Lacto-Fermentation

[stearns]

I was at a spice shop in Fort Collins on Saturday and saw they had "fermented chili flakes," I gave them a little taste and it was pretty good, but thought maybe I could make it myself. Yesterday morning I took a handfull of some sweet and spicy fermented thai chilis I made last year that have just been sitting around and cut them in strips/laid out on a parchment paper, along with about a dozen cloves of fermented garlic cut extra thin because why not. I put these in the oven starting at 200* but eventually working my way down to my oven's minimum, 170*, checking every 30 minutes. After 2 hours the peppers were dried and close to crumbling, but the garlic would still bend. I took the peppers out and into the spice grinder, where they broke down quite nicely. I put the garlic in for another hour and while it got a lot darker, it never really got the the point that it would break instead of bend. I figured any longer and they might start to burn so I gave up and took them out, even though they were still maliable I put them in the spice grinder and it actually turned into a nice powder, darker than your typical garlic powder but much better result than I was expecting.

All of that good stuff aside I ended with... about a teaspoon of each. I haven't tasted them yet but the smell is very concentrated and pungent, much funkier than the one I tasted in the store. Don't know if it's worth all the effort to make such a small amount, I guess that depends on how much I need to really impart that spicy sour flavor I was going for, I'll update when I do some more taste testing


(before going in the oven, didn't take any pictures of the final product)