Cayenne peppers are about the only thing doing well in my hot, dry garden right now. Even at that, I only had three ripe ones today. But after my spicy misadventure with lamb stew recently, I wasn’t in the mood to put the ripe beauties in any food I could think of. That left three options: refrigerate and hope I’d get in the mood to eat them soon; dehydrate for the future; or ferment. I know myself pretty well, and I think it’s safe to say that as long as I still have lamb stew left I won’t get a hankering for more spice…so refrigerating was out. I didn’t want to turn on the dehydrator for three peppers, so that was out too. That left fermenting! And luckily I found this recipe and decided to make a go of it.
Now, the first thing I noticed was that the recipe called for 3 pounds of peppers, and I had only 3 ounces. But, thought I, that will be easy because I’ll just make 1/16 of the recipe. I found that 1/16 of two tablespoons was not so easy to eyeball; and not only that, but 1/16 of the recipe barely swished around in my blender. I ended up adding some water and extra salt just to get the peppers to puree. Here’s what I did:
- 3 oz fresh cayenne peppers
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
- scant 1/2 teaspoon sucanat (next time I might try honey)
- 3/8 teaspoon unrefined sea salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh whey
- 1/8 cup filtered water
I blended as well as possible, avoided touching any of the mixture, and transferred to a very small jar. I’ll let it ferment for about a week and then follow the rest of the instructions to strain out the solids.
We aren’t big hot sauce fans around here; in fact, I was an adult before I had ever tried Tabasco sauce (and could probably live the rest of my life happily without it). My kids hate it when their dad puts hot sauce on their food, so I doubt they’ll be eager to try mine. So why did I make the stuff??! I think I’d like to use it in this Zesty Shrimp Creole, although we don’t eat shrimp so I’ll have to sub another protein. Review to come after fermentation is complete!
