Fermented chile-garlic paste.

[Gerald Boggs]

Fermented chile-garlic paste is Good Stuff.  I've been making my own sauce and paste for a few years and this year I decided to give fermenting a try, the results were WOW!!! My canned Chile-garlic paste was good, but the fermented is GREAT! I used ripe (red) jalapeno peppers and lots of garlic. Big bonus, fermenting is

easier and less work then water bath canning.

So how much do I like this stuff? Last Sept/Oct, I made a little over a gallon of it (almost 4 liters for you poor metric folks) and I've just opened my last pint.

 

The other pint is corn salsa, and it's become my favorite salsa.  I've gone through 12 pints of it.

 

Note to self:  Make a lot more this year :-)

Edited June 10, 2022 by Gerald Boggs

[Charles dP]

Hmmm. Looks and sounds good. I did quite a lot of ferments last year. Jalapeño and apple (with some cilantro) was good. So was pineapple-habanero. I’m very fond of home-fermented sauerkraut too.
 

 

 

Still getting rotated photos at times.

[Gerald Boggs]

Those sound tasty. I haven't started to experiment with flavors, still getting a hand of the basic process.

 

I've made sauerkraut, if you do the squeeze method to bring out the juice, it's a great grip workout :-)

Tried fermenting pickles, the first jar was really good, but the rest were soft and lacked the taste of the first jar. I'm thinking part of the problem is I live in a area of hot summers and have no cool room. This year I'm going to try planting the cucumbers late and start the fermenting in the fall.

[Don Abbott]

We'll have to look into this. Sounds very good.

 

My wife has nailed a salsa recipe as well as a barbecue sauce recipe. Oh, and pickled jalapenos... I did several jars of those myself.

 

I was just looking at our leaf covered raised beds and envisioning them full of peppers and tomatoes. Won't be long.

[Charles dP]

Thanks for reminding me Don. Gotta get my chilli seeds in today (heated propagator).
Gerald, I don’t have one (yet) but if the bug bites you might want to check out this YouTube video on modifying a fridge into a temperature-controlled fermentation cupboard. The guy also has some good videos on fermentation and chilli sauces.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Charles dP

[Gerald Boggs]

A sad day has come, I've had to buy a bottle of sriracha hot sauce.  This year, just to be safe, I'm going to put up 3 gals

[Gerhard Gerber]

I recently got a a bottle of chilly sauce/salsa that a friend makes, he does it small scale but has takers for everything he can make.

I loved it, polished the bottle way to fast for......comfort.

One thing bothered me, I could taste the sugar in there, asked him and he confirmed it's quite a bit, right there is where it stops being healthy.

I know fermented vegetables have health benefits, so before I go down this rabbit hole, does these recipes also contain as much sugar? (or any at all?) 

[Gerald Boggs]

I don't use any sugar.  A lot of recipes use sugar to help soften the bite of the pepper. I just use milder peppers for the same effect.

 

Amounts are up to you

Peppers

garlic

Salt

 

It's the same ingredients for both canning and fermenting. The only difference is I cover the top of fermenting with a thin layer of salt. I believe that it helps stop any mold development at the air-pepper interface.

 

Update on my recipe. With more reading, I've learned I shouldn't have added any vinegar to the mash, only salt. How much salt is a on-going question, but 3% appears to be about right. The vinegar interferes with the fermenting and is added after fermenting to help preserve and enhance flavor.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Gerald Boggs

[Charles dP]

I don’t use any sugar either. The fermented peppers are great as sauces (or relish). I sometimes also add onion for a slightly more pickle-taste but I also play around with them after they have finished fermenting. For example, I might add some lime-juice, fresh herbs, tamarind paste, fruit juice, whatever I think will work. I’ve had this restart the ferment though which caused a friend to have chilli sauce across her kitchen floor and half-way up her wall  so now I let them sit for a bit longer to make sure there is no restart before bottling.

[Gerhard Gerber]

18 hours ago, Gerald Boggs said:

I don't use any sugar.  A lot of recipes use sugar to help soften the bite of the pepper. I just use milder peppers for the same effect.

 

Amounts are up to you

Peppers

garlic

Salt

vinegar.

 

It's the same ingredients for both canning and fermenting. The only difference is I cover the top of fermenting with a thin layer of salt. I believe that it helps stop any mold development at the air-pepper interface.

That's about my friends recipe, just with tomatoes and the sugar......

Thanks, that's good news, now I'll have to look into this fermenting thing.....

[Gerald Boggs]

There's lots of information out there, some of it quite good.  For a basic primer, Ball Canning (www.freshpreserving.com), The National Center for Home Food Preservation (https://nchfp.uga.edu/) and any number of American state extension web sites are a good start.  Be warned, with the government sites, anything they have not tested is listed as dangerous, even if it's something that's been safely done by generations of canners.  The BBC is also a good place for canning and fermenting information. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Gerald Boggs

[Gerald Boggs]

Oh No!!!  I'm out of chili paste and Huy Fong Foods has warned that due to lack of peppers, sriracha sauce is going to be a shortage.  Man, this is like the 'End of the World' news, stockpile while you can!  Luckily, I only have to make it to the fall and then my peppers (fingers crossed) will be ripe.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Gerald Boggs

[Don Abbott]

A quick search for "Homemade Sriracha Sauce" yields a lot of recipes.

 

We use it on my wife's "egg roll in a bowl". It's good, but a little goes a long way for me.

[Gerald Boggs]

Life is good, I just put up to ferment the first two quarts of Chile garlic sauce.  From the looks of the plants, I should get at least four more quarts.  With a bit of rationing, that might last me through the year :-)

 

[Charles dP]

Nice. Just the last few days I’ve made a batch of kimchi, sauerkraut and pineapple-cider. Busy turning a ferment into a tobacco-sauce style, well, sauce (currently steeping in vinegar). Tomorrow I’ve got to make a chilli relish. This year’s crop has been disappointing. Too hot and dry (yes, in England )

[Alan Longmire]

3 minutes ago, Charles dP said:

tobacco-sauce style, well, sauce

 

I hope you meant Tobasco, tobacco tincture is pretty darned poisonous!   Seriously, though, you can soak tobacco in alcohol and use the resulting sludge as an insecticide.  Kills anything and everything.  

[Charles dP]

 I’ll blame autocorrect for that one.

[Gerald Boggs]

2 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

 

I hope you meant Tobasco, 

don't you mean Tabasco?

[Charles dP]

I think that’s where autocorrect got me. I was spelling it the way Alan did and it went for the wrong option.

[Alan Longmire]

13 hours ago, Gerald Boggs said:

don't you mean Tabasco?

 

I do.  

[Charles dP]

My harvest has been terrible this year so I gave in and bought some jalapeños. 4 jars fermenting (still waiting for the mason-jar caps to arrive). Onion , jalapeño and garlic in all. One has apple, one carrot, one tomato and one just more jalapeños. My normal jars are currently sitting with kimchi and sauerkraut in.

 

I also put in a batch of gherkins to ferment (first time)

 

and turned a year old mash into some sauce

 

 

[Gerald Boggs]

I was putting up some more hot stuff. Decided to skip removing the seeds and pulp and learned something. If you don't remove them, the mix is too dry and chunky. So while you can still ferment it, you would have to add water before the ferment or vinegar afterwards to get a paste.

[Charles dP]

Gerald, do you use a mash or brine ferment? Don’t know if you do this but if I strain a sauce, I dehydrate and the grind up the solids for a nice chilli spice to use in cooking or to sprinkle on e.g. a cheese toasty.

 

Also would you mind sharing your corn salsa recipe?

 

You might want to consider adding the book ‘Fiery Ferments’ to your Christmas list. Lots of interesting recipes in there, most of which I have still to try.

[Gerald Boggs]

I do a fine mash.  I put the peppers, garlic and salt though a blender until it's a pourable liquid and after it's in the jar, cover it with a light layer of salt.  Rather then adding vinegar after the ferment and straining, I just eat it as it is.  Salt is three tablespoons to the quart, two blended in and one on top.

 

The salsa recipe is from "Ball's Canning Back to Basics" book, but with some minor modification, such as I use Romo instead of cherry tomatoes.  I recommend this book for those that want to learn canning, as all the recipes are water boil. 

One can also find the recipe on-line: https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=corn-and-cherry-tomato-salsa 

 

One of the things I hope to do, is make enough hot stuff to last into the next Fall.  Want to compare how 12+months ferment compares to 1-2 months.  But with only getting seven quarts, maybe eight, not sure if that's enough.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Gerald Boggs

[Gerald Boggs]

How to tell if it's fermenting :-)  This happened in less then 24 hours, as I check them everyday.  It's only happened to two out of five, no idea why the fermenting is this strong on some and not the rest.   I've been leaving about 1 1/2" of space at the top, I think I might need to leave more.