept is fascinating. Drying, roasting, toasting, smoking, fermenting, grinding, used fresh in foods, salsas, vinegar sauces, and now fermented sauces.

A serious handicap to this endeavor will be my personal distaste for gardening. Oh, I can get excited about it and built raised beds for my wife's efforts, but I find weeding tedious and boring. How she can spend hours pulling weeds in her flower beds amazes me. I start thinking Round-Up and big torch. JW and fivers gardening exploits both impress and depress me.

Because of that personal failing my choices in peppers is quite limited.

 

[Rockydoc]

I grow all my peppers in big pots and planters on my back porch. No weeding necessary. Look back in this thread and you will find a post on “wicking planters”. I made some of them, but to me it was a lot of expense and work just to keep from having to water the plants every other day. Large planters/pots work just fine for me.

 

[JWFilips]

This year I did the same because of the deer in my regular gardens!
Big pots are a plus...Minimum size is 5 gallon but 7 to 10 gallon is better.

Use a good potting soil like Miracle Gro potting soil and never use Anything they sell that is called "garden soil" in any container! I start my pepper indoors under lights 2 to 3 months before the last expected frost! Most peppers need a long growing season

 

[358156 hp]

It’s because Tabasco sauce is too hot and I don’t like the flavor.

I think this batch will mellow out nicely with a decent amount of garlic, onion, and perhaps a handful of Thai Basil.

 

[L Ross]

I think this batch will mellow out nicely with a decent amount of garlic, onion, and perhaps a handful of Thai Basil.

Was it fermented with the garlic, onion, and basil or can you add that after the peppers are fermented?

 

[358156 hp]

Was it fermented with the garlic, onion, and basil or can you add that after the peppers are fermented?

I didn't ferment it. I may have enough peppers left for one more batch, and I may try fermenting that batch.

 

[hporter]

wicking planters

I was very disappointed in the wicking planters performance. It just gets too hot in Houston for a pepper plant in a 5 gallon plastic bucket - soil temps rise too much.

 

[fiver]

chuckle.
i just planted a bunch of 'future' trees in the upper garden.
they will probably take 5-7 years before they figure our weather out and actually produce any fruit.
but in the mean time they provide just enough shade to keep the dirt in the boxes moist for more than a day.
between that and the cardboard topper holding the moisture underneath i get away with watering maybe every 3 days or so during our hottest time of the year.
it also makes it so weeding is a 20 minute a day drive-by type thing throughout the entirety of the garden.
i do put in some time in the spring getting everything prepped but after that it's more or less a wander through to check on stuff, open and close the lids, or make some adjustments to the covers.