Making your own lacto-fermented chili sauce might seem difficult, but it really isn’t! You just need to follow the recipe carefully and use some common sense.
Also, if you grow your own veggies and had a good harvest: this is a great recipe for using up a glut of peppers!
Before the invention of refrigeration, fermenting was one of the few ways people had to preserve vegetables through the winter months. But how exactly does it work?
Lactic acid bacteria naturally occur on vegetables. By adding salt at the beginning of the fermentation process, you create the perfect environment for them. It gives them the chance to multiply faster than any other (possibly harmful) bacteria that might be there too. As they feed on the sugars in the chilies, they start to lower the pH.
In the end, they make the mixture so acidic, harmful bacteria simply can’t survive anymore. Once the pH goes below 4.5, even the clostridium botulinum bacteria can’t grow there anymore. This is important because this is one of the few bacteria you need to be truly careful about. It produces the most potent toxin known to humankind.
While you don’t need a lot of fancy stuff for fermenting, a couple of things will make your life easier. The first is a closed fermentation jar with an airlock. If you use a jar with a normal lid, you may build up too much pressure. This will either pop the lid or burst the jar. You can buy fermentation jars online or you can make your own.
The second is a pH meter. With this you can accurately check the acidity, which makes your sauce that much safer. They are not super expensive and a good investment if you plan on fermenting more often in the future.
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Ingredients
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- Wash the jar you want to use in hot soapy water. Rinse it thoroughly and leave to dry.
- Clean the chilipeppers and remove both the stems and the seeds. For some reason, the seeds seem to be more prone to going mouldy. Removing them will prevent a lot of problems.
- Put the peppers in a blender or foodprocessor and process into a pulp. If the mixture is to dry to process, add a little bit of water.
- Weigh the chili pulp, so you can calculate the amount of salt you need to add. You'll need 2.25% of the total weight. In other words, 22.5 g of salt per kg of chillipuree.
- Stir the salt through the puree and mix it thoroughly. At this point you can also add the fructose powder. This will give the fermentation a bit of a kickstart. However, it isnt necessary and you can leave it out if you wish.
- Pour the chilli puree into your jar, close the lid and fill the airlock with water.
- Store the jar at room temperature, as this is the temperature the fermentation bacteria like best. Don't put it in direct sunlight, as this will make the temperature fluctuate too much.
- Leave the sauce in peace as it ferments. Don't stir or move it. If you need to refill the airlock, do so carefully.
- It's possible to get small patches of mould forming on the surface of your sauce. As long as it's just on the surface, it's not a problem. It's actually not your sauce that is mouldy in that case, it's dead bacteria that have floated to the top. Just carefully scoop those patches out of the jar. But make sure you use clean utensils. This way you'll avoid contaminating the inside of the jar with unwanted bacteria.
- How long you want to let your sauce ferment is really up to you. But ideally, you should wait untill your sauce is below 3.5 pH. This will usually take a couple of weeks. But the longer you let it ferment, the more the taste will develop. You can leave it for as long as a year.
- Once your sauce has fermented for long enough, you can sieve it. First scoop off the surface layer of the pulp. This layer is often a bit discolored and rather unappetising. Discard it.
- Pour the rest of the sauce through a fine strainer into a bowl. Use the back of a spoon to push any remaining liquid out of the pulp. Measure the pH of the sauce. If it is not below 3.5, add some vinegar until it is low enough.
- Put the sauce in a clean jar and store in the refrigerator.
