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fermenting bubbling, expanding homemade hot sauce: dangerous or harmless?

T

TNTodd

Tried my hand at making hot sauce this year. My ingredients were habaneros, garlic, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of sugar and salt. Roasted the garlic & peppers, threw everything into the Ninja blender, and put the resulting sauce into Mason jars. So far, so good - tasted delicious, and insanely hot. So I come back to the shelf where I left the jars a couple of weeks later, and I notice one of them has slightly leaked from one of its lids. After noticing this, I got all of the jars, took them outside, and carefully opened them. No explosions, but the hot sauce expanded and overflowed the tops of the jar rims with every jar. Here's my question: Has my hot sauce just gone through a harmless fermentation, OR, is it infected with botulism bacteria? Any assistance to this hot sauce making newb would be much appreciated!
 
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:welcome: to THP.

Since you did not mention any cooking, except the roasted garlic, im going to assume nothing was cooked. Plus the addition of oil, which is a No-No, my feeling is the sauce is spoiled. Botulism Special.

Pitch it.

It might have lasted a bit longer if it had been refrigerated, but only as long as you woukd expect vegetables to last in the refer.

Dont give up on sauces, most people have an Oops or 2 along the way. Have you seen the Making Hot Sauce 101 thread?

Salsalady
 
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LOL, "Botulism Special"....thanks, y'all.  I'll just dump it all out and chalk it up to a lesson learned.  So in the future, don't use oil as an ingredient, and once I've got everything in the jars, I need to do a cook/sanitizing step, such as a hot water bath or pressure canning, correct?
 
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