A little late, but as promised here is a thread showing how I make my pepper mash. Aging the peppers makes an excellent sauce. Real smooth flavor and no vinegar, which I like. Never been a fan of a hot sauce where you only taste vinegar.
The bacteria needed to acidify the mash and turn it into a great sauce is naturally occuring and can be found everywhere. The key is to give it an environment to thrive before the bad bacteria and molds get a foot hold. The age old method is to add canning salt to the peppers to about 10-15% by weight cover with a layer of salt and let age. I am a little paranoid, so I use a starter to get mine going. Some people use kefir for this, but I prefir sourdough hooch. You can make this by mixing 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of distilled water and let sit for a day. Then throw half of it out and add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup distilled water to the half you kept. Repeat everyday until it starts to bubble and smells sour with a beer smell to it. Then it can be kept in the fridge and "fed" once a week or so by following the same process as when you started it. Now, the hooch is the liquid that seperates from the flour/water mixture.
Here is a picture of my hooch. Notice the hooch on the top. It is dark, smells like alcohol, and full of the good stuff to get your mash going.
Now that you have your starter, time to make the mash. I prefer to add everything together to ferment and acidify so there is no need to add vinegar later. Like I said, I prefer the taste of the peppers, not vinegar. You can add whatever you like to it to get the flavor profile you like.
The bounty I pulled from:
So, here is the recipe I used:
By weight
6 oz Hot peppers (mixture of trinidad congo, caribbean red, marouga red, red devil's tongue, couple 7 pots, scorpions)
2 oz white onions
1 oz carrots
1 oz tomato
add to that
2 medium cloves of garlic
1 tbsp canning salt
Wash everything real good, deseed peppers if you wish (I do), and put in a blender with 1/4 cup distilled water and chop finely.
Now it is ready to add to the container that will hold your mash. Some people use carboys with the water locks, expensive fermentation crocks, but I use regular quart canning jars. Don't worry about pressure build up in these, you don't seal them so the air will escape rather easily.
The recipe above yeilds about 1 cup of mash. I put it in the jar and add distilled water to about 1" from the top. Then add about 1 - 1 1/2 tbsps of the hooch to the jar. Place the top on the jar and give it a shake to mix the contents. I store it in a cabinet to "cook" for about 6-8 weeks. Don't forget to write the start date on the jar.
Now on to the good stuff. Here is the mash finished fermenting and ready to finish. This was the first one trying out this recipe so it was only a half batch to see if I liked it before making a lot.
a Ph measurement
and after cooking down, I yeilded 2 about 2 1/2 woozies of a wonderful sauce.
End result is a wonderfully tasting sauce that is smooth, not overpowering and goes great with about anything. A real winner. I currently have 6 jars at various stages right now and will do several more before it is done. I hope this helps anyone who is interested in trying this and thanks for looking!
jacob
The bacteria needed to acidify the mash and turn it into a great sauce is naturally occuring and can be found everywhere. The key is to give it an environment to thrive before the bad bacteria and molds get a foot hold. The age old method is to add canning salt to the peppers to about 10-15% by weight cover with a layer of salt and let age. I am a little paranoid, so I use a starter to get mine going. Some people use kefir for this, but I prefir sourdough hooch. You can make this by mixing 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of distilled water and let sit for a day. Then throw half of it out and add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup distilled water to the half you kept. Repeat everyday until it starts to bubble and smells sour with a beer smell to it. Then it can be kept in the fridge and "fed" once a week or so by following the same process as when you started it. Now, the hooch is the liquid that seperates from the flour/water mixture.
Here is a picture of my hooch. Notice the hooch on the top. It is dark, smells like alcohol, and full of the good stuff to get your mash going.
Now that you have your starter, time to make the mash. I prefer to add everything together to ferment and acidify so there is no need to add vinegar later. Like I said, I prefer the taste of the peppers, not vinegar. You can add whatever you like to it to get the flavor profile you like.
The bounty I pulled from:
So, here is the recipe I used:
By weight
6 oz Hot peppers (mixture of trinidad congo, caribbean red, marouga red, red devil's tongue, couple 7 pots, scorpions)
2 oz white onions
1 oz carrots
1 oz tomato
add to that
2 medium cloves of garlic
1 tbsp canning salt
Wash everything real good, deseed peppers if you wish (I do), and put in a blender with 1/4 cup distilled water and chop finely.
Now it is ready to add to the container that will hold your mash. Some people use carboys with the water locks, expensive fermentation crocks, but I use regular quart canning jars. Don't worry about pressure build up in these, you don't seal them so the air will escape rather easily.
The recipe above yeilds about 1 cup of mash. I put it in the jar and add distilled water to about 1" from the top. Then add about 1 - 1 1/2 tbsps of the hooch to the jar. Place the top on the jar and give it a shake to mix the contents. I store it in a cabinet to "cook" for about 6-8 weeks. Don't forget to write the start date on the jar.
Now on to the good stuff. Here is the mash finished fermenting and ready to finish. This was the first one trying out this recipe so it was only a half batch to see if I liked it before making a lot.
a Ph measurement
and after cooking down, I yeilded 2 about 2 1/2 woozies of a wonderful sauce.
End result is a wonderfully tasting sauce that is smooth, not overpowering and goes great with about anything. A real winner. I currently have 6 jars at various stages right now and will do several more before it is done. I hope this helps anyone who is interested in trying this and thanks for looking!
jacob
Kept meaning to start a batch of mash and wanted to that before I dump half of the microbes, and took longer than I thought before I could get to it. I actually deseed my peppers when I chop them up. Cuts the heat down a bit, but I just use hotter peppers so I don't have to strain.
Cant wait to do this again but on a much larger scale.
