Rob’s Recipe of the Week: A slow burner | Canalside Community Food

This week I made green fermented hot sauce so I thought I would share the recipe. It’s a bit of a slow burner (excuse the pun) in that it won’t be ready to eat until next summer, but it’s a fun little project so bear with me…

Green fermented hot sauce

Ingredients (scale to suit your harvest):
450g green chillies
4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
3 tablespoons salt
4 cups warm water

Method:
To make chillies:
The first thing you need to do is reserve some seeds from the dried chillies in the share, and then sow them into modules or pots inside, early in 2022, repotting as they grow. I grew 9 plants in the end, which have happily produced all summer outside. I picked chillies green to stimulate more growth and froze them until I had enough for a batch of sauce. Approx 1 month of harvest gave me 225g of chillies which resulted in 1 jam jar of sauce. Beware it’ll be very hot – Frank’s hot sauce has nothing on the Canalside chillies!

To make sauce:
Remove tops of peppers and split in half lengthwise. You might want to wear gloves for this. Tightly pack a jar with peppers and garlic, leaving a little headspace

Mix salt and warm water to form a brine and pour this to completely cover the chillies

Fill a freezer bag (or alternative) with water and use this to weigh down the chillies, keeping them submerged

Cover with a kitchen towel and leave in a cool dark spot (such as a cupboard) for 3 or 4 days or until brine appears slightly cloudy and bubbly. The longer it sits, the funkier it will get. Don’t let it go past 7 days or it will be too funked (even for you). It’s worth opening the jar every day or so to release built up air pressure.

Strain the brine and reserve it. Transfer the chillies to a high-speed blender. Add 1 cup of the reserved brine, 1 cup of fresh coriander (omit if you don’t like the taste) and 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar to the blender, and process until very smooth. Strain the pulp through a fine-mesh sieve, and bottle.

Store in the refrigerator. The flavours will continue to develop and get more complex over time, and the heat will mellow. This will keep for at least 12 months in the fridge.

Adapted from: https://www.anarchyinajar.com/blog/2020/6/green-fermented-hot-sauce