Easy Lacto-Fermented Hot Sauce, as the name implies, is one of the simplest ferments to make. It requires only 4 ingredients, will be ready in a few days and you don’t need any fancy equipment. nada! You can use any hot pepper or mild peppers you like for this recipe. This method allows the hot sauce to develop complex flavors you can’t get in a traditional recipe.
This is the perfect recipe for a beginner. If you are just starting out or have never made a fermented food in your life this one is not complicated.
What is Lacto-fermentation?
Lacto-fermentation is the oldest form of food preservation in the world. It involves only salt, water and vegetables. The salt water brine creates an anaerobic environment (free of oxygen) where only lactobacillus bacteria can survive. The lactobacillus bacteria act as a preservative, keeping harmful bacteria from living in the ferment.
The article, “Lacto-fermentation – How It Works” written by Food Preservation Expert, Leda Meredith explains the stages as…
In stage one of lacto-fermentation, vegetables are submerged in a brine that is salty enough to kill off harmful bacteria. The Lactobacillus good guys survive this stage and begin stage two.
In stage two of lacto-fermentation, the Lactobacillus organisms begin converting lactose and other sugars present in the food into lactic acid. This creates an acidic environment that safely preserves the vegetables – and gives lacto-fermented foods their classic tangy flavor.
The result is a food that is loaded with probiotics and flavor. Eating probiotic foods like this strengthens your immune system, increases vitamin and mineral absorption and helps balance hormones.
Is lacto-fermentation safe?
Lacto-fermentation is safe if you follow recipes that use the correct salt to water ratios for the brine. My recipes are all tried and true so you don’t have to worry about them. The brine creates an environment where harmful bacteria can’t survive making the food safe and healthy for eating.
You must let it ferment enough to allow the stages as described above to happen. You can tell a ferment is safe to eat if it smells sour and pleasant. If it smells rancid, like broccoli or lettuce rotting in your fridge, then something went wrong and it should be thrown out.
What you’ll need
Making Easy Lacto-fermented Hot Sauce using this method is straight forward and requires no fancy equipment. You will need a small glass jar or container, purified water, high quality fine sea salt, garlic and peppers.
What to expect
For the first day or two the brine will be clear. About 3 days into fermentation the brine will get cloudy. This is a good thing. It means the lactic-acid bacteria are doing their job. It should smell a little sour, almost like pickles.
Once the brine is cloudy you can blend it all up, place it in a glass container and use it. You can store it in cold storage and let it ferment longer to develop the flavors more or in the refrigerator for several months.
- 1 cup of hot peppers chopped into rings (about 6 medium size peppers) - You can use any hot pepper you like or mix them up.
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed
- 1 cup of purified water
- ½ tablespoon of fine celtic sea salt (any fine sea salt will do).
- Place the hot peppers and garlic cloves in a glass jar. A pint sized mason jar or similar works.
- Make the brine by heating up 1 cup of water and adding the salt.
- Stir the salt until dissolved and let the brine cool to room temperature.
- Once the brine has cooled pour it into the jar with the hot peppers and garlic.
- Cover loosely with a lid and set on the counter in a cool place away from direct sunlight for 2-3 days.
- Stir the brine each day or every two days to prevent mold from forming on the top.
- The brine should become cloudy in 2-3 days depending on the temperature of the room.
- Once it's cloudy and smells slightly sour, place it in a blender and blend until smooth.
- Transfer it to a glass jar and store it in the refrigerator. It's ready to use.
- Lacto-Fermented hot sauce will store for several months.
If you want to make your own Fermented Hot Sauce we just added Fermented Hot Sauce Kits to our store here.
Happy Fermenting!
Danielle
Articles
“Lacto-fermentation – How It Works” written by Food Preservation Expert, Leda Meredith
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Yay for this! I have some pepper I need to use up, and I pretty much put hot sauce on everything. I watched the how its made episode on tabasco the other day. Did you know they ferment it for years in oak barrels? Pretty neat, though I’m still not a huge fan of the flavour of tabasco.
Thank you! You can ferment the hot sauce for longer if you like. The flavors change and get more complex as it ferments. It’s fun to taste it along the way to see how the flavors change :)
Any idea how fermenting peppers would affect the sauce for someone who has a nightshade allergy? My face breaks out like a teenager’s, but I miss peppers SOOO much. Thanks!
Hi Rebecca, I would avoid this recipe if you have a nightshade allergy.
Can you use dried peppers for this?
Maybe, i would soak them first, but would still add brine, from previous vegitable firment, or a few fresh pepper. I doubt the dehydrated ones would have enough of the natural lactobacillus by itself to work.
I’m currently making this recipe and my peppers are fermenting away quite nicely. I have a bumper crop of peppers from my garden this year and was planning on doing another batch. Is it a good idea to use any leftover brine from the first ferment on my second batch? Or should I start a new brine each time?
Yes, you can use some of the leftover brine. It should get the process going faster.
I tried to make this recipe but the peppers all floated on the top. I used a glass weight to push them down. Was I supposed to do this? The recipe didn’t say anything so I improvised- hope it works! I don’t think I’ll be able to remove the glass every day to stir it though, it was so hard to get it in!
Yes, that’s perfect. You don’t need to stir it if you have a weight to hold the peppers down. Good job!
Somehow my fermenting peppers don’t have a lot of brine (used a slightly different recipe). Can I add more brine to jars of ferment after it’s been sitting a while?
Yes, you can always add more brine if it gets low.
Thank you Danielle!
I fermented three kinds of chilies. One turned out kind of bitter. Should I be concerned?
Also, if I ferment it longer, will it get more sour?
It’s probably the type of pepper that is bitter. You can ferment longer to get more sour flavor.
A bitter taste means it is a little alkaline so you should leave it to ferment a little longer to restore acidity.
I did a batch of fermented hot sauce at the beginning of the fall. After 3-4 days I placed it in the refrigerator with a solid lid. It is still fermenting though! I’ve never had this happen before. Is there anyway to stop the fermentation?
Boil it
Hi there! Some hot sauces have things like carrots or lime juice for more complex flavor. Do you think it’d be okay to experiment adding them to the fermentation mix? Or would that add too many variables to the blend?
Yes, you can experiment and add them to the mix. I highly encourage it.
Hi, I recently made a batch of this with some scotch bonnets and it worked great, however the sauce is a little too hot for me. Would it be safe to roast and purée a bell pepper or two and add that? Or do you have any other recommendations to make it slightly less hot? Thanks
You can use whatever peppers you want, use less hot, add non hot or even sweet pepper.
Add a touch of xantham gun to create that slightly thick sauce that will coat your food. Used in all commercial sauces and a natural product.
Oh, man. I’ve been wanting to make a fermented hot sauce for so long. Very glad to find this article! We have tons of Chile Pequin’s around our place. They’re so small they’d be hard to slice.. and they don’t have a lot of liquid. Any recommendations? Maybe blend them slightly with a little brine?
You can ferment them whole and then blend them into a sauce or blend them with a little brine and then ferment.
Should the pulp be strained out after blending or should it remain?
That’s up to you. I don’t strain it, but you can if you want a clearer hot sauce or if you don’t like the pulp.
How do you get this to not be a salt bomb? I strained the peppers out of the brine before I blended them, figuring it would be super-salty otherwise, also thinking I could add some brine in during blending if it needed more liquid. The consistency was fine without adding brine, but I ended up with slightly pepper-flavored salt sauce. I can’t even imagine if I had blended it all together with the brine.
I followed the salt:water ratio precisely. Is it supposed to be really salty, or did I miss something? I have another batch fermenting now, and I feel like I need to rinse it after fermentation and before blending.
If you tasted more salt than pepper flavor, it needs to ferment longer. The peppers should overpower the flavor and should smell sour and spicy when ready.
Yes, you can rinse the peppers before blending to reduce the salt.
The type of salt used matters too. Sea salt has less sodium chloride than table salt and tastes less salty.
Mine is very salty, too. I followed the directions exactly, using Real Salt. About half red serrano peppers and half red bell peppers, because I wanted a milder sauce. I let it ferment 6 days, then blended the peppers with a little brine, and it tastes very salty. Will that change if it sits in the fridge for a while? Or is there something I can add? Thanks.
Yes. You can add water. You may need to transfer to a larger container or pour off some of the existing brine. You’ll simply be diluting and the salt will move via osmosis to a less concentrated solution (into the fresh water). I got this tip from fermentation expert Sandro Katz.
Actually, I just let it sit in the fridge for a while, and it became less salty and tasted really good! (it’s all gone now.)
Does the mixture need to be stirred, or can the mold just be skimmed off of the top after fermentation? I have a fermentation crock, with an airlock, and I assumed that I did not want to open it and allow air in for the purposes of stirring the mixture.
If done right at the most their may be a white film. If you see colored dots then this is mold and tye batch should be discarded.
An over all white film is yeast and can be stirred in or skimed off.
If I wanted to add vinegar to the recipe, at what point should this be done?
It’s best added after the peppers ferment.
I read somewhere if you leave the stems on during thr fermentation process, it will enhance the flavor. What say you? I would think remove them before blending?
We ferment in half gallon wide mouth jars. Peppers are firmly packed in so tight nothing floats. A pint jar fits in to form a perfect air lock. We set the jar in a small stainless steel bowl to catch any leakage. Next is eagerly waiting for fermentation and hope we can do enough to last till next gardening season.
We are growing a new to us, a Cuban seasoning style pepper, hoping to add it to our current recipe fermenting. It has a wonderful flavor similar to a habernero without the excess heat.
Can you use idodized sea salt?
Be careful using iodized salt for 2 reasons: iodine (in iodized salt) is anti-bacterial. The iodine in iodized salt could kill the good bacteria you want in a fermented product. Also iodized salt can have anti-caking agents to keep the salt free flowing. Anti-caking agents could cause problems in your ferment.
http://www.pickl-it.com/faq/64/why-not-regular-table-salt/
I processed a batch of peppers and added the brine and have let them ferment in a half gallon jar from june to January. No mold I present and I am ready to add the vinegar to make a Tabasco style hot sauce. Will this batch be safe as it did not ferment in a refrigerator.?
Yes, it’s safe. It won’t ferment in a refrigerator so you did it right.
Thank you Danielle . The bottles are ordered.
Hey! Two questions. I saw a discussion about adding vinegar and doing so after the peppers ferment, for your recipe, what do you suggest would be the best amount of vinegar to add? Also, I have read that you can add sugar in this fermentation process. How would that change the taste of the hot sauce?
Could you suggest how many chilis one might use per cup with red Thai bird’s eye chilis??? That’s what I’ve got going 2 days in. Seeds and all I put 22 of the little devils in there to begin fermenting. Just now I’m going to add another brine of 1 cup. It will probably make a super thin runny sauce of course, but I want it to be edible ya know! Any ideas of an approx measurement compared with fresno/jalapeno etc
Hi! Thank you for the recipe share. Can the garlic be left out? (Picky hubby)
Yes. You can leave it out.