I have been teasing the creation of my hot sauce since the day I built my hot pepper raised garden box in the spring of last year. Hence, this post is 7 months in the making and is actually not quite at a conclusion yet. There is something special about growing your own food. What makes it even better is when you can grow the right food to make your very own hot sauce! While it is great to have fresh peppers to put on your food in the summer, my true motivation for growing peppers was to learn something new, and make my ideal combination of heat AND taste in a sauce.

Here is the aforementioned garden box that debuted in the garden this year. Jalapenos, Habaneros, Chilis, and Ghost peppers all crammed in there with a few sweet green peppers. There is something about brand new triple mix soil and the way plants do so well the first year. As you can see, I was in for a bumper crop this year so I had to plan my process

The ghost peppers were first out of the gate with a fury and a promise of insane heat. Jalapenos were not too far behind and these plants are so great for producing early and often throughout the year. A development I really enjoyed this year is how red/orange all of the peppers got later in the season. Even a few of the jalapenos turned red which is something I had not seen before in my Canadian garden. Green hot sauces are great but a nice vibrant orange/red would be something special.

Lactofermentation!

Luckily, I know the fermentation king @sequentialvibe who has done this all before. I knew of the existence of fermentation but really didn't know of the different methods or finer points. https://cedarcirclefarm.org/tips/entry/why-we-love-lactofermentation

Earlier in the year, when I figured we had enough to give it a go, we fermented 3 different blends including jalapeno, jalapeno/chili/ghost, and a blazing death sauce of all ghost peppers. Since then, I have been freezing the harvest in anticipation of this day. Here, we pile them all up and prepare them for the smashening.

The most important tool in this process is the hand blender. One of my fer-mentor's (see what I did there?) life hacks is to pick one of these up every time he sees them on clearance or at a garage sale. They do burn out eventually when you use them as much as he does and it is handy to have a couple of them so that you do not have to endure incredibly spicy smoothies the day after you make hot sauce!

The issue when you freeze your peppers, most of the beneficial bacteria, required for fermentation, is killed off. So, we selected some other ingredients and produce to add flavour, texture and the bacteria. Carrots (colour and texture) onions (sweetness and flavour) garlic (kickin flavour!) were among the fresh stuff. We also added a little honey, plum sauce, a kicker of the juice from the pickles and peppers I fermented earlier this year, salt and a splash of beer. I had to.

It turned out to be a sweaty affair due to the physical activity of pureeing everything, the cooking of a veggie chili going on in parallel, and sampling the blazing hot peppers as we finished each. So much flavour and heat to blast the tongue and the placebo of beer to fleetingly cool us down.

The fruits of our labors today turned out to be 3 sauces. A nice blend of Habanero/Jalapeno/Chili/and a couple Ghost peppers to make it interesting. I had a good amount of Chili peppers and we isolated that one in a jar of its own. The last one was the insane and rather intimidating number of Ghost peppers I had left. You may have read my post in the summer where 3 little ghost rings on a sandwich resulted in a traumatic experience because of the mean heat. I am hoping that the addition of honey and onions to the Mostly Ghostly sauce brings it down a few scovilles to make it eatable......not in a sport heat kinda way.

Now, we play the waiting game. I have put the jars up on the shelf with the sauces made earlier in the year. I will burp and shake them every couple of days, and add a touch more salt later in the week. From there, I will have to sit down with some bread and milk so that I can sample each for taste and heat.

Once I get the idea what each one brings, I will combine them all into the ultimate Zeke Hot Sauce, liquefy it, and come up with some branding so that I can distribute to friends and hot sauce aficionados. I will also keep some of each in raw blended form as I really enjoy a super hot relish which is basically what they are now.

We were considering making a few available for sale exclusively on the blockchain exclusively for STEEM. The garden, process and story live on the blockchain so why not close the loop and include other folks in the story. We will see.

Proud Manual Curator for:

If it turns out as well as I anticipate, would you be in the market for a taste or trade of your own sauce?

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