Fermented Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
I love the local summer/fall farmer’s market season as there are so many delicious organic foods to pick up and play with in my fermentation kitchen. I recently spied a gaggle of beautiful jalapenos and with my father who loves spicy foods coming to visit shortly, I thought it would be fun and prudent to work up a fermented jalapeno pepper sauce and share the recipe here. It came out delicious and was a very active fermentation so it should have good probiotic benefit as well
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Fermentation time: 1 – 2 weeks (mine was 9 days)
Yield: 3 cups
Ingredients:
1 lb Jalapeno peppers, stems removed but seeds remaining
5 cloves garlic
1/2 large red onion
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric (fresh turmeric nice if you can get it)
1/4c live vinegar (I used Kombucha vinegar, but unpasturized apple cider vinegar would be great too). If you don’t have live vinegar, this recipe should work fine as well, but may take longer for the fermentation to get going in earnest
Directions:
- Place the whole peppers, garlic, onion, lime juice, turmeric, vinegar and salt in a food processor
- Blend until everything is chopped up quite fine into nearly a liquid paste
- Place it in a your fermenting vessel. I used a 1.5pint mason jar topped with an airlock, but you would also just place it in a jar or bowl and cover with a clean cloth.
note the gas bubbles that formed throughout
- Wait 1-2 weeks and enjoy, placing in refrigerator to slow the fermentation.
This was a very active fermentation, with lots of gasses being produced, causing the airlock to bubble every 10 seconds or so at its peak of activity. The result is more paste than liquid. You could dilute it substantially more at this point with vinegar to make it whatever consistency you prefer. If you want a real clean liquid hot sauce, add another cup of vinegar and let it all stew for a few days further and then strain out the pulp with a nut milk bag or fine strainer.
I take the paste and add it to sauces, toss a teaspoon of it in with rice and stir-fried goodies, mix with rice and beans, and sometimes eat some directly on a chip when feeling particularly daring. Temperature of course will vary with the heat of the peppers you buy. If you have any variations for this or simply would like to share your experience, please feel free to share. Enjoy….
Hey Ted,
I sure wish I had read this yesterday before jarring up 4 quarts and 2 pints of beautiful jalapenos I bought at our FMkt on Saturday, sounds fabulous! Something I’ve been doing to certain veggies before putting them in the jars is to soak them in spring/filtered water for an hour or so with some ACV splashed in – I think this helps loosen and remove any toxins and foreign material, and also inoculates w/ the Mother from the ACV.
Yesterday was an intense ferment day for me, I travel a lot so have limited windows during which to get veggies started. I finished my coffee about 6am and jumped right into ferment preps, and completed clean-up about 6:30pm! Great day, very busy, but quite gratifying. In the jars: 2qts/1pt Green Tomatoes, 4qts/2pts Jalapenos, 2qts/1 1/2pts Sauerkraut, 1qt/2pts Dilly Green Beans, and 3qts Brussel Sprout Kimchi. Can’t wait to try them! Last Weds I put up 5pts Garlic cloves, whoa, quite a chore pealing that batch! And my room smells of heavenly garlic as the jars out-gas.
For an easy method to peal large amounts of garlic, check this out: http://www.deliciousobsessions.com/2012/01/how-to-peel-a-head-of-garlic-in-less-than-10-seconds/. It works well, however I found that I still had to hand peal or re-shake many of the cloves to get the job done. I shook 1-2 heads worth of garlic at a crack, if you put too much in apparently it is less effective, next go round I’ll try more to see how it works. I used 6qt plastic salad bowls for the apparatus. You will have particles of garlic skin fluttering around, but easily swept up after completing your task.
Something else I’ve been doing is to cut the jalapenos and green tomatoes in half length wise so the ferment can easily access the inside tissues. Worked great with the green toms last fall, so hoping for similar results from the jalapenos.
Next up will be delicata squash, such a wonderful squash, a tad bit sweet w/ edible skins. I have a really great recipe for balsamic roasted delicata on my website, folks rave about it all the time. Check it out: http://www.extravagonzofoods.com – our site is currently under maintenance but we should have it up again soon.
thanks for all your recipes and ideas Ted, I am looking forward to a winter filled with beautiful, healthful, fermented veggies.
Keep ‘m smiling… Tom
This is the reason I got into fermention, it is a great way to make hyot sause. Now over the years I have adapted this recipe with 3 or 4 diferent types of peppers, I also added carrots beets and let it ferment for all the way to 7 weeks. I did do 1 batch for 3 months and it was just wonderfull. I’d sugest to adjust the peppers to what you like, taste it about every week and uese it when you think it’s right.
Thanks Mark. Love the idea of adding carrots and beets!