The Ups and Downs of Making Homemade Hot Sauce

You know what they say, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!'

When we first began cutting out processed foods early last year, I thought mostly about making our about our meals and our snacks from scratch. I never gave much thought to our condiments. Condiments were, in my mind, an INGREDIENT, not something with their own list of ingredients! Making homemade mustard and mayonaise, however, have been some of the highlights of our eating non-processed foods. My interest in making condiments stems slightly from my desire to know exactly what is in my food, my homemade versions do not contain yucky preservatives or food colorings. But really I think my interest comes from the desire for enlightenment. How does one go about making mustard? I mean, who is even talking about that?

I read The Nourished Kitchen's recipe for Fermented Hot Sauce almost a year ago. And I was fascinated by it. The ingredient list was impossibly small, peppers, salt and whey. The whey is even optional. And I do love a good hot sauce! But the post came out after pepper season was already over here last year. So I waited until this year.

I have investigated my beloved Frank's Red Hot and it does not contain any highly processed ingredients. I was pleased about that. But I am concerned about the salt content of such sauces. I am definitely a hot-head. If I am not sweating, it is not hot enough. On tacos and chili and the like I use alot of hot sauce to achieve my desired heat level. Alot of hot sauce equals alot of salt. And too much salt doesn't do anyone any good. So....that was my other motivation, not having bags under my eyes the morning after a heat seeking journey.

The first time I made the recipe, I followed the recipe. But I only had 9 ounces of peppers. So I adjusted the measurements accordingly. It was unlike other fermented recipes I had tried because there was no bath of whey and water enveloping my pepper puree. I was concerned about how the whey was going to get to all my peppery bits. Then after two or three days, my habenero puree came down with a powdery looking white mold on the top. I left the jar sitting on the counter for almost two whole weeks before I decided to deal with it. After reading several articles that told me that no injury would befall me as long as the mold was white, I decided to proceed. I finished the recipe. And my sauce was the exact consistency of my Frank's Red Hot. But the habeneroes made it super crazy ridiculously spicy. My kinda sauce!

I am living proof. White mold on the top of fermented foods will NOT make you sick. Whatever it is, it is benign. However.....the white mold does do something to the flavor. My super crazy hot sauce, as much as I wanted to love it, tasted off. It tasted turned. I ate it several times before I threw it out and started over. I never got sick but I never LOVED the sauce.


On my second try I purchased a greater quantity of peppers so as to remain closer to the original recipe.. Habeneroes are all done around here, so I chose serrano peppers. The original recipe calls for three POUNDS of peppers. Do you have any idea how much three pounds of peppers is?! It is a crazy amount. Only slightly less than 2 pounds fits into my food processor, so that was where I stopped. I used the full amount of whey given in the recipe. And the full amount of salt. I also figured since I had a mold problem the first time around I should add a quarter of a cup of water so as to increase the whey's ability to get into every pepper crevice. I did not want mold coming to the party this time!

Fortunately the sauce fermented on the countertop for a full week, and no white mold ever developed. Hurrah!! I strained the sauce and tasted it. It had the right balance of salt and sour from the fermentation. It was perfect on the heat level! It was overall exactly what I wanted it to be. Only problem...the sauce is way to watery. It is fine to add to chili. But it has the same consistency as water. So putting some on a taco might not be so awesome.


Oh well...here we go again. Do I make a new batch? Or just live with this one? Did I make a mistake in adding the extra water? Did I not strain it well enough?

I had a truly brilliant math teacher in high school that always told us, 'You don't learn much from a right answer. One must do many many things right to get a right answer. But when you get a wrong answer it is important to look back at your work and find the ONE thing you did that produced the wrong answer.' Every recipe we make is an opportunity to get some new outcome. Limiting sugar, replacing eggs for baking soda or playing with water contents have all been some of the things I have tried in coming up with the perfect recipes. And with each triumph and failure I have learned something new. Some recipes have been good. Others have been total throw aways. This one has been in between. But I definitely plan on dusting myself off and getting this one right again.

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays Healthy 2Day Wednesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursday and Fight Back Fridays

Kefir! Kefir! Kefir!

The lady at the farmer’s market who sells me my milk every week (I now know her name-that is a big step!) has tried in the past to sell me on the Milk Thistle yogurt.

“I have another customer who says it beats the pants off the yogurt at {insert another local farm}, you should maybe try it. It is drinkable, a little looser than {insert another local farm}’s yogurt.”

I regretfully inform my almost-new friend (whaddya want, I am actually pretty shy deep down), that I am not interested in her yogurt because it is drinkable. I explain Thing 1 likes Greek style yogurt, I buy the other yogurt because Thing 2 occasionally eats it and doesn’t like the Greek stuff. Oh, and I cook with {insert another local farm}’s yogurt.

Finally she wears me down, okay I will try it. And it was delicious. But I didn’t buy it again. I just wasn’t ready for change. But maybe, just maybe, my almost-new friend planted a seed…

Late last month, inspired by a recipe I had seen for vanilla water kefir soda during a blog carnival, I decided to hop on over to The Kefir Lady’s website. MB, my kombucha mentor suggested I try kefir, but at the time I wasn’t interested. He told me about the website though and I filed it away. Thinking about probiotic cream soda though was enough to make me commit to shelling out cash for kefir grains. And while I was at it, I might as well try using the milk grains. I ordered one order of milk grains and one order of water grains.

Marilyn contacted me about a week later to say that they would be arriving the following week, which they did. I didn’t mind paying for my grains. Especially because I do not know anyone personally except MB who makes their own kefir. When the grains showed up I was very excited! I bought coconut water right away for the water grains and poured the milk over the milk grains that night.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. The process for the water grains seemed more like the kombucha with which I was comfortable…sugar water solution, let ferment for 3-5 days, strain and allow for a second fermentation in a bottle. But the milk kefir procedure was altogether different. Every day?! They would eat more and more and more milk if I let them? The grains sounded like selfish greedy little beasties to me.

But I gave it a whirl. The first day they produced a thin mild kefir, about 2 cups worth. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I put it in the fridge. The next day it was the same, but I could already see that the grains were growing bigger. My milk source is excellent and quite high in fat, and Marilyn said the grains LOVE fat. I was making too much kefir. I had a quart after 2 days and I hadn’t even started drinking any! Not to mention the everyday ritual. I was starting to feel like the chubby guy in those Dunkin Donuts commercials from the 80’s. Only I was getting up every morning bleary eyed saying “it’s time to make the kefir, it’s time to make the kefir.”

Finally I did begin to drink the stuff. At first I took a serving, 8 or so ounces, to work. I had my kefir with my granola. I would have brought milk to have with my granola anyway, so this was an easy substitute for calories already in my diet. I tried it, and you know, I really liked it. The taste was pleasing and mild. The texture was not unlike buttermilk. In fact, the kefir itself looked a lot like the buttermilk I had used to make quark all those months ago… And within a week the texture got a little thicker. Especially when I started adjusting the ratio of milk to grains. My water kefir on the other hand was strange, it tasted like sweet fizzy coconut water, but it smelled like cheese.

I have been drinking kefir for breakfast every day for the last couple weeks. It is way more filling than regular milk, so I have been able to lessen my serving of granola or on some days and entirely omit it on others. And to my kefir I add a teaspoon or two of honey (please don’t tell me that that defeats the purpose!) and I have been drinking it through a straw. Although I had stayed away from kefir for the reason that it was too loose, now its liquidity was exactly the characteristic that I was finding the most pleasing. Drinking kefir was downright…comforting. Wholly unexpected.