welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen it's October and so we have
pulled out our garden and we've got the last of the hot peppers that we didn't
pickle or can earlier in the season and so I have some hot peppers kind of a mix
of hot peppers and some of them I don't even know what they're called so I've
got these no clue another hot if you've ever gardened you know that
and in the spring you write everything down and say oh this year it's gonna be
different I'm gonna remember everything and then you get to the end and it's
like I don't know what that is it's hot I've got some scotch bonnet peppers and
I've got some hot banana peppers although these ones aren't that hot
they're much more flavorful than like searingly hot whereas these ones are
mouth searingly hot so I'm gonna chop these up and I'm going to
lacto-fermented a pickle or a vinegar pickle and I'll link to that below and I
do that every summer sort of mid summer with the first picking of the peppers
I've also got a carrot just a carrot in because I really like carrot in this as
well as an onion and some garlic but at the heart of it is this mixture here of
salt and water so I have 1 liter of water and to that I'm going to add 50
grams of salt and that will give me a 5 percent salt solution and that 5 percent
salt solution gives you that perfect balance between inhibiting the growth of
the bad bacteria without slowing down the good bacteria and what's the good
bacteria gets established the pH drops to the point where none of the bad
bacteria is going to grow in it at all so that 5% gets us in the right spot
it's not too little salt that might not work and it's not too much salt that
will work and kill everything so I'm just gonna let that dissolve I'll come
back to this a few times and just keep stirring it until I stir it in and get
all the salt dissolved and the meantime I'm going to cut up the peppers and I
just take the tops off I leave the seeds in and I maybe just cut them into thirds
like that and stick them into of course a clean jar and some of them like those
I don't even cut them up I just cut the top off
okay last pepper now the onion just gets a rough chop you don't really have to
chop it up too much I maybe just go into eighths and then stick it in Garret in
the garlic I just smashed the garlic just to break it up and stick it in I
don't bother chopping it up too much once you've
broken it open it's it's good to go and the carrot top and tail and maybe just
cut it into quarters now if you have a muddler a cocktail muddler now is a good
time to use it and I just use it to press everything down just a little bit
just to compress it just so that it's not all at the top of the jar and that's
probably good so we've got our salt dissolved in the water and now we're
gonna pour it in and then just press it down again to try to get any trapped air
out so that things don't float now the next step is to compress everything
below the level of the brine if it's under the brine everything is fine so
I've got a couple of lids here I don't know what they were from they're from
something that had food in them and I've drilled little holes in them and they
just sort of squeeze in through the top that might take a little bit of
finagling to get everything below the lid I've got a second one that I put in
just for good measure okay now you might have one or two
floaters above the lid that's fine it'll be okay in here is just salt water it's
just another mason jar with salt water in it fits inside it just adds a bit of
weight to keep everything down below the surface of the liquid now we just wait
you don't need to cover it but if you're worried about stuff falling in or
critters getting in you could just put a tea towel over it it's all you need to
do sit it on the back counter and let it ferment forget about it for a few days
and then come back and look at it and see if it's bubbling okay so this has
been sitting on the back counter for about six weeks now there's no hard and
fast rules about how long it should sit how long it should ferment it comes down
to your personal choice and what sort of flavour you want the longer it sits the
stronger the flavor gets and I don't mean the heat from the chilies I mean
that fermented flavor and so to be completely honest I forgot about this
bunch of stuff happened we went to Mexico for a couple of weeks to learn
more about al pesto and miss cow and this sat back there so this is probably
sat longer than I would have liked but I think the flavor is still going to be
great now you don't have to do anything with this beyond this point you could
leave it in this jug and eat these simply as pickled fermented peppers and
you can see on the top there there's a little bit of sort of what looks like
white slime around the edges and that's perfectly normal what you don't see is
any mold and mold will be dark and fuzzy and that's something that you don't want
and the weight and the plastic discs kept everything below the brine and if
it's below the brine it'll be just fine so I am going to turn this into a hot
pepper sauce but let's pull this out and give it a taste okay I just want a
little one just to give it just a bite just a little bite
Wow incredible flavor there's heat definitely heat but there's so much more
to it than just heat there's a depth of flavor there that comes from the
lacto-fermentation that comes from the variety of peppers that I put in comes
from the carrot comes from the onion all of those other things I mean if you just
put peppers in you're gonna get heat and you're gonna get flavor but my
experience has been you throw in other things you can round that flavor out so
I'm going to turn this into a pepper sauce so let's get started on that okay
pepper sauce really simple I have a small strainer over a big glass bowl and
I'm just gonna pour this in we're gonna strain out the brine liquid from the
solids most of the liquid is out so I'm just going to put the rest of this into
our blender jug and all of the stuff that's in a strainer into the blender
jug now I also want to add some of the brining you need a little bit of liquid
just to get the whole thing started and you don't want to add too much just add
in a little bit you can add more later if you need it so maybe like a quarter
cup put the lid on and away we go
okay I think that's good now how much of the brine you stick in here just makes
it thinner or thicker thin it down to the level that you like it at thin it
down to the level of how you want to use it some people like it really thin some
people like it on the thicker and chunkier side I'm somewhere in between
although I must admit I never do it exactly the same way twice
so I've just got a mason jar here and I'm gonna put this in the mason jar I
put a lid on it and stick it in the fridge now it will continue to ferment
over time the fermentation isn't done and so the flavor will continue to
develop and change over time if you put it in the fridge it slows that process
down but you can leave it on the countertop I know a lot of people will
either put vinegar in this when they when they're blending it and that
vinegar will stop or halt the fermentation process and sort of
preserve it at this flavor stage although the vinegar itself adds a
different flavor so I don't know how you feel about that other people will
pasteurize it they'll put this jar into a pot of water bring it up the
temperature to stop the fermentation process completely put a lid on it and
then stick it in the fridge and in that case you do have to keep it in the
refrigerator because it could go bad at that point I don't do either of those
things I live with the fact that it's going to change over time the flavor is
going to continue to develop and that this will get used before that happens
it is hot though my eyes are watering and my throat's a little bit tickled so
that's how easy it is um there's really not much to it you've not many
ingredients you don't really have to babysit it you don't have to do much to
it or about it it just kind of happens on its own now the brine you don't have
to throw out the brine I wouldn't use it again to fully pickle something else but
I do use this brine in the start of the next one because it's filled with the
bacteria that we're looking for out of the gate and if you inoculate your next
ferment with this you get that process started faster I also know that people
keep this on hand and keep it frig and also use it as a hot sauce
which is fantastic which is what I'm going to do I'll put it in a bottle and
hang on to it so you can put it into soups and stews
and all of the places that you would normally use a hot sauce but maybe don't
want the full heat and a little bit more flavor hang on to the brine and use it
for that thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you