Making Hot Sauce

Finally I have red peppers in my garden and I am making hot sauce. Today I gathered 1 oz Casabella peppers, 3 oz. Cayene peppers, 6 oz Jalapeno peppers, one 6 oz Cubanelle pepper, and one 2 oz. Anaheim pepper for a total of one pound of fresh peppers. 

After I picked and washed my peppers I cut off the stem, cut the larger peppers into smaller pieces and put them in my food processor

 After the peppers were processed I stood back making sure my nose was not close to the peppers.  It only takes once to learn small lessons in life. The peppers will take your breath away if you inhale the fumes.  It is best to wait a few minutes after processing and then open the lid. 

After carefully opening the processor I poured the pepper mash into a wide mouth mason jar.  To the jar of peppers I added the brine.  The brine consists of one tablespoon of pickling salt to two cups of room temperature water.  Mix the salt in the water and pour over peppers just enough to cover the peppers.  It is important to use pickling salt because the salt does not contain iodine and mixes easily with the water. Now the mixture has to sit for several weeks until it goes through the fermentation process.  A coffee filter and a rubber band covering the jars helps keep unwanted stuff out but still lets air in.  Air is important for the fermentation of the peppers.

Now begins the hardest part of making hot sauce--waiting for the sauce to ferment.  Each batch of sauce has a different flavor and a different level of heat so you do not know what you get until its ready. 

After a few weeks I will put the mash through the vegetable seive and bottle the sauce.  So please check back with me in a couple of weeks for an update.


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