Double Fermented Hot Sauce Recipe
If you’re not fermenting your hot sauces, you’re missing out. Fermentation makes hot sauces taste better and last longer, so I use two fermentation methods in all of my hot sauce recipes.
In this post, I share how I combine both lacto-fermentation (which adds acidity) and koji-based fermentation (which adds umami) in a single hot sauce. The result is something so savory and delicious that you’ll be glad it lasts months in the fridge.
We’re about to review a hot sauce recipe that uses two types of fermentation to transform its ingredients into something magic. And while I’ll provide the step-by-step instructions for making my favorite version of this sauce (a habanero, carrot and gooseberry hot sauce!), my goal is to equip you with the information you need to create your own unique fermented hot sauce. So, we’ll start with the theory behind what makes fermentation so special.
About fermentation
Fermentation is all around us. Beer, wine, bread, kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut — all delicious foods transformed from simpler ingredients by fermentation.
The process behind fermentation is surprisingly simple: certain microorganisms (think friendly bacteria or mold) feast on food and, in the process, convert that food’s complex molecules into simpler ones. The simpler molecules are easier for our taste buds to comprehend, so we find them tastier and easier to digest.
For thousands of years, our ancestors have used fermentation to improve flavor and shelf-life. So why not use it for hot sauce? In this recipe, we’ll use fermentation to:
Add acidity and other flavors to make the hot sauce more complex and mature
Add umami to make the hot sauce savory and mouth-watering
Increase the shelf-life so your hot sauce lasts for many, many months before it goes bad
Capture what’s “in season” for a given fruit or vegetable long after the season is over
We’re going to use two types of fermentation in this recipe: lacto-fermentation and koji-based fermentation.
Ferment #1: Lacto-fermentation
Lacto-fermentation is a natural process where good bacteria called lactobacillus (found on the skins of fruits and veggies) break down the sugars in foods to form lactic acid. Lactic acid is sour in a good way, and it helps preserve food from going bad. For example, pickles, kimchi, and sauerkraut are all made via lacto-fermentation.
In this recipe, we’ll use lacto-fermentation to ferment all of the ingredients to turn them sour like a pickle. This has the effect of not only adding new flavors to your hot sauce but also tweaking the existing flavors — rounding them out, maturing them, and helping them meld together as one cohesive sauce.
Since the lactobacillus bacteria can survive in salt and most other bacteria cannot, it’s really easy to lacto-ferment fruits and vegetables. In fact, it’s so easy that you literally just have to add salt. That’s right, if you weren’t aware, pickles are just salty cucumbers that have fermented their way to their own funky vibe. Later on, we’ll review the steps to lacto-ferment your sauce.
Ferment #2: Koji-based fermentation
Koji is the molded rice used to make miso, soy sauce, and sake. Like nature’s MSG, koji is by far my favorite way to add umami to any dish. That’s because the enzymes in koji break down proteins and starches into their component parts to make them taste sweeter and more savory.
Koji is made from growing good mold (called aspergillus oryzae) on rice or barley. Once koji has taken hold, the rice or barley looks like it’s been covered in snow. It seems weird, I know — but this process has been used for hundreds of years in Japan, China, and Korea to make some of the best sauces known to man.
In this recipe, we’re going to use koji to add umami to the hot sauce. We won’t be growing the koji mold in the hot sauce itself; instead, we’ll be using the enzymes produced by pre-grown koji to break down the proteins and starches of the fruits and vegetables we add. I grew my own koji to create this recipe (which is a whole other rabbit hole that I recommend you get in to), but this recipe will call for store-bought koji. Let’s get to it!
Safety first
There are a few rules you need to follow to ferment your hot sauce safely. Here they are, and we’ll go through the specific steps later on:
You need to add the right amount of salt. Your hot sauce will need to be exactly 2% salt. It’s helpful to have a digital scale so you can measure in grams.
While the ingredients are fermenting, they can’t be exposed to air. The easiest way to do this is to ensure that the ingredients are submerged in a brine. I’ll show you how.
You need to ferment at around room temperature. Somewhere between 60f to 80f is ideal.
Thankfully, if you have the right equipment, it’s really easy to ferment safely.
THE EQUIPMENT
Here is the equipment I use to make this recipe.
1. Wide-mouth mason jar: This is where we will store the hot sauce ingredients as they ferment.
2. Fermentation lid: When the fermentation is doing its thing, air escapes. We want air to exit the mason jar so that it doesn’t explode from built-up pressure. But we also don’t want to let air in (because that can let the wrong bacteria take hold). This lid has a one-way valve to allow for this.
3. Kitchen scale: You need a scale that measures to the gram, because we’re going to add a very specific amount of salt that enables the good bacteria to do its thing while the bad bacteria can’t.
4. Rice koji: This is the molded rice, the secret behind this sauce’s ability to taste savory. It’s been dehydrated for storage.
You could also sub out the rice koji for barley koji if you’d like a more earthy taste.
Ingredients
The ingredients below are for my habanero, carrot, and gooseberry hot sauce.
Koji: 150g
Salt: We’ll calculate the amount later
3 orange bell peppers (de-stemmed and seeds removed)
2 habaneros (de-stemmed and seeds removed)
8 oz cape gooseberries or golden berries
3 medium-sized carrots
8 peeled cloves of garlic
Feel free to follow this recipe, but you can also replace the fruits and vegetables with others of your choosing. Just don’t roast them first like some other hot sauce recipes, because this could kill the good bacteria we need.
Instructions
Lightly wash the fruits and vegetables with a wet paper towel.
Loosely chop the ingredients then add them to the mason jar.
Add just enough water to cover all the ingredients.
Now we want to add just enough salt equal to 2% of the weight of everything in the mason jar (i.e. the ingredients + the water). To do so:
Put a bowl (large enough to hold the contents of the mason jar) on the kitchen scale and tare it to zero.
Pour all contents of the mason jar (i.e. the ingredients + the water) into the bowl and note down the weight in grams.
Multiply that weight by 0.02. The resulting amount is how much salt you need to add to the bowl. For example, if the contents (i.e. the ingredients + the water) weigh 900g, you would do 900*0.02=18 and add 18g of salt.
Thoroughly mix the salt and ingredients, then return all contents to the mason jar.
Put your fermentation weight on top of the ingredients to make sure that all ingredients are submerged under the salty water. If the ingredients aren’t fully submerged, you can add a bit more water, but it has to be water with 2% salt.
Cover the mason jar with the fermentation lid, then store it at room temperature. To make sure that the ingredients are fully fermented before you bottle this, I recommend fermenting it for three whole weeks. Otherwise, it might bubble or explode in your hot sauce bottle!
Once the hot sauce is fully fermented, strain the liquid and reserve it to the side.
Blend the ingredients with some of the liquid, then add more liquid until it is the consistency you like.
If you want a smoother hot sauce, strain it through a nut milk bag. If you want a hot sauce that never separates and has a more luxurious mouthfeel, weigh the sauce and then blend in 0.2% of its weight in xanthan gum. You’ll probably need a more accurate scale to weigh the xanthan gum.
And that’s it! You can store this in the fridge for many, many months. I love to give hot sauce as gifts, so I bought this set of bottles to gift them in. Enjoy!
