Smoked Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce - Fermented For INSANELY Good Flavor

Delicious sauce with a ton of heat and flavor. Smoked for an extra layer of flavor.

Ingredients:

9 ghost peppers

2 red bell peppers

9 cloves garlic

1 tsp caraway seeds

1 bay leaf

2 stems thyme

***The following is done by weight, procedure is shown below

Filtered water or bottled spring water

Fine sea salt, no additives or iodized for best flavor

Tools needed:

Mason jar

Sharp knife

Rubber gloves

Cutting board

Strainer

Mason jar

Fermentation weight

pH meter

Smoke gun with chips

Kitchen scale the reads in grams

How to make it:

Always wear gloves when handling hot peppers. Also note that you need to use a VERY sharp knife when cutting hot peppers. Check out my link for my favorite knife I use. Ghost peppers are in the range of 800,000 to 1,000,000 SHU. The capsaicin will burn your skin and eyes pretty badly if it gets into contact.

Wash and dry peppers. Pull stem off ghost pepper, cut in half and rough chop. Seed removal is optional.

Stand the bell pepper upright and cut sections off pepper around the placenta and seeds. Rough chop bell pepper.

Lightly smash garlic cloves on cutting board and remove outer paper layer. Cut root end off the cloves of garlic.

Wash your jar with hot soapy water and air dry.

Place jar on scale and tare (zero) the scale and set to read grams. Add the peppers, garlic, thyme, caraway seeds and bay leaf to the jar. Fill the jar to the bottom of the neck of the jar with the water. Record the weight on the scale. My range is generally around 875-900 g. Follow the simple equation to figure out the amount of salt needed for the brine. I will use 875 g for this example. That is the ingredients plus the water weighed in grams.

875 g x .03 = 26.25. This is the amount of salt needed to make your brine. If your scale doesn’t read decimal points, round to the nearest whole number. This won’t affect anything since you can go anywhere between 2% and 4% for the amount of salt. I will go with 26 g of salt for the brine.

Carefully pour out the water from the jar into a mixing bowl, holding back the ingredients with your gloved hand or slotted spoon.

Place a small dish or ramekin on the scale and zero it once again. Add the salt until the scale reads the calculated amount.

Add the salt to the mixing bowl with the water and mix to fully dissolve the salt into the water. Now that the brine is made, pour this back into the jar with the ingredients.

Place the jar onto a glass pyrex dish or pie dish. Place your fermentation weight into the jar weighing the ingredients down. It is important that the ingredients stay underneath the brine level. This is an anaerobic environment and is necessary for the fermentation process to begin. If any ingredients are allowed to be exposed to air, they will most likely mold and you will have to start over. Food safety is a priority when fermenting. I like to place a coffee filter or cheese cloth over the opening of the jar and secure it with a rubber band. As this ferments, you need to make sure everything stays submerged beneath the brine level.

Place the jar in a location on your countertop or in your pantry. Really, it needs to be kept at room temperature away from direct sunlight. Let ferment for 2-4 weeks depending on how funky you want this to be. I let my first batch go for 45 days and was really tasty. I have a place in my pantry that stays consistent in temperature no matter what time of year I am in. Lacto fermentation projects thrive best when kept at a temperature between 65-75 degrees.

You will most likely see signs of fermentation after day 3-4. This will look like tiny bubbles starting to collect on the sides of the peppers and/or garlic. When it starts getting more active, the brine will look like very lazy carbonation. After week 1, I like to check the pH of the brine (my recommended pH meter is in the tools needed list above). You want to see it below 4.6 at this point in time. After the fermentation period is done, the brine should read between 3.6-3.8 pH. This is a great indication that fermentation was successful. The lactobacillus that lives on the skins of the peppers and on the garlic feeds on the natural sugars present in the peppers and garlic. The byproduct of that consumption is lactic acid. Lactic acid is what is responsible for preserving food and giving the ingredients a great flavor that I describe as sour, salty, umami and almost sweet with a touch of acidity.

The following step is optional as cooking the sauce will kill any lactobacillus and will halt the fermentation process. If you do want this to keep fermenting, note that the flavor profile will change and you will most likely need to relieve pressure that gets built up in the jar or hot sauce bottles that the sauce is being stored in one a week or every few days. Keep in mind that if you keep the bacteria alive and it keeps fermenting, the flavor profile of the sauce may change over time.

Add the jar contents and add enough brine to just barely cover the ingredients or at least even with them. Heat the pot on high heat to bring the liquid up to a boil. One boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes to sterilize the sauce. I keep a lid on the pot at all times to help keep the fumes at bay. The fumes will be irritating to your eyes and sinuses. Also, if you have a window nearby I recommend to keep it open and turn on your hood fan if applicable.

Once the cooking process is done, remove the pot from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Once cooled, cover with foil and place the cold smoker hose into the bowl securing it with the foil. Turn on the smoker, ignite the chips and pump cold smoke into the bowl. Make sure there are no leaks. Once the bowl is filled with smoke and you can barely see the ingredients, turn off the smoker and remove the hose. Keep the foil tight around the rim of the bowl and let the ingredients sit in the smoke for around 15 minutes. You can repeat this process once more if you want more smokey flavor to the sauce. Though I found one time is perfect.

After the smoking process, blend the sauce in a high powered blender or nutibullet until smooth. I like to strain my sauces through a fine mesh strainer for a very smooth sauce. Cool the sauce at room temperature and check the pH once again. It should still be around 3.6-3.8. Technically shelf stable, though I always store my sauces in the refrigerator. Store the sauce in mason jars or hot sauce bottles. This will keep for many months. I have a batch of fermented blueberry and habanero hot sauce I made that stayed good for around 1 year in the refrigerator.

I don’t usually add vinegar to the sauce. But you can for a nice addition to the already awesome flavor profile in the sauce. A splash of raw apple cider vinegar would work great. The pH is low enough, so adding vinegar is there to only add more flavor profile.

Enjoy!

Logan