fermenting Drifty's ferments & sauces

[Drifty]

Each year its time to harvest my crop I tend to try something new with what I have. Most of the time it's all turned into sauces the usual way and whatever is left over goes in the dehydrator for either powders or reconstitution later on.
 
This year it was time to learn how to ferment. My main reason was twofold, it was something different and I like learning new stuff and the other was that Id been keen to make my own sauerkraut and kimchi for a while so why not go all out and do those as well as some chillies.
 
Having read the stickied ferment thread from start to finish and a bunch of posts on everyones efforts I thought it was time to get into it.
 
The day of action was February 1st 2015.
 
For the harvest I was able to get the following
 
150g of Trinidad Moruga Scorpions
150g of Yellow Bhuts
150g of an Unknown Habanero hybrid
300g of Thai Bird's eye
 
This was to be split into 5 jars, 1 of each and 2 of the Thais so everything could be even. Along with that I then gathered all of the other ingredients to use in the mash.
 
I wanted to make everything identical so that each of the other ingredients would go into the jars in the exact same ratio. My thoughts behind this were that when the ferment was finished, I could then blend each mash, have a bit of a taste and do my own mixing of sauces just as they do with whiskey.
 

 
 
What I put in was the following, each blendered individually so I could make sure all the measurements were spot on.
 

 
150g Chilli
60g Onion
50g Carrot
30g Garlic
15g Ginger
15g Galangal
10g Salt
15ml Whey
125ml Water
 

 
In total this added to around 470g of ingredients in each jar, but I found this amount came up too high for my liking so I scooped out around 75g from each jar and put it all into another jar as a random mix. Each jar was topped with an additional bit of 10% brine, given a crazy good shake and left to its own devices.
 

 
The jars I used are pretty cool and I have used them for pickling and various sauces over the years with great results. They hold 500ml and have a plastic lid that is not wadded but has a lip in the lid that allows them to seal airtight time and time again.
 

 
All the jars went into my pantry, in a dark warm corner (adjacent to the fridge) along with all of my other preserving/fermenting efforts.

The day after putting it all together I grabbed the main four out to see what was going on and the bubbling had commenced and was looking fine.
 

 

 

 

 
So there it is, my first attempt at fermenting. It all went to plan which was nice and I've already leant a few things for next time.

Now I just need to try and update this as I progress along
 
Cheers,
Drifty

 

[Drifty]

Rocketman is a vocal proponent to the potato/salt leach technique - and it does indeed work well.   Key is to cook the tatos till fork tender and remove immediately, not cook until they fall apart into your sauce.  
 
Great step by step post on your first ferments and sauce Drifty - nice pics and process.  You did well bud!

 
The potato trick is so handy, works in just about anything unless it is a clear soup or similar as it gets cloudy. You can then clarify it as you would a stock/broth but that requires a bit more effort.
 
I'm now just waiting on my bottles to arrive so I can process a few more.
 
The season is drawing slowly to a close now here in Sydney and I've probably only got enough pods from all my plants to make one more ferment of a complete mix, guess I will just have to see how it goes.

 

[cypresshill1973]

NIce! I like your kimchi and ferments, all looks great!

 

[Drifty]

It's been a little while since I've had any time to even contemplate making a sauce but luckily I had today off so thought best to get cracking fine tuning a sauce that I have made a few times before.
 
What I wanted was a sauce that needed to be big bold and quite zingy but also be a habanero based sauce because most of my favourite Mexican hot sauces are made with them. Originally when I first attempted this sauce I was just looking around the web to find something that may suit Mexican food, there were a few recipes I pulled together and this is the evolved result of that.
 
Habanero & Citrus hot sauce
 

 
250g habaneros, de-stemmed
2 medium brown onions, sliced
2 tsp grated orange zest
250ml cup orange juice
2 tsp grated lime zest
100ml tablespoons fresh lime juice
500ml cider vinegar
250ml cup water
2 tsp dried Mexican oregano
3 tsp sea salt
2 tsp sugar
 

 
Preheat oven to 180c, put the habaneros and onion on a baking tray and roast for around 30 minutes. Don't let them brown too much (like mine at the back). Allow to cool.
 

 
Put the chillies in a blender with the onion, orange and lime zests and juices, vinegar, water and oregano and purée until smooth.
 

 
Add the purée to a large pot and bring to a simmer. Cook over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until reduced to desired consistency, generally around 30 minutes. Now add the salt and sugar, stir in well and you are done.
 

 
Choose your vessels and filling method and you are done.
 

 
I was able to make 5 full 150ml bottles with around 50ml left over. I put the remainder in a bottle and thinned it out with some boiling water to see if I'd prefer it that way.
 
Sadly my pH Meter has called it quits (after 3 uses) so I had to use crappy old litmus paper to test the acidity. A coloured sauce will skew the paper results a bit but it was lower than 4 each time I tested and as I've made this before with only further tweaks to minor ingredients I was confident enough that it will be fine.
 
The colour has already changed a bit, it was a browny orange and it seems to have deepened a bit with more of a red tinge to it.
 
It has a nice expected heat level and that comes on nice and slow and lingers nicely, the citrus just really ramps it up making it very fruity with the zing of citrus I was after.
 

 

[SmokenFire]

It has a nice expected heat level and that comes on nice and slow and lingers nicely, the citrus just really ramps it up making it very fruity with the zing of citrus I was after.

 
Hitting the notes you're after on a sauce is one of the best feelings there is.  Nice looking stuff ya got there drifty.  

 

[Drifty]

 
Hitting the notes you're after on a sauce is one of the best feelings there is.  Nice looking stuff ya got there drifty.  

 
It's a wonderful thing, just like anything with cooking something of your own. Making it taste OK is one thing but making it taste as you intended is what it love the most.
 
That being said, today was a fail, well not fail but I did not achieve.
 
The intention was to make something along the lines of a favourite of mine El Yucateco's Kutbil-ik sauce, and it just never seemed to get there. By the end taste bud fatigue set in and although I was close it just was not happening.
 
I will post up the recipe and photos when I have time in hopes I can be given some guidance on where things went a bit south.

 

[Drifty]

El Yucateco's Kutbil-ik sauce is a fav of mine, there's just something about the mix of spices that I like. I wanted to make my own version, one that is even better and one that I can ramp up the heat in with some superhots.
 
On the bottle they list these as the ingredients - Habanero Pepper, Vinegar, Tomato, Salt, Spices, 0.1% Sodium Benzoate (preservative) - not much to work with as the 'spices' are what make this sauce distinct.
 
Because 'Kutbil-Ik' means crushed chilli in Mayan I knew I would be getting out the mortar and pestle for this one.
 
After having a think, a few tastes and sniffs of El Yucateco's sauce I came up with a list of ingredients and a general method for making it. I did a final Winter harvest from my plants and got around a 100g from mostly yellow bhuts and a few tiny scorpions but they will be enough to get it a bit hotter.
 
Volumes of the spices were the only things I tweaked during the making/cooking of the sauce. 
 
Chocolate Habanero Sauce
 
Ingredients
 
1 tbsp Olive Oil
200g Habanero Chillies
100g Mixed Chillies
20g Garlic
1 tsp Rock Salt
½ tsp White Peppercorns
½ tsp Black Peppercorns
250g Onion
400g Tin Tomato
80g Fresh Tomato
¼ Cup Cocoa Powder
2 tbsp Mexican Oregano, dried
1 tbsp Cumin, ground
1 tbsp Coriander, ground
1 tsp Liquid Smoke
1½ cup Apple Cider Vinegar
½ cup Water
 

 
Preheat Oven to 120C, slice chillies in half and place skin side down on a baking tray. Lightly roast for around 30 minutes making sure they don’t burn.
 

 
In mortar and pestle pound the garlic along with the pepper and salt, when it has reached paste consistency add your roasted chillies and continue to pound until you have a very fine paste.
 

 
In a food processor blitz the onions with the tomatoes then add them to the mortar and pestle. Break down the paste further until it is homogenous.
 

 
In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and carefully add the paste and cook it until it has become quite fragrant, about 5 minutes.
 

 
Add the vinegar and water, bring to a simmer and cook over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until reduced to desired consistency, about 30 minutes.
 

 
I wasn't happy with the texture of the sauce so I used an immersion blender to get it super smooth.
 
As per the norm, choose your vessels and filling method and you are done. This made 7 150ml bottles with a bit left over.
 

 
This shows the colour of the sauce in my prior post (left) and the one in this post (right). I thinned them out a bit with water to do the comparison.
 

 
When it comes to taste I was pretty disappointed with it all the way along. First it was too much white pepper, then too much salt, then not enough hab flavour coming through, then when I finally started to cook the paste things settled down and it smelt really good but the taste was still lacking. The white pepper was still too much but it was better than before cooking it out a bit.
 
Putting in the vinegar just killed everything, the tang was all I could taste and the heat was high enough to make tastings harder than I wanted. I was adding spices by ¼ teaspoons at a time, giving it 5 minutes, tasting and so on.
 
I was adding the cocoa in bigger doses and the liquid smoke was only added at the end when it was off the heat ready to be bottled. Not at any point did it taste bad, it just never got to where the spices could shine and the cocoa be noticed.
 
Fast forward to today, time to sleep, rest the taste buds and allow the sauce to mature (even if just a day) and I've done a complete 180, I really like it. It needs some tweaks with the main one being the vinegar I used, but I am really surprised how it turned out.
 
 
 

 

[JoynersHotPeppers]

Looks nice, rice wine vinegar perhaps

 

[Drifty]

Looks nice, rice wine vinegar perhaps

 
How does it go in sauces, what kind of flavour does it impart?
 
I am thinking I make the same base sauce paste again, then split into 3 or 4 for adding different vinegars to work out the best one