Habanero Bell Pepper Hot Sauce
My habanero bell pepper hot sauce ferment is done! This is a continuation of the process began here.
The ferment smelled spicy-peppery and a bit vinegary, too, if that makes sense. One of the actors at play in this kind of ferment is lactobacillus so you get a kind of souring out of it, similar to pickling with vinegar. The fizziness had completely died down and the liquid was slightly cloudy -- I decided it was time to puree and bottle.
Sanitization first! Got the lids and caps in sani water, and put sani water in each salsa bottle.
Using a collandar and a large glass pyrex measuring cup, I strained the solids out and reserved the liquid to mix back in for consistency.
Though my blender didn't do great with the toum the other day, I was optimistic. I added the peppers and got it blending, slowly adding some of the reserved liquid to try to get the right consistency. I was trying to be patient, hopeful the blender would work.
I was wrong. Once again, my Ninja Blender let me down. This thing is great with making margaritas and stuff, but for pureeing food it hasn't been so swell. After a LOT of blending the hot sauce was still much chunkier than I wanted.
This isn't going into salsa jars, it's going into hot sauce bottles; it has to be able to come out of the tip of the bottle. It needed to be much smoother to do that. On to the Magic Bullet to... well... work its magic. Good blender.
Using a funnel, I poured the salsa into two 10-oz bottles. This tells me that each 16-oz jar of fermented peppers, going for the consistency that I want, will make one 10-oz jar of hot sauce. Good to know!
The sauce is not as spicy as I was thinking it was going to be. It has a kick but it's pretty mild. The sweetness of the bell peppers (and habaneros, too) comes through and then there's a mild heat and a vinegary-ness from the fermentation. I had a ton of it in some ketchup with fries and poured it liberally into an A-1 Thick and Hearty from Whataburger today and really enjoyed it. Next time, I'll kick up the heat, but if I have to choose between "not very spicy" and "too spicy", I'm going with the former every time. I definitely didn't want to make a hot sauce too hot for me to eat!
I didn't end up straining out any of the pureed solids. I had planned to do this and dry them out to make a pepper flake type spice to use, but I ended up liking the consistency once it was all blended up together, so no big deal. It's not as runny as Cholula but I love the texture, color and flavor. Good stuff.
The ferment smelled spicy-peppery and a bit vinegary, too, if that makes sense. One of the actors at play in this kind of ferment is lactobacillus so you get a kind of souring out of it, similar to pickling with vinegar. The fizziness had completely died down and the liquid was slightly cloudy -- I decided it was time to puree and bottle.
Sanitization first! Got the lids and caps in sani water, and put sani water in each salsa bottle.
Using a collandar and a large glass pyrex measuring cup, I strained the solids out and reserved the liquid to mix back in for consistency.
Though my blender didn't do great with the toum the other day, I was optimistic. I added the peppers and got it blending, slowly adding some of the reserved liquid to try to get the right consistency. I was trying to be patient, hopeful the blender would work.
I was wrong. Once again, my Ninja Blender let me down. This thing is great with making margaritas and stuff, but for pureeing food it hasn't been so swell. After a LOT of blending the hot sauce was still much chunkier than I wanted.
This isn't going into salsa jars, it's going into hot sauce bottles; it has to be able to come out of the tip of the bottle. It needed to be much smoother to do that. On to the Magic Bullet to... well... work its magic. Good blender.
Using a funnel, I poured the salsa into two 10-oz bottles. This tells me that each 16-oz jar of fermented peppers, going for the consistency that I want, will make one 10-oz jar of hot sauce. Good to know!
The sauce is not as spicy as I was thinking it was going to be. It has a kick but it's pretty mild. The sweetness of the bell peppers (and habaneros, too) comes through and then there's a mild heat and a vinegary-ness from the fermentation. I had a ton of it in some ketchup with fries and poured it liberally into an A-1 Thick and Hearty from Whataburger today and really enjoyed it. Next time, I'll kick up the heat, but if I have to choose between "not very spicy" and "too spicy", I'm going with the former every time. I definitely didn't want to make a hot sauce too hot for me to eat!
I didn't end up straining out any of the pureed solids. I had planned to do this and dry them out to make a pepper flake type spice to use, but I ended up liking the consistency once it was all blended up together, so no big deal. It's not as runny as Cholula but I love the texture, color and flavor. Good stuff.