Started making some hot sauce again. Decided to make a thinner Tabasco style sauce. This time tried adding some mountain paw paw fruit as one of the ingredients. It’s given it a nice floral fruity flavour.

However my spice tolerance has gone way down since having kids 🥵

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I grow my own chillis every summer, just to make a big batch of hot sauce for the coming year. I do a lacto-ferment following the Brad Leone method he did on his It's Alive youtube show. Its mostly cayenne, with about a 1:6 ratio of habanero for the fruitiness.

Takes a couple of weeks to ferment, then I separate the brine from the chillis, then blend the chillis in some of the brine, pass it through muslin so im left with just the liquid. Then its a matter of balancing the brine & distilled white vinegar, and a final stabilisation with a very small amount of xantham gum.

I don't know how long it should be safe to use for, but I keep it in 2x 1.25L jars in the bar fridge once its done, and top up a small bottle for the main fridge and i'm still using the last of last year's batch - not dead yet!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I grow some every year too, but they’ve been moving down the Scoville scale. Used to do Ghost peppers and the like, but only did cayenne this year.

I haven’t done a fermented one in quite awhile, been too lazy! Do you test yours for ph? I have some left over testing strips I use. I find if it’s 4 or under ph it lasts pretty much indefinitely in the fridge. In fact I blended some leftover basic ghost pepper sambal into the sauce that’s been sitting in the fridge for at least 6-8 months that still seemed fine.

Nice tip about the xanthan gum, I keep meaning to pick some up to try stabilise smoothies, now I’ve got more reason to!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've not thought to do a ph test; I kinda live by Leone's quote "Botulism? Nobodies ever died of botulism. ?"

But I prefer a fairly vinegar forward hot sauce, and the brine is also salty so i've not noticed any problems. After about 13 months it can start to discolour a bit, but i've usually got a new batch ready by then so I just biff that.

Xantham is a bit tricky to use, you really don't need much but you also kinda need to sprinkle it in, it can clump quite a bit and if you use too much while running a blender too high it can capture air bubbles. I made a ketchup and it just kinda got foamy so even though it tasted good the mouth feel was really weird.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah true, if I’m doing one with mainly vinegar I’m not too worried either. When I do some lacto fermented vegetables they sometimes get a bit of white mould on the top if left too long, but I understand it’s pretty safe to just remove that layer.

I’m going to have to try some experiments with the xantham gum to see what works I guess

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Funny, I've been craving spice since having kids! I don't often get to have anything too spicy.

Though my initial spice tolerance wasn't exactly that high. I'll do "medium" or "kiwi hot", but not really any hotter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

We used to always add chilli to most of our cooking, but having to cater for children now means much, much less spicy food. It's just too much hassle to make separate dishes for everyone, so it usually ends up something kid friendly.