Lacto Fermented Taco Sauce YOU Can Make At Home

Ingredients:

20 grape tomatoes or 10 oz

1 yellow sweet onions

4 jalapeno or 10 serrano

3-5 cloves of garlic

1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 lime zested and juiced

Fine sea salt done by weight

Water (filtered or bottled spring water is preferred)

***the amount of water will vary. You will need at least 3 c. This is not a recalculated amount as the ingredients need to be kept under the brine level. It is hard to determine the exact amount of water needed for the size of the jar and amount of ingredients being fermented. Follow the instructions below on how to make the brine. Hence why we are weighing the ingredients.

Tools needed:

2 pint mason jar

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Digital scale that reads in grams

Sharp knife

Cutting board

Blender or nutribullet

Mixing bowl

Fine mesh strainer

Saute pan

Rubber spatula

Zester or microplane

pH meter or litmus paper

How to make it:

***I will be fermenting with a 3% brine for the taco sauce. Weighing out the ingredients and using a simple formula is the best way to ferment this sauce and everything else at that. This will yield the most consistent results if you make the same fermentation multiple times.

Wash the tomatoes and peppers under cold running water, let air dry. Cut an “X” on the top end of the tomatoes. Slice the peppers into medallions. Inspect the inside of the pepper to ensure it is fresh. You can cut the peppers in half if you’d like, stem end removed.

Cut the ends off the onion, quarter and remove outer paper layer.

Cut root ends off the garlic. Smash the garlic lightly on the cutting board and remove outer paper layer. Getting the natural liquid from the garlic will help kickstart the fermentation process.

Place mason jar on the scale. Set to read grams and zero the scale (tare). Add the tomatoes, onion, garlic, peppers and cumin to the jar. Fill the jar with water to the bottom of the neck of the jar. Record that weight. I will use 875 g as an example.

Multiply 875 x .03 (3%) to get the amount of salt needed in grams. This is 26.25 grams of salt needed. If your scale doesn’t read in grams, round to the nearest whole number.

SPECIAL NOTE ON SALT: I prefer fine sea salt since it dissolves the best in the water as opposed to kosher salt or coarse sea salt.

Pour out the water from the mason jar into a mixing bowl. Place the bowl on the scale, tare the scale (still set to grams). Add the salt to the water until the scale reads 26 g. Go slowly and allow the salt to rest before adding more so you don’t add too much salt by mistake. Whisk the salt into the water thoroughly making sure that the salt is dissolved entirely. Alternatively, you can set a small dish on the scale, tare it and add the salt to the dish. If you add too much by mistake, you can always take pinches out until you get the calculated amount. In this example, it is 26 g of salt.

Pour the salty water back into the jar with the ingredients. Place a fermentation weight on the ingredients. I use an empty glass baby food jar that I reuse all of the time. It is easy to clean and won’t hold any flavors from previous ferments. Plus, it fits perfectly in the mouth of the jar. You can use a ziplock bag filled with water also. Not my preferred weight, but it WILL work. It is important to keep the ingredients underneath the brine level. This is an anaerobic environment. If the ingredients are allowed to be exposed to air, they will most likely mold and the batch will need to be discarded. We are utilizing lactobacillus bacteria (lactic acid bacteria) that is living on the skins of the peppers, tomatoes, garlic etc. Lactobacillus lives elsewhere in our environment, but we’re focusing on the ingredients themselves. This bacteria feeds off of the natural sugars in the ingredients and the by product is lactic acid. The lactic acid is what preserves the food, thus it creates an acidic environment (between 3.3-4.0 pH). It is also salt tolerant up to a point. Too little salt, and there will be bad bacteria growth…too much salt and the fermentation process will most likely not work and will kill off the lactobacillus. You can really go deeper on how this all works, but this is a very brief description of how this works.

Let ferment at room temperature (68-75 f is optimal) on the countertop or in your pantry away from direct sunlight for 3 weeks to 2 months. Check for fermentation bubbles (like very lazy carbonation) after day 3-5. This is a good sign that fermentation is beginning. I like to check the pH of the brine after 7 days to see that it is under 4.6, which it should be by now. If it is not under 4.6, I recommend discarding the batch as bad bacteria may have grown….botulism is a thing that may develop and make you very ill. Check on this every day to make sure everything is underneath the brine level. Kahm or pellicle may form which is completely normal and isn’t harmful. I skim it off before making the sauce since I do not like the flavor it gives the sauce.

Once the fermentation time is up, check the pH of the brine. It should be less than 4.6 to be considered safe to make a sauce and to consume( like I described above). My sauces that I ferment normally sit around 3.3-3.7 pH.

Strain the contents in the jar, keeping the brine. Place the contents from the jar into a nutribullet or high powered blender. Add enough brine to cover at least half the way up the ingredients. More brine will result in a thinner brine, less will result in a thicker brine. Blend for 30 seconds or so the completely break down the ingredients to make a smooth sauce.

***Optional step below

Strain the sauce if desired and place in a small stock pot. Place over a burner set to medium heat. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat slightly. Continue to simmer for 8-10 minutes to sterilize the sauce. This will of course kill the lactic acid bacteria. Turn off the heat, zest and juice 1 lime into the sauce.

Cool the sauce at room temperature for 20 minutes and place into a mason jar with a tight fitting lid. This will keep in the refrigerator for 6 months to 1 year if not longer. You will most likely use it all by then, it is delicious!

Serve over tacos of your choice. I share my favorite taco recipe on my Youtube channel!

Enjoy!

Logan