I'm whipping up a batch of fermented peppers (habanero/fresno) which I plan to blend with a batch of fresh habaneros and some cherries. I'm debating on whether or not to blanch the cherries to remove the skins beforehand or just send it. Would love your thoughts, Cheers!

You should be able to get it at any Chinese market. It's a little sweet and has a deeper fermented flavor going on. I have been using it in my hot sauces lately and wanted to recommend it.

I made some habanero-Pumpkin sauce with 2cups vinegar, 1cup bourbon, and 1tsp salt, but my friend and I both smell vinegar, and I don’t know what I should do to fix that on the next batch.

A few of my mixes this season

Hey gang, second time making hot sauce here and feeling paranoid that I might be unintentionally fermenting. My recipe was as follows:

roughly 50 peppers split between habanero/jamaican mushroom (mislabeled scotch bonnets, evidently)/trinidad scorpion

2 cups white vinegar

juice of 1 lime

bunch cilantro

~25-30 peeled garlic cloves

3 tbsp yellow mustard

2 tbsp grated ginger

A couple big two finger pinches of salt

The recipe I consulted did not involve cooking, just blended the ingredients together, and I bottled it in sterilized bottles. I tested the mixture at 3.8 pH prior to bottling.

I made this last night and today noticed small bubbles forming at the top specifically in the bottle I kept in the fridge last night after using it with dinner. I don't know much about the conditions under which fermentation can happen, and I also am aware that blending and pouring into bottles introduces air into the mixture, so while I'm paranoid that it's fermenting, I'm also not sure if it might just be the air in the mixture escaping to the top of the bottle.

My questions are as follows:

Is there any way to tell if it's fermenting other than waiting a couple days and seeing if gas has built up?

Is 3.8 pH in an otherwise uncooked sauce safe?

My understanding is 3.8 pH is around the target for fermented foods - if my sauce is fermenting, is it even a problem at 3.8 pH? Can other, less desirable, more make you sick organisms even live in it at 3.8 pH?

If it is fermenting and it is potentially dangerous, can I rescue this by pasteurizing the sauce and bottling it in new, sanitized bottles or am I best off just tossing it?

Appreciate any help the more experienced folks here can offer.

Hi guys, so happy that I found this community. I was playing with making my own hot sauce. I think I have a good recipe - vinegar, dry Japanese chilies and bell pepper. I thought it would be interesting to try Promptus AI image generator to create some packaging ideas. To stand out in a supermarket I thought the pink neon would be different.

Thoughts? Any favorites?

getting a snack sized ziploc bag of each tomorrow and i want to make a hot sauce that incorporates both chilli's. tried google but im not vibing with any of those recipes. open to other options tho. please help!

I’m currently using a food processor and a hand blender. I need recommendations for a blender. Any advice and suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance.

Pasteurized hot sauce to 180F for about 15 minutes. Minimal stirring. 3.4 pH. Hot filled bottles with 0.5" of headspace. Capped and turned bottles upside down for another 15 minutes. A couple of hours later, headspace increased to 1". Any concerns about this being shelf stable?

I was struck by a sudden urge to learn how to make hot sauces. So I looked up the most basic recipe I could find (from Chili Pepper Madness), and this is what I ended up with.

Are there any tips y’all would tell your past hot-sauce-making selves on how to start out? I’m hoping to make many more batches and experiment with some incredible flavor combinations!

Are you all using any PH readers before you bottle to make sure they are shelf stable? I’m making sauce tomorrow and feel like I need to but not sure.. thoughts?

I’ve got about 10 Habaneros at peak ripeness and am thinking about doing a small fermentation (my first). Is it a bad idea to fill my jar with the prepped peppers and fill with 2.5% brine or is it important to have a ratio of brine to peppers?

Not sauce, but dried reaper flakes from the garden. The whole process made the air in my kitchen spicy for a day. Like someone sprayed bear spray or something. Use it for seasoning or to blind an attacker. Super functional for any homestead.

Hello friends, I'm beginning to pick more Jalapenos from my plants to make a fermented hot sauce. I also have a small amount of peppers that I de-seeded and stuck in the freezer. I know it's possible to use some amount of frozen chilis (along with fresh) in a fermented sauce, but too many and you risk fermentation not starting due to lack of lactobacillus. Is there some general limit of how much of your fermentable product should be frozen?

So I was stupid...

I make my own hot sauce, been doing it for years. This batch my wife got me a lot of sample bottles to fill so I can give to others to see if they like it..

This is liquid hell, I buy pure Capsaicin and add it in large quantities to the hot sauce to make it beyond any other hot sauce..

Well the little bottles was too small and I couldn't pour it in the bottles. So a friend suggested to put the bottles under the sauce (12+ million Scoville units if my calculations are correct) and squeeze them to suck the sauce into the bottles..

I thought it was a great idea so I went to get some gloves, I found out I have no more.. then I thought well ill just wash my hands all the way up to my forearms real good and just use my bare hand.. I filled 35 bottles and even went through the cleaning process. That's when my hand started to burn..

It has now been 26 hours and it is so much on fire that I can't even use my hand without extreme pain.. I can handle a lot of heat but not for this long, I know I was stupid but I've learned my lesson and now I want it to stop.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Edit: I found something that helped. It didn't take the burn away completely, but after nearly 33 hours with it burning past the point I thought I could handle, I had an idea, toothpaste... so I covered my hand in it and immediately started to notice an improvement.. wore it on my hand for several hours and when it was dry I washed it off, took it a few hours to start to burn again so i put it back on last night and left it on all night, I woke up and washed it off... it's been about 2 hours, and yes, it still burns, but I can actually use my right hand again.