Feeling HOT, HOT, HOT

MAKE YOUR OWN FERMENTED HOT PEPPER SAUCE.

- STEPHANIE THUROW

Learning how to make your own homemade fermented hot sauces will open the door to endless flavor opportunities for your culinary creations.

Experimenting with a variety of peppers, fruits, herbs and seasonings will allow you to transform the flavors to make infinite hot sauce blends. As with homemade fermented sauerkraut, I'll say that I've never made a batch of hot sauce that I didn't like; some are better than others, but all are delicious.

The most basic hot sauce that I make is jalapeño garlic hot sauce. I've broken down my step-by-step process for making fermented hot sauce for you to use as a guide to create your own blends. You can follow my general outline and tweak my recipe to incorporate peppers that match your heat tolerance; if you want a milder hot sauce, use a poblano pepper or banana peppers. If you're looking for more spice, try adding Thai peppers with cayenne and/or tabasco peppers. For extreme burn-your-bum heat, ferment habanero peppers.

Be creative and daring, take risks and try unusual suspects together; it may end up being your new favorite condiment! Also, keep in mind that different colored peppers will result in different colored hot sauces. Vibrant colored peppers will result in gorgeous colored hot sauces.

FERMENTED JALAPEÑO + GARLIC

I'll use this classic combo as an example to explain my DIY hot sauce process.

YIELD: 1 pint finished hot sauce

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pound fresh jalapeños

• 10 cloves of garlic, crushed

brine

• 1½ tablespoons coarse kosher salt, dissolved in 2 cups of water

SUPPLIES

• quart-sized canning jar

• cutting board

• knife

• measuring cup

• measuring spoons