Fermented Pepper Sauces (Tabasco) recipe home made

Fermented Pepper Sauces (Tabasco)

Note: This recipe requires pulling the liquid from the peppers, so they must be fresh, fleshy and of the right state of ripeness. At Avery Island they still use the original "critique baton rouge", a red stick tinted to the exact color of the peppers to be harvested. Peppers not matching the "critique" are rejected.

Please remember - old or over-dried peppers are the key to failure. This is true for all hot sauce recipes that use fresh versus powdered chile peppers.

Ingredients:

Tabasco chile peppers
Salt
White wine vinegar
(See below for amounts of each.)

Directions:

Prepare mash. Grind peppers (any amount), seeds and all, in a medium to fine grind. Add ½ cup kosher salt per gallon of ground peppers. This ratio of mash to salt of 32:1 seems to be the best but can vary depending on the quality of your peppers. Put mash & salt mixture into a glass or crockery jar. Press the mash down and cover with saucer or other lid . Liquid will form.

Age (ferment). Allow to age at least 1 month. Longer is better … McIlhenny ages their Tabasco peppers for 3 years!


Allow fermenting until the mash stabilizes (stops fermenting). After aging is finished, place mash in a new clean and sterilized jar. Add sterilized white wine vinegar to taste and age for about another week to blend the flavors together.

"Pulling" the peppers. Run the mash through a chinoise, fine strainer, or, last resort, throw it all into a bowl lined with cheesecloth, fold the cheesecloth up into a ball and twist & squeeze until the juice is extracted. Salt to taste. Bottle the juice and keep in the refrigerator.