Fire Roasted And Fermented Serrano Pepper Hot Sauce

Lacto fermentation gives the serrano peppers a very unique, developed flavor on top of being fire roasted. This sauce is very tasty with a nice balance of flavor and depth. This is a very easy sauce to make that you will find yourself putting on everything!

Ingredients:

25 serrano peppers

5 cloves garlic

1/2 yellow onion

1 tsp cumin seeds

Fine sea salt (done by weight)

Flitered water or bottled spring water (enough to fill a quart size mason jar)

Tools needed:

Mason jar with lid

Blender or Nutribullet

Digital scale that reads in grams

Mixing bowl

Wire whisk

Sharp knife

Cutting board

Fermentation weight or ziplock bag filled with water.

Hot sauce bottles for storing or a mason jar

How to make it:

Wash mason jar with hot soapy water and let air dry.

Roast 20 peppers over flame on your stove top, in the oven set to broil or on a grill. Roast until outside of the peppers are blistered. Cut stems off peppers and cut them into 1/2 thick medallions or in half lengthwise. Remove paper and root end from garlic.

Cut onion into medium dice.

Place mason jar on scale set to grams, zero (tare the scale). Place peppers, garlic, onion and cumin seeds into the jar. Fill jar to the bottom of the neck with the water. Record that weight and multiply it by 3%. This will be the amount of salt needed to make the brine.

For example: 870 g (ingredients plus water) x .03 = 26.1 g of salt needed for the brine.

Place a small dish on the scale, zero out. Add the salt to the dish until the scale reads the calculated amount. If your scale doesn’t read decimal points, round to the nearest whole number.

Pour the water from the jar into a mixing bowl, add the salt and mix thoroughly with a wire whisk. Pour that salty water (brine) back into the jar with the ingredients.

Place fermentation weight on top of the ingredients in the jar to keep completely submerged underneath the brine level. This is the most important thing when fermenting. Any ingredient that is allowed to touch air will most likely mold and the batch will need to be discarded. Ferment on the countertop or pantry away from direct sunlight for 2 weeks to 1 month. The best temperature range is around 68-75 degrees f.

After the fermentation period, strain the contents in the jar reserving the brine. Place in a blender and enough brine to cover the ingredients 1/4 to 1/2 of the way up. More brine will result in a thinner sauce and vica versa. Blend until smooth and strain through a fine mesh strainer (optional). I like to dry the pulp, grind it and add some salt to it. Check this recipe out for a delicious spicy serrano seasoned salt.

This will keep for many months up to 1 year in the refrigerator in a mason jar with lid (I place parchment paper under the lid) or hot sauce bottles.

Enjoy!

Logan