Fermented Jalapeño Hot Sauce

Just a few weeks ago we went out of town on a rather long 1800 mile road trip to take the kids to see family.. the night before we left, we realized that we had a fridge full of local organic produce from our CSA.

Our trip was pretty much last minute, and as much as I wanted to get out of town, I didn’t want to come back to rotten, spoiling produce in the bottom of the fridge (who would??!). So we pulled everything out and within minutes used it up in various ways (more to come!).

This hot sauce is an incredibly easy, delicious way to make something that is gut healthy – it requires just a few simple things and your patience as you wait for it to ferment.

This hot sauce has a strong flavor – not just garlic and onion, but a pungent tangy salsa that is far more rich than the hot sauce you will find on store shelves.  Despite it being jalapeños, it’s really not overly spicy – you could definitely kick it up a notch though by using hotter peppers.

This fermented hot sauce takes a few minutes to throw together – in fact, prepare the jalapeños and then take off out of town for 10 days while it ferments.  I buy jalapeños in rather huge batches of 10-20 from my local farmers market and my oldest loves to snack on them in the fridge. 

Use this sauce any of 3 ways:

• Keep them as  sliced rings and enjoy on your sandwiches or salad.
• Blend up the sauce and serve it on your tacos or fish – like a thinner version of thick salsa but spoonable
• Strain this blended sauce through a strainer and pour into old hot sauce bottles and use it similar to Tabasco – the only difference is that this is green.

If you are making this sauce, you’ll want a 2 quart canning jar, some sea salt, distilled water and a nice peaceful spot on your kitchen counter to allow the jar to sit undisturbed.

• You can use any peppers for this sauce – from red jalapeños to green, serrano, habanero, etc.
• The peppers will be sliced into rounds – I opted to keep the seeds but you can definitely discard them – they do add considerable flavor.
• Feel free to add 1/2 onion, or a few cloves of peeled garlic to your jar too.
• The salt bring will be overly salty and that is O.K. – once you add the water and peppers, it won’t be quite as salty, though the salt is needed to ferment so don’t skip that part.
• Push the jalapeños into the bottom of the jar and cover completely with the salt water brine – make sure the peppers are completely covered. If not, put a small mason jar in the mouth of the large one and tie a cheesecloth over the top.
• Your peppers will sit, undisturbed, for a week to ten days – we let ours sit for about 2 weeks until we came back from out of town.

Once that time is up, decide if you want to blend it, keep them as is or blend and strain through a sieve – whatever method you choose, the entire process of wild fermentation creates incredible probiotics in a hot sauce that will last quite a long time.

This sauce refrigerates for a long time – but if you are going to use it, make sure you use a clean spoon to scoop out and then add to a serving bowl.  Try not to eat it out of the jar, and then put it back because then it won’t quite last too long.

That kind of goes for anything you serve out of a jar (mayo, mustard, etc.) – remove what you want so you don’t taint the original.

If you are curious to know if this sauce is spicy, it is – but it’s not overly (if that makes sense?)  This sauce isn’t overly spicy though because I am able to tolerate it without complications, and I usually don’t eat spicy things.

It is my oldest daughter that can practically drink hot sauce and her life would be uneventful if she didn’t have spicy sauce on a daily basis.

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Fermented Jalapeño Hot Sauce

Have lots of garden fresh jalapeños? Use them to make this simple fermented jalapeño hot sauce with lots of good gut-healthy bacteria.

Author Sheryl

Ingredients

• 9-10 jalapeños sliced into rounds
• 3 cloves garlic peel removed and crushed
• 1/2 small onion sliced
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 2 C. filtered water

Instructions

• Put the sliced jalapeños, garlic, and onion in the 2 qt jar.
• In a separate bowl, combine the water with the salt until dissolved, and then pour that solution in the 2 qt jar with the jalapeños until they are completely submerged. (If you can't keep them submerged, put a smaller jar in the mouth of the larger jar to get them to stay down, then cover with a cheesecloth and rubber band.
• Place the canning lid and ring loosely on the jar, and let the jar sit in a quiet place in your kitchen or pantry undisturbed for 10 days.
• If your goal is pickled peppers, then let sit on the counter for 72 hours.
• After 10 days, pour your peppers and the brine into your blender and blend - if you are looking for a strained hot sauce, then strain through a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth and store in hot sauce bottles that have been washed, or wine bottles work well too.