Re: Lacto-Fermentation
 

Looks interesting, reminds me of hot pepper relish I used to put on subs growing up, I bet it's delicious

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That’s exactly what I was shooting for. It’ll be interesting to see how the flavors meld over the next couple of weeks. Initial taste, the artichoke was the most dominant.

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A month into my garum doing its thing. I moved it into my garage last week, to take advantage of the higher temps in there. In the one week, it's progressed a lot further than when in the basement. There's distinct layers as the autolysis does it's stuff.

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Well crap. Took a peek at my pepper ferments. The red ferment I’ve had going for almost a year has green mold on it. Into the bin it goes.

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Can't you just scoop out the mold from the top? Anything below the brine level should still be good.

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I’ll have to take a closer look and see if it’s just on the brine.

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Had a big bag of random peppers so I made two batches, a medium and a hot, based off this recipe, left out a few ingredients due to carelessness or just not having them.

Right now, 24 hours later, they are at that "new pickle stage" in the ferment, where they still taste like what they are, but with a little lacto sour going and are still kind of crunchy. I swear, being a fan of new pickles, I could eat a whole jar right now with a spoon.

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I just used some Adam, on a grilled eggplant sandwich I made for dinner. Still spicy hot af, but rounding out the flavors after a few months nicely.

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Cool. I never added extra pepper powder, didn't see the need with the pepper blend being roughly 1/2 red jalapenos, 1/4 habaneros, and 1/4 some other pepper that I think were either Italian Hots or really big cayenne peppers. Be interesting to see how much the heat drops, if any, without the concentrated powder.

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Started a new batch of red pepper hot sauce. A mix of red Anaheim and red lantern peppers, about 3300g in total. Another 200g of garlic and 4% salt. Hopefully this one doesn’t go bad like the last.

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Decided to process tonight. Much to my dismay, mold. And on my other batch that was just over a year old. :gary

Enough trying to do large batches in buckets. Too much head space. Going to stick to half gallon or smaller batches.

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Sad to hear Bob. I haven't run any batches of anything lately, decided to pickle my last pepper pickup of the year this year rather than ferment (and haven't made it through my first of five jars yet). Been a little too busy lately to start anything new but I'm planning on joining my CSA again this year so I'll do a few batches as things come into season. I haven't made any actual hot sauce in a while, I never really got the proportions right and the viscosity was always frustratingly thick, for my next sauce my focus will be getting that right, ideally something slightly thicker than a tobasco but can still come through the shaker hole on the top of a bottle

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Oh, so I never came back to post a followup to the pepper-eggplant-carrot etc mash that Bob posted the link for.

Stuff came out really good. Added apple cider vinegar at the point where I wanted to stop the ferment and put it in the refrigerator.

Still have 2- 3 pints or so left.

Took a bunch of it and ran it through a low speed juicer a few times to make a bottle sauce.

Took the pulp from the low speed juicer and put it in a stainless bowl and put a fan on top of it blowing down so I could dehydrate the solids. Took a few days, then I ground them in the coffee grinder I keep just for spices. This stuff was awesome. Unfortunately, as you could imagine the yield is very low.

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pics?

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I"m down to my last 1/8 of a 2 qt jar (I think that's how big it is). Going to need to make some again soon. I have most of the ingredients on hand already.

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I do this with the pulp from straining ground up peppers from past hot sauce runs, makes for a fantastic chili powder but the yields were always very low. I usually lay them out on parchment paper in a baking sheet and set the oven to "Keep Warm" or whatever the lowest setting is, takes a few hours but works well, after that I grind the dried pulp down to a powder in a mortar and pestle. When I was moving last year I realized I had way too many jars of fermented chilis so I took a full jar and dried them out on a couple baking sheets, took a little longer but I ended with about 2oz of powder that I now sprinkle on everything, it's not very spicy but adds a nice funkiness to whatever I put them in

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Started a few batches of items today. A poblano/serrano/garlic hot sauce that’ll be used as a starter for a batch of fermented anchos. Some blood oranges and Meyer lemons too. Some of the blood oranges will also go into the ancho sauce.

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I'm curious here, could you explain a bit more? Anchos are dried poblanos. You have my attention since the dried peppers will have such a significantly more intense flavor.

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I'm going to use the method this guy suggests - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da9yn5jJKYc

The poblano ferment will be used as the lacto starter for the larger batch of ancho's. Fingers crossed it turns out.

I could only find serrano's at the store. Was hoping to find at least hab's. I'll grab a few of those for the second ferment to up the heat quotient.

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Started stage 2 yesterday. I did find some habs and some red bells to get a second ferment going in a vacuum bag. That was a day or so after the poblano/Serrano ferment. Both were processed yesterday into a big batch of rehydrated ancho’s, more fresh garlic and a few more fresh habs. I have 2 half gallon jars now, just waiting on the action to start. Both of the first ferments measured 3.3pH.

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Tell me more about using the vacuum bag

I've been out of the hot sauce game for some time but really want to pick it back up when peppers start cropping up this summer

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I made a mash out of the bells/habs and 3% salt. Put into a food saver bag and sealed as best I could. Was hard due to the liquid already leeching out. Then left on the counter to do its thing. Had to poke a small air hole to let the co2 escape as the bag started to inflate a lot.

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The co2 was my main curiosity, poking the hole makes sense :tu

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Yea, was blowing up like a pillow.

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Day 2 and starting to see some signs of activity. Marked the fill level on the outside of the jar. Both are above it now just a bit. Left plenty of head space should it really expand, but not a ton. Might add a couple cabbage leaves on top and cover with brine to keep any nasties away.

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Ok, maybe jumped the gun. Looks like the solids are separating from the water, pushing them up. Each jar has a layer of liquid on the bottom. Used some cabbage leaves and onion slices to push everything back down, under the liquid.

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Do you use any sort of weight to keep things submerged or just using the cabbage/onion? I bought some glass weights that work perfectly for fermenting in a mason jar but curious how well using other produce works

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I have those weights, but the fall down into the mash.

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Welp, another batch down the drain. Last time I do a mash style ferment. Can never keep it all submerged, so I inevitably get mold growing. It’s strictly brine ferments for me.

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Ok, been busy the last few days. Got a few projects in the works.

Started another batch of hot sauce. Again using dried anchos, plus de arbols for heat. Also, carrot, onion, red bell (for fresh lacto starters) and some quasi-black garlic I had. All submerged in a 3% brine. Started it only a couple days ago and it’s bubbling good already. Didn’t rehydrat the anchos or de arbols. Figured the brine would do that. I’m planning to mix with some blueberry beer vinegar when it’s time to process.

Today I took out my new vac sealer on a test run. Made two batches of sauerkraut, one with caraway seeds. The other is almost kimchi. Added garlic powder, Korean Chile flakes and some chives from the garden.

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That all sounds so good!

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Revisiting this thread/project. I completely forgot about the garum, tucked away in my basement. It’s been nearly two years now. Should be ready. Lol. I’ll process outside, once our weather isn’t so screwy. Then I can finally send some to Ben.

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Nice! Processing outside is probably a good idea :D

I haven't really been fermenting much, I did some hot peppers that I was going to dry out and grind up but forgot I left them in the oven to dry and turned the broiler on the next morning, so there went those. I did do a fresh batch of fermented garlic that's almost done bubbling, those are always good to throw in a sauce

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I have 7, 1 gallon bags of peppers from the garden in my freezer. I really should start making another batch of sauce.

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I had a couple of stragglers on my jalapeno plant last month, so I "lacto'd" them with a little onion and garlic for three weeks. Today I blended them with some fresh jalapenos, garlic, onion, kosher salt, and white and cider vinegars. It turned out pretty tasty; the tang from the fermentation didn't get overpowered by the vinegars.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...5efe6058_z.jpg

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Nice work James!

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Thanks!

I revisited this thread today; how'd that garum turn out?

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You know, it’s been sitting in the basement still. I’ve looked at it many times and thought to myself, “I really need to process this”. The little bit that’s seeped out of the top tastes good.

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Started a new hot sauce ferment with mostly frozen peppers and some fresh Serrano’s from the garden. 3.5% brine with a little of the whey from some yogurt. Kicked off the fermentation quickly. I really need to learn to leave more head space. :D

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Funny enough, I also put a batch in yesterday, first time probably all year. I stopped for the most part because I'm not too good at making them into hot sauces, I don't use hot sauce enough to keep experimenting until I get it right, and I have a friend who does it really well who keeps me stocked. My only other current uses for lacto-fermentated stuff are garlic for my garlic buffalo sauce and a set hot pepper mix for my honey bbq sauce, so those ones I make about a batch a year of

My wife planted some jalapenos in the garden but they're dinky little things, although full of flavor. She left a bunch on to see if they'd get bigger and they just turned a beautiful shade of bright red, so I chopped a few up to ferment and make into a micro batch sriracha, I figure I'll add to it as more come off in the coming weeks

Any issues starting with frozen? I was worried it might cause problems but that's what I wanted to do with the red jalapenos instead of a rolling ferment. My plan now is just to add a few cut up peppers to the same jar every week or so and top up with salt and water each time

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No issues. Done it a couple of times, adding in some fresh peppers to kick it off.

After a couple of days the ferment has slowed that it’s not pushing brine out of the airlock.

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Canning sauerkraut. This batch has carrot, dill seed, caraway, and I threw bay and allspice in the bottom of each jar. They’ve been bubbling since 8/7 and decided today was the day.

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Speaking of which, I owe you some kimchi. It's from the giant head of cabbage I got from you, it's been fermenting for a couple weeks and is probably ready soon

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Tasty stuff, Ben! Thanks again! Tried on a burger one night, ramen the next day, & fried rice another night. All really good! Hope your house has aired out a little :D

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My first batch of chilies and garlic bubbled for nearly 2 months in approx 4% brine. Garlic still had a bit to go, but the chilies were ready. Spicy, tangy, hot! A bit of kham showed up, so I called it. Eight quart jars (initially packed tight) made about six pints of really good hot Sriracha! Another batch is down and still good few green chilies (Fresno, jalapeño, mexibell) on the bushes. One of my Habanero Caribbean Red is also loaded, so I will do something special there. Got in a few new books with plenty of ideas.

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Looks tasty!

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Nice! Can’t wait to see what you whip up.

I started another batch using fresh Serrano, and a mix of frozen peppers that I smoked for 3 hours. Used a Chillichump video for reference.

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Picked the last of my Caribbean red hab’s today and started a batch of habanero carrot sauce. I added a couple yellow jalapeños for good measure!

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Looks good. How well do you like those lids? I bought the glass weights, but they’ve been a big disappointment. I’m using brine filled ziplock baggies right now.

I did up two batches of serrano’s yesterday, one will be finished with tequila/lime. The other has some green cardamom, coriander and white pepper. Should be interesting.

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I haven’t tried anything else yet, but these ball kits work well for me. I will have to try the bags if I go for fermenting a mash down the road. Your Serrano sauces sound great!