How to Make Hot Sauce

Green hot sauce is normally on the milder side however this homemade green hot sauce certainly falls into the butt burnin' hot category!

Making hot sauce???  Are you crazy???  That sounds expensive, dangerous, tedious, and probably takes forever to make.

If that is what you think then you are wrong on all counts!  Except for me being crazy, I am most certainly crazy, we've already proven that here time and time again.  My Instagram account is certainly further proof of that.

Did I mention that we're going to ferment this hot sauce?!

Ooohhhhh, now you're really freaking out, aren't you?  People always freak out about fermented anything.  Little do people realize that fermented foods are really dang good for your gut microbiome and that your gut microbiome is pretty essential to you being healthy.

Fermenting foods is actually the healthy thing to do and it's really not that scary.  Plus it's a hell of a lot more tasty than the tiny $5 jar of crappy hot sauce that you buy at the grocery store.

Hot sauce is incredibly easy to make while being cheap and it doesn't take a lot of time.  Wear disposable gloves and wash your hands after to eliminate the danger part.  If you don't think that's necessary, let me know how it works out for you when you handle peppers without gloves, forget to wash your hands then go use the bathroom... I can hear the screams now...

Let's get to it!

What You Need:

-Peppers - Hot, sweet, mild, medium, whatever you like, grow a bunch of peppers and use them.  So far my favorite is to take all of the peppers that are currently ripe and mix them all together, it gives the sauce quite a unique flavor explosion.

-Salt

-Vinegar

-Garlic (optional)

-Onions (optional)

-Disposable Gloves

-Blender or Food Processor

-Mason Jars

What You Do*:

0. Wear disposable gloves

1. Grow Peppers

2. Harvest Peppers

3. Cut tops off peppers

4. Add peppers to the blender or food processor

5. Add garlic to taste (optional)

6. Add onion to taste (optional)

7. Add salt - Very Important - Don't Skip Adding Salt

8. Blend it all up

9. Add to mason jars

10. Cover mason jars with a paper towel

11. Secure paper towel to jar with a rubber band

12. Let the jars sit out on a table for 3 to 7 days to ferment

13. Each day, take the paper towel off and mix the fermenting hot sauce up with a clean utensil

14. After 3 to 7 days, add the hot sauce back to the blender

15. Add vinegar to thin it out to your desired thickness and taste

16. Blend it up

17. Add back to jars, put an actual lid on the jars and store in the fridge

You now have a crap ton of damn good hot sauce that took very little time and money to make.  You're welcome!

If you notice bubbles in your hot sauce when you go to mix it up, don't worry, that's just the fermentation process happening and all of the microbial animals are doing their thing!  It's a great sign.

I don't measure the salt or any other ingredients in this recipe.  You do want a fair amount of salt in it so it ferments properly but you obviously don't want to go overboard.  My current method is I fill the blender up with peppers, chop them, add more peppers, blend, etc. until the blender is about half full then I add a liberal amount of salt that coats the top of the mixture then blend that in.  Followed by tasting it to see if it tastes like it's too much or too little and adjusting (if needed) from there.

I also don't think the vinegar is 100% necessary and I've definitely heard of people making and storing hot sauce without it.  But I'll be keeping my hot sauce for a year (if not longer) so I currently feel better about it with vinegar in it.  Plus it adds a pretty good flavor to it, as long as you don't go overboard with it.  I'll definitely be trying making hot sauce without vinegar in the future though.  For the kimchi and sauerkraut I don't add any vinegar and they store for over a year just fine!  I also don't know what affect the vinegar has on the beneficial bacteria that's cultivated during the fermentation.

I also know of people who ferment hot sauce for 30+ days.  I'm currently not patient enough for that, I very much enjoy the 7 day fermented hot sauce.  You also don't need to ferment the hot sauce at all, you can certainly just blend it and bottle it, but then you're missing out on all the fermentation goodness.  Fermenting is better.

*Keep in mind I have no idea if these instructions follow health regulations or not and you make it at your own risk.  However I have made this several times and have never gotten sick from it or anything of that nature.  Make it at your own risk but you'll likely be just fine.

Side Hustle Idea: Make and sell hot sauce (in a way that complies with health regulations in your area) at your local farmers market!