Late summer/early fall is when peppers are in peak season in New York City, and they are magnificent. Floral, spicy, & fragrant, these beauty queen peppers can transform into a flavorful and complex hot sauce with some salt water and time. This hot-sauce is preserved through lacto-fermentation (just like kimchi). The Lactobacillus bacteria converts the sugars found in the peppers into lactic acid and creates an acidic environment that preserves the peppers. Fermentation takes anywhere from 1-2 weeks depending on how hot your kitchen gets, and this recipe can easily be scaled up or down as needed.

Recipe Type: Easy project

Time: 30 minute hands on time and 1- 2 weeks of fermentation

Servings:

Ingredients

1/4 tsp coriander seeds
2 garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon peppercorns in the color of your choice
Fresh chilis in any variety
Optional additional produce like tomatoes or tomatillos
Optional 1/4 onion
Salt

Equipment

Glass jar or fermentation crock large enough to hold your produce
Optional - fermentation weights
Mixing bowls
Colander
Scale (optional)
Food safe disposable gloves
Blender
Containers to store the hotsauce - sterilized

Recipe updated August 24, 2023.

I’ve modified this to be more of a technique and guidance rather than a prescribed recipe. I want to encourage you to experiment and have fun with this hot sauce.

Originally, I made this hot sauce using exclusively chilis, but realized that I riff on this recipe when I make my hot sauce. I am lucky to have lived in places with an abundance of gorgeous produce and will add whatever is looking delicious and is in peak season. Right now, I have an abudance of tomatillo, tomatoes, and other local peppers that our farmers have been producing. The key to proper fermentation is using brine that’s at least 5% salt (if you don’t want to measure a good rule of thumb is if it tastes as salty as seawater, you’ll have enough salt in the water). Happy fermenting, and let me know how it’s going (tag me on ig or send me an email)!

Instructions

Prepare your produce. I suggest wearing disposable food-safe gloves while you prepare spicy chilis as a precaution. Cut peppers into 2 inch pieces and get rid of the stems (compost, please), if you want more heat, leave the seeds and gills inside the pepper, if you want less heat, remove. Cut additional produce into 2 inch chunks as well. Place all produce including onion and garlic into your fermentation jar.
Prepare salt brine in a mixing bowl. Mix one quart of water with 5% of its weight in salt. You can use a scale and calculate the weight of the salt or use this pickling brine calculator. If you don’t have a scale, no problem, mix your salt into one quart of water gradually tasting the water as you go. It should taste salty like seawater (FYI -Lacto-fermentation needs only 2% salt to occur).
Add the remaining spices into the crock: the coriander seeds, cardamom pods, garlic, and peppercorns. Pour the saltwater brine over the peppers and ensure the liquid covers the peppers. If you have fermentation weights, gently place them over the pepper to submerge them under the liquid.
Set your fermentation jar/crock in a cool part of your kitchen and let it ferment for 1 - 2 weeks. Within the first two days, you should see tiny bubbles coming out of the peppers. This means your peppers are fermenting. If you don’t see bubbles coming out of the peppers within 5 days, I would advise you to toss the batch and start over. If your kitchen is warm, then let it ferment in the kitchen for 2 days, and then transfer to the fridge to continue fermenting for 2 weeks.
Make sure to let gas out of your jar every few days so that pressure doesn’t build up in the jar.
Once the produce has fermented, they’ll let off less gas and will have changed slightly in color and texture (they’ll become less vibrant). Strain the produce over a bowl. Carefully remove all of the cardamom pods and other spices that you don’t want to blend into the sauce and discard (okay to bend the cardamom and whole pepper).
Place the produce into the blender and add 1/4 cup of the brine to the produce. Blend until smooth. Taste the sauce. Add more brine if you want the sauce to be more liquid, but note, you’ll add more salt into the hot sauce. I like to season my hot sauce just a touch saltier than I want the final product to be by adding a generous pinch of salt to the blended hot sauce. I do this because the sauce will continue to ferment and the salt with mellow over time.
Store the hot sauce in the sterilized containers in the fridge. I store mine in mason jars. They’ll continue to ferment in the fridge and should be good for up to a year — if it makes it that long.

How to Serve

Enjoy with Breakfast Nachos or on anything really. I love to give little bottles as gifts!