- Today, I want to share with you how to make fermented hot sauce, and I'm going to share two spicy recipes. And I'm going to share with
you my special ingredient that I like to add, that I feel really gives
these a fabulous flavor. (cheerful music) Hi, sweet friends, I'm Mary,
and welcome to Mary's Nest, where I share traditional cooking skills for making nutrient dense foods, like bone broth, ferments,
sourdough, and more. So if you enjoy learning
about those things, consider subscribing to my channel, and don't forget to click on the little notification bell
below that will let you know every time I upload a new video. Well, what I've got here
are two types of peppers. These are Fresnos, and
these are jalapenos. So I'm going to make a Fresno hot sauce, and I'm going to make
a jalapeno hot sauce. Now, in addition to the peppers, the other ingredients
that you're going to need are sea salt and whey. Now, if you don't have whey, don't worry. Then you're just going
to need extra sea salt. And you may be wondering
why I'm using whey today, because as I've shared
with you in the past, if you've been with me for a while, and you've seen some of my videos where I made fermented vegetables, I often don't use whey because I find it imparts a
little bit of a milky flavor. And that's true, however, when
I make fermented condiments like mustard and ketchup, and even when I make homemade mayonnaise, I like to use whey because
I find whey in those cases helps to soften the
sharpness of the flavors of those types of condiments. And if you're interested in
seeing how I make all of those, I'll be sure to link
to that in the iCards, and in the description
below so that you can, if you want to make a fermented ketchup, and fermented mustard
and so on and so forth, you can learn about that. But, so that's why I like using
whey when I make hot sauce, because it helps to just
make the flavor nice and make it palatable.
And so that's what I do. But if you don't want to use
whey or you don't have whey, that's no problem at all. Now, if you don't know how to make whey, I have a video where I
show how to make whey, and I'll link to that and the iCards and in the description below so that you can make it. It's very easy. It just involves draining some yogurt or some kefir, a dairy kefir, milk kefir, and then the white sort of cloudy liquid, what's drained out of that, is whey. And then you can use it for your ferments. And a whole bunch of other things, which I discuss in the video about whey. But in any event, the next
thing that you're going to need, so that's going to be, I've got a half a cup of whey there, and we're going to put a
quarter cup of whey in each jar. Then what I've got here is a
coarse ground Celtic sea salt, and you're going to need a tablespoon if you're using a coarse ground sea salt. If you're using a fine ground sea salt, you'll need a half a tablespoon. However, if you decide that
you don't want to use whey, or you don't have whey, then you're going to want two tablespoons of the coarse ground sea salt, or one tablespoon of the
fine ground sea salt, if you're using the fine ground. So we're going to be putting
a quarter cup of whey into each jar and one
tablespoon into each jar of the coarse ground sea salt. Now, in addition to the peppers
and the whey and the salt, I like to add a wonderful mix of spices and that's kind of my special ingredient. And I find that these
add such wonderful flavor to the final product, to the
final fermented hot sauce. And what I like to do is add a quarter cup of my homemade pickling spice. Now you can use, they're
all basically very similar, whether you make it homemade
or you buy it store-bought, so you can definitely use a
store-bought pickling spice if you don't make your own blend of a homemade pickling spice, but I will tell you what's in here in case you want to make a homemade version. But as I said, you can definitely use a store-bought pickling spice, or you can completely
completely leave it out and just use the peppers
and the salt and the whey. But I have to tell you, this pickling spice really gives the final fermented hot sauce
product, the end product, a wonderful flavor. Now, I wrote down all the
ingredients that I use to make the homemade pickling spice. And I just want to tell you what they are in case you decide you
want to make this homemade. And what I start with is one cup, one full cup, of yellow mustard seeds. And then to that I add half
a cup of allspice berries, a half a cup of dill seed,
a half a cup of celery seed, a quarter cup of cloves and a
quarter cup of caraway seeds. And then I also take a cinnamon stick and I break that up and add that in. And then I also add in
about a half a teaspoon or so of dried ginger. Now you could also in this ferment, you could throw in some fresh
grated ginger, if you want. And that's definitely
perfect for this too. But when I make up this mix, I usually just put in
about a half a teaspoon or so of the ground ginger. And then I also crumble
up a couple of bay leaves. It's not an exact science,
you know, depending on how, if the bay leaves are small,
I might put two or three, if they're really big, I
might just put one or two, but that's the basic mixture. So the yellow mustard
seeds, the allspice berries, the dill seed, the celery seed,
the bay leaves, the cloves, the caraway, and then the
cinnamon stick and the ginger. But again, you can certainly use a store-bought pickling spice as well. It's very similar. Now, the first thing
that we're going to want to do is take our jars. And these are half gallon jars. If you make a smaller amount, you could certainly cut all
these ingredients in half and just use quart-size jars, but I've got a lot of peppers here. So I'm going to do this
in half gallon sized jars. And I'm going to go ahead and put my little special ingredient
in here, my pickling spice, and we'll get that into the jars. And then I'm going to put one tablespoon of the coarse ground into each jar. I don't like to put too much salt when I make a hot sauce, because even though these
are half gallon jars, because we're going to have so much water, it's not like where doing a ferment, where it's packed with vegetables and we're going to need a little more salt to help keep those vegetables crisp. That's one of the purposes
that the salt serves is to keep vegetables crisp
when you're fermenting them, as well as to create an environment that's more friendly for the good bacteria and tamp down the bad bacteria. But in the case of
doing this with peppers, we're not going to pack them in. We're going to put them in. There's going to be a lot of water. And so one tablespoon
of the coarse sea salt in a large jar like this is sufficient. And the next ingredient
that you're going to need is some sort of chlorine-free water. You can use spring water, or if you have a filtration system at home that filters out the
chlorine, that's great too. And the reason you want
to use chlorine free water is because if your water
has chlorine in it, it interferes with the
fermentation process. Now don't worry if you
don't have filtered water or bottled spring water. You can certainly use your tap water. The only thing is you want to
pour it out the night before or into a pitcher and just
cover it with a cloth, you know, to keep it clean, keep the dust out, but a very thin cloth and allow, and overnight, let it sit and allow some of the chlorine to dissipate. And then you can use that water for the fermentation process. Now, what I'm going to
do is I'm just going to add in a little bit
of water, not a lot. I just want to get some
of the salt dissolving and some of the spices softening a bit, just a little bit like that. And then we'll go ahead and also add in our quarter cup of whey. This is a half a cup. I'm just going to measure this loosely and just try to get a
quarter cup in each jar. Okay. That's perfect. There we go. I'm just going to give
this a little stir around and I'm going to do the
same thing to this one. And then I'm going to put these aside. Now normally when I work with food, I really like to be able to
feel the texture of the food. I don't like to wear gloves,
but in the case of hot peppers, I find you really need
to work with gloves. So I'm just going to put these gloves on and then I'll show you how we're going to cut up these peppers. Now just a little tip. When it comes to ferments,
you want to make sure that everything that
you're using is very clean, that your cutting board is clean, that your knife is clean, that your jars that you
started with were clean. And since I'm using these gloves, I wash my hands with the
gloves on to make sure that the gloves are very clean as well, because we don't want to introduce any bad bacteria into the ferment. We want to give the ferment
as good a headstart as it can. And hopefully if there's any bad bacteria, it's tamped down quickly, allowing the good bacteria to flourish. Well, the first thing we'll do is start with these lovely Fresno peppers, and I'm just going to cut these tops off, and then I'm going to
cut the pepper in half. Now, if you want, you can add
in the membrane and the seeds, but that's where, the membrane is where a lot of the spice is. And for us, I find it just
makes too spicy a final product. So I'm going to use a little spoon. I'm going to use a grapefruit
spoon. Those work great. And I'm going to scrape out
the membrane and the seeds. So that's all I'm going to do. Just take this grapefruit spoon and just scrape out the
seeds and the membrane and put those to the side. And I just want to mention
about saving these, the tops. You can just throw them
in a bag in the freezer and they break apart pretty easily. And what's nice is if
you do make mineral broth and you find that, oh,
you know, a lot of people, bone broth or mineral broths, sometimes people will say,
oh, they're a little bland. You throw in a few of these, they're not going to be bland. (laughs) If you're interested in
making a mineral broth, I'll put a link in the iCards above so you can see how I do that. It's a nice alternative to a bone broth or a nice alternative for
people who are vegetarians. And you don't need to chop
these up or anything like that. You just cut them in half, clean them out and drop them right in. And if you want to keep in all
the membrane and the seeds, then you would just chop the top off and you could throw them in whole or cut them in half, either way. But this is it. It's as simple as that. So I'll go ahead and clean
up all these spicy peppers, and then I'll show you
what the next step is. Well, I've got the Fresnos all done. So I'm going to set those aside and then I'll show you what
the next steps are in a minute. But first I'm going to get all
of these jalapenos chopped up and into their jar. And before I do that, I just want to mention a word of caution that I didn't mention
when I put the gloves on. Whether you're doing
it without any gloves, which I hope you're not, or with gloves, always remember, don't touch
your face, for various reasons. Number one, you've got
the spicy peppers on them and could really burn
your face and your eyes. And secondly, you also don't want to put any bacteria onto your gloves. And now I'm going to go ahead and just do exactly the same thing with the jalapenos. I'm going to cut them in half, and I'm going to scrape out
the seeds and the membrane and put them into their jar. And I just wanted to
mention that I have a pound of each of these peppers, a pound of the jalapenos
and a pound of the Fresnos, but I'll also have the
whole printable recipe over on my website, marysnest.com. So you can head over there if you want and print out the recipe. And I'll be sure to have in there that there's a pound of each of these. Well, I've got my Fresnos in the jar. I've got my jalapenos in their jar. And now the next thing we're going to do is just top these off with some water, but we're going to want to
leave some good head space because these are going
to get very bubbly. So I'm going to leave about
two inches of head space, just so we don't get any bubbling over. Now I'll just do the same
thing here to the jalapenos and leave about two inches of head space. Now, at this point, you
have a couple of options. You're going to have
to put a lid on these, and you can simply just use the plain white plastic canning lids and just put those on securely. However, you're going
to want to watch these because every day as
the fermentation process starts to take place
and the bacteria starts to release CO2, carbon dioxide, this is going to become very bubbly. And so you're going to
need to burp the jars. So probably after the second day, especially if you're
doing this in warm weather or in a warm kitchen. And you just release it. You might hear a little whoosh,
and then close it up again. However, if you don't want
to go through that process, they make all kinds of
fermentation devices today that you can put on top of these lids so that you don't have to burp it. I have these Pickle Pipes that just have a very tiny little hole in
here that lets the CO2 out, but no oxygen in. And so all you do is just
put that on top of your jar. You're going to need a canning lid. So wide mouth, this is a wide mouth jar. So you're going to need
a wide mouth canning lid, canning ring, excuse me, not lid. And then you're just going to tighten that and then you don't have
to worry about going through the burping process. Now, the next step, all we have to do is just
find a warm undisturbed place in the kitchen, out of direct sunlight, and just let these sit and
ferment for a few days. You're going to start to see the bubbles and it's going to become
very effervescent. And it's really up to you how long you want to let it ferment. I usually like to go
no more than five days. Some people will leave
it for a couple of weeks, but I find five days is
just the right amount, that it's gotten nice and effervescent, very rich in probiotics, and ready to be turned into a hot sauce. Well, I had both of these
sitting on my counter for about five days and they're
all nice and bubbly now. So we're ready to move
on to the next step. Now I use these little pickle pipes, so I didn't have to burp the
jars over the last five days. So that was kind of nice. And if you're interested in
using these pickle pipes, these particular ones
are made by Masontops, and the people over there are so nice. And they gave me a coupon code for 15% off their items that they sell
through their Amazon shop. So be sure to check that
in the description below. So we'll start with the Fresnos first and I'll show you what we're going to do. We're just going to remove this ring, remove the pickle pipe, and then we're going to
strain out all of the liquid. This smells so good. (laughs) So heavenly from all the
spices that we added. Now, what you want to do is get a blender. And this is just a plain regular blender. If you have a high-speed
blender, that's fine, but you really don't need one. And then all we're going to
do is just empty this jar into the blender, along
with everything else, the few peppers and the various spices and whatnot that we caught
in the strainer here. And that's it. And now I'm going to add
the brine back into this jar just to make sure I can get all of those herbs and spices in there mixed in. I just put a lid on to mix it up, just to make sure I got
everything down off the sides. I got one little piece, one little spice piece hanging
on there, but that's great. Now I'm going to pour that
back into the measuring cup. Now you don't really need
to go through that step, but I like to do it because I
don't like to waste anything and I didn't want to leave any of the spices behind in there. Now what we're going to do is puree all of the peppers and the spices, and we're just going to start
with a quarter cup of the brine. Oops. And then we'll add more brine as needed to get this nice and smooth. Now I pureed this for about a minute and I think it does need
a little more liquid in it to help smooth it out a bit. So I'm just going to
start with a tablespoon of the brine at a time. So I added in a tablespoon of the brine and I'm going to swirl it around again. And I think another tablespoon of brine and it should be perfect. Here we go. Now, I really liked this consistency and I'm going to overlay a picture. I'm going to put some on a plate here and I'm going to overlay a picture so that you can see exactly
what this looks like. How much brine you add
back into the peppers when you put them in the blender is going to depend on so many things, how much liquid that the
peppers themselves contained in the first place, how
much liquid they absorbed during the fermentation process, and what consistency at which do you like your hot sauce? Do you like it very watery? Do you like it a little
thicker consistency? For us, I really like this consistency. This is perfect. So I would say the consistency
is a little thinner than ketchup, but thicker than water. Now we're going to strain
this one more time, just to make sure that we
get out any little bits and pieces of the spices that
may have not been pulverized. Now, I just want to
mention about this brine. Don't throw this out. This is precious if you're a fermenter, and the reason that this is so good is because after going through
the fermentation process, this is very rich in probiotics. You can store this in your refrigerator and it'll last a good while, a couple of months, at least. And this can be used
for your next ferment. So if you use whey when you
ferment, you can replace, instead of using the whey
you can use this brine. Instead of a quarter cup
of whey in a jar this size, you can use a quarter cup of this brine, because this is very probiotic rich, and that'll help get your ferment going. And a spicy brine like this
would be perfect, you know, for doing spicy pickles
or a spicy sauerkraut, whatever the case may be, where you want to have
a brine that's spicy. So I've got about a quart here and I am just going to go ahead
and store it right in here, in this quart-size mason jar. I'm going to scoop out
a lot of these spices that we used to get them
into the jar best that I can. And then I'll just put this
little bit in the smaller jar. I don't want to occupy my
big half gallon size jar with just this much. That's why I'm putting
this in a quart size jar. And then I'm going to get a
little place to store that. And then I've got this
wonderful probiotic-rich brine. I'm just going to get this
hot sauce off the plate. And then we're going to pour
this through this strainer, into this measuring cup. I cleaned up both and I'm
going to get a spatula to get everything else out of here,
and then we'll work it through. Now I'm just going to work the hot sauce through the strainer and
strain out any little bits that weren't pulverized. Well, I got everything strained through. And as you see, I have a little debris left
here that just didn't pulverize. You know, 'cause we had
all those spices in there, but everything else is strained through and I'll show you how we'll decant it. And now I'm going to get ready to decant the Fresno hot sauce into this bottle. And I've got two bottles here. Cause I think that I'm
going to have enough to fill more than one bottle. Alrighty, I got one bottle filled. This smells so good. And we're going to take a
taste too and see how it is, but I'm confident it's
going to be delicious. You can use any bottle that you have, any type of bottles you like, even if you like to put your
hot sauce in squeeze bottles, whatever the case may be. But I'll put a link in
the description below if you want to get these exact type. They're just available on Amazon. You may even find them at
your local kitchen stores or the big box stores. I've seen them in a lot of places. And now I'll just put the
remaining in the second bottle. And now another bottle. All right, I'm going
to take a little taste. Mm! It's spicy. But what wonderful flavor! Oh, I love the Fresno peppers
and all of the spices, the pickling spices we put in, it gives it such a great tang. And the fermentation is a little vinegary. This is really good. Mm. This is really delicious. I highly recommend this. Now I'm going to repeat the
whole process with the jalapenos and I'll show you how everything
looks when we're done. So I did the same exact thing. I pulverized the jalapenos
with some of the brine until it came to a
consistency that I like. And then I strained it
through the strainer. And as you see, there's just
some little bits and bobs here that I'll discard and we'll
get ready to can this. But first we'll give this a taste. And now remember at this point, you know, before you decant it, if you want to add a little extra salt or whatever the case may be, this is a good time to
check the seasoning as well. And also the consistency. You can add less brine, more brine, whatever thickness you
like your hot sauce to be. Alrighty, let's give this a, I'm going to just take a little bit. Jalapenos can be very spicy. Mm! Oh, it's got a kick, but
it is really flavorful. And now this has more of
a kick than the Fresno, but it's got a wonderful,
if you like jalapenos, this has a wonderful jalapeno flavor. And I had to make jalapeno hot sauce, 'cause I live in Texas and we
have a lot of jalapenos here. But it's got a nice spice
to it. Not overpowering. And at the jalapeno flavor comes through. And then all the spices that we added and the slightly vinegary tone to it from the fermentation process. This is really good. I highly recommend this. Now I just want to say one thing about storing these hot sauces. You want to put these in your fridge. It will considerably slow
down the fermentation process and they should easily
last for six months. But because these are in bale bottles, you would want to periodically
burp them. (laughs) But you can certainly put them
in screw top bottles as well. And then you don't need to
worry about any burping. So I hope you'll give these
fermented hot sauces a try. They're really delicious. And if you'd like to learn
more about traditional cooking, be sure to subscribe to my channel, and then click on this video over here. We'll have a short playlist
where I show you how to make fermented condiments, including mustard, ketchup, probiotic rich mayonnaise, and a salsa. And I'll see you over there in my Texas Hill country kitchen. Love, and God bless.
