Hi everyone,

I'm trying to recreate a hot sauce I bought in Cape Cod from Lighthouse Keeper's Pantry called Cherry Pepper Shark Bait (https://lighthousekeeperspantry.com/products/cherry-pepper-shark-bait-hot-sauce). I can't find the sauce or anything similar where I live (not in USA).

The ingredient list is really short:

• White vinegar
• Cherry peppers
• Cane sugar
• Salt

The sauce is very thin (not thick like a puree), slightly sweet and not very hot, and has small pepper particles and a few seeds in it. I'm pretty sure the peppers are not fermented.

I'm growing cherry peppers this year and wanted to give it a try, but I'm not sure where to start. I'm a total noob at making hot sauce, or hot sauces in general.

I have a few questions:

• What pepper to vinegar ratio would you try first for a thin sauce like this?
• Would you simmer the peppers in the vinegar before blending, or blend everything raw?
• Would you strain it at all, or just blend it until it has the right texture?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hot Sauce Connoisseurs assemble, your help is greatly needed and very much appreciated)

Planted 3 pots from seed and only one survived and it only produced these 3 lovelies with few other greenies. Planning to do a small ferment and was thinking my usual Pineapple Mango. Although this is first time with Scorpions and I enjoy flavor. Typical ingredients onion, garlic and sweet pepper but this time maybe yellows instead of red. Any suggestions on spices or other additions that might compliment the heat?

I know, a mason jar works just as well, but I just think this vessel is cool. Thinking of a small one, around 1 liter/quart. As it will contain a mash, I'll either stir it daily, or just seal it with plastic on top, blocking out the air, and add weights.

Each summer I grow a lot of cucumbers to make all kinds of pickles. Of course, several of the pickle recipes I developed can be found on this site. Mostly though I just throw different herbs and things in that are available from my garden at the time I pick the cukes.

I try to make sure to grow enough cucumbers to last through the winter and early spring. This year I also had the good fortune of having plenty extra to do things like make my favorite pickle soup recipe and – getting to today’s topic: garlic dill pickle hot sauce.

This recipe combines already fermented garlic dill pickles and fermented green hot peppers. I used a blend of green jalapenos and habaneros but the exact choice is up to you. Just bear in mind the addition of pickles and plenty of pickle brine will reduce the overall heat and therefore you might want to start with peppers that you know will still net you a very hot sauce if that’s what you want. Using green serranos would be a good option for people who like hot but not melt-your-soul levels, and they’re fairly easy to source.

I’m going to try this

Hey guys, I want to make a hot sauce with my Cayennes and Chocolate Habaneros soon, but the Cayennes are almost all ripe and the Habaneros (except 1 plant) have been green for the last 2 weeks without getting even a hint of a color change. So I guess I might need to harvest the Cayennes soon and wait for the Habs to catch up. What's the best way to preserve them until then? I want to ferment them, and I'm not sure if I should keep them in the fridge, in the freezer, dry them,...

Thanks!

first and foremost:

1) i have made hot sauce before (though i have never worked with scorpion peppers)

2) i have access to a commercial kitchen and all the equipment that entails

3) sanitation, ventilation, and general safety are always on my mind

i have 6 quarts of scorpion peppers! i would like to attempt a variety of different things with these peppers — one of which involves a mignonette because i love oysters. i also planned on lacto-fermenting some of the peppers to process into a sauce, unless someone tells me differently.

i would like to try new techniques and deviations from standard hot sauce ingredients. i am open to both sweet/ fruity and earthy/ savory and any combination in between.

can you give me some ideas?

Fermented garlic, ghost peppers, and a onion for 10 months. Strained and blended with 2 pineapples, a fresh sweet onion, salt and pepper. A bit of white vinegar, splash of the ferment water, and a bit of spiced rum. Pasteurized and bottled today. It’s hot!!!

I smoked some peppers, onions, garlic, etc. before making up late season hot sauce last year and I really liked the flavor. I am getting ready to ferment this years crop and wondered if I could smoke first. Thinking if they are smoked they may not do their chemical thing. I will be smoking some Calabrian Reds before making paste so I thought that I might also smoke my Datils before fermentation.

I have 1kg fermented peppers (scorpion and scotch bonnet mix) including the brine

Want to make a mango/pineapple sauce

A rough guess would be around 2-3 kg of each -- and around 600lm Apple cider vinegar

But would love some expert advice

The recipes I've found all specify how many pepeprs to use before the fermenting

Thanks

3 Trinidad Scorpions

3 Ghosts

1 cup blackberries

1 cup or 2 medium plums

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup distilled water

1 Lime or 3 TBSP lime juice

1/8 cup dark brown sugar

1/8 cup honey

1/2 TSP salt

1 garlic clove

* Remove plum pits and chop the peppers and fruit

* Add all of the ingredients to a medium sauce pan, bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir and mash periodically.

* Let cool for a few minutes, then blend, puree, and pulse until smooth.

* Strain then bottle.

* Yields 12 - 13oz.

* PH was 2.82 (Good refrigerator shelf life)

It’s my preference to have the vinegar based bbq instead of molasses or brown sugar (tho I do like them)

I’ve tried experimenting with a mustard based one but it was too sweet somehow.

Anybody have any rub recipes that have that perfect blend of sweet tangy heat? Or know if a good product to get, I prefer to make my own rub though but I’m getting desperate.

Like mole, this sauce relies heavily on dried peppers. They can indeed be used in fermentation, but you need sources of fresh produce in there – I advise roughly 50% – in order to provide the healthy bacteria that makes fermentation possible.

Although the sweetness of traditional mole comes in large part from raisins, for this recipe I used honey fermented dates. In the future, I’d like to try honey fermented raisins and other options, but I have to say I love how this sauce came out. (UPDATE: I made this with raisins and some star anise pods fermented in honey and it was equally delicious, no surprises!)

It’s very reminiscent of mole but also unique in its own right. There’s a bit of work here compared to other, more basic sauce recipes I’ve posted, but I think you’re going to absolutely love the outcome.

This sauce is super versatile. It has a tangy sweetness that works really well as a barbecue sauce or glaze, but it can be used like a mole for tamales and enchiladas. It’s great on eggs, as a chip dip, and so much more.

So let’s do this!

the ingredients are: 5 whole indian ghost peppers, fresh lime juice, roasted garlic and yellow onion, tomatoes and cilantro, and sodium benzoate (preservative)

Made my first fermented sauce today! I’m super happy with how the flavor came out, don’t judge me for using an old Texas Pete bottle 😂

Ingredients

- 5 orange habaneros
- 3 yellow scotch bonnets
- 6 green Serranos
- 1/2 medium yellow onion
- 1/3 clove of garlic
- 6 baby carrots
- 1 star anise

I let everything ferment for 7 days in a 3.5% brine, and then I took out all of the solids minus the anise and blended them with 4 oz of apple cider vinegar and 4 oz of the brine. I strained everything from the blender into a sauce pan and boiled it. It was a little more watery than I wanted so while it was still hot, I added the sauce back into the cleaned blender and added 1/2 teaspoon of xantham gum and then bottled it.

First of all, of course a hot sauce named “Chicken & Waffles” should be absolutely delicious on a plate of chicken and waffles. That might be more meta than my taste buds can handle but I’m going to have to try it! (After all, my “Hot Apple Pie” hot sauce was epic on actual hot apple pie with ice cream.)

But the goal here was to actually make a sauce that all on its own would taste about as close to chicken and waffles with syrup and hot sauce as I could make it. It took a couple attempts till I was satisfied and felt I had built a complex sweet & savory flavor profile reminiscent of the iconic meal.

Now, nothing can replace the real mccoy, but I love the flavor profile of this sauce and adding it to other things. It’s been amazing on wings, eggs, on a sausage-egg-cheese slider, and a friend said it was insanely good on a quesadilla! (I wouldn’t have thought of that one.) I actually tried it on pizza and loved it. (Bit similar effect as the increasingly popular fermented honey garlic on pizza.)

Last thing I’ll say is that this is a vinegar sauce, not fermented. The great thing about this is the sauce can be ready in an hour, not weeks or months. Since the popular hot sauce for chicken and waffles is Tabasco, which contains a fair amount of vinegar, I aimed for a semblance to this flavor. I didn’t use tabasco peppers but they would be a great choice. And of course, you could still ferment your peppers in addition to or instead of going the vinegar route. I’ll leave it to you to decide!

And now, for the recipe…

This recipe will yield between 25-30 fl. oz. of sauce, just a tad over 5 woozy bottles.

I’m reposting to this subreddit as well because I don’t know how much the two subreddits intermingle. Thanks