How to Make Lacto-Fermented Hot Sauce

Making your own lacto-fermented hot sauce is a wonderful way to naturally preserve your hot pepper garden harvest! Once fermented, the hot sauce should last for 9 to 12 months in your refrigerator. Use this tangy and spicy hot sauce to top scrambled eggs, stir-fries, soups, and all types of Thai food! Each time you use it you are consuming a wide variety of beneficial bacteria that help to promote gut health.
Lacto-fermentation is a process where beneficial lactobacilli organisms naturally present on the skins of vegetables consume sugars in the vegetables in an anaerobic environment. Salt is used to deter the growth of other non-beneficial organisms and allow the lactobacilli to flourish in order to produce acids that will preserve the vegetables.

I make a few gallon glass jars each year after I harvest all of my hot peppers growing in my garden. The sweet red bell peppers balance out the spiciness in the hot peppers to make the sauce tolerable and enjoyable—not just all spice! Each batch I make is a little different, depending on how many bell peppers I use, and which variety of hot chili pepper I use most in that particular batch.
You can make this recipe using green bell peppers and hot green chili peppers as well. It is important to use all red or orange colored peppers in one batch and all green colored peppers in a separate batch.....otherwise you'll get an unappetizing brown hot sauce. Green chili peppers and bell peppers will ripen and turn red on the vine or on your counter after harvest, so just wait if you don't have enough red chili peppers quite yet to make this recipe.
To make this recipe you'll need:
- A blender
- A good quality salt (I use Real Salt for fermentation)
- A gallon glass jar with an air-lock lid or several quart jars with quart-sized air-lock lids
- Eight 17-ounce latch lid jars for long-term storage
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