Chilli Sauce

Time: 1-2 months. 30 minutes prep.

Serves: however much you make

Ingredients & Prep

• Enough chillis to fill your fermentation jar

• Loads of garlic

• 1 x Onion or Apple

• Salt

• Water

How to

Ferment the chillis

1. Making the brine:

   1. Boil the kettle

   2. If you’ve got a 1 litre fermentation jar, make 1 litre of brine

   3. Add 5-10% salt to the water and dissolve, i.e. if you’re making 1Ltr of brine, you’ll want 50-100 grams of salt

1. Chop the chillis and bang them into the jar. You can remove the seeds/placental tissue if you want.

2. Chop the skin off the onion/apple, and cut down to fit into the top of the jar. This is just to push the chillies down into the brine. Make sure there’s a hole for gas to get out.

3. Pour the brine in to cover as much of the chillis as possible. Don’t get it too close to the lid though, or you’ll leak juices everywhere.

4. Pop it in a cool dark place for at least a month, during which time you’ll start to see white stuff in the water. This is fine, and it’s just yeast doing it’s thing. Categorically do not remove the lid during this time. Yeast make themselves a nice little home that’s unfriendly to any and all bacteria, so they’ll hook you up. I like to give my jars a shimmy around every now and then just to make sure the brine is killing off any nasties.

Prepare the sauce

1. Strain out the brine into a container. If you’ve got a PH meter, or some litmus paper, it needs to be <4.0 PH. If it’s not, white wine/rice wine/distilled vinegar is the way to go

2. Get all the chillis in a nutribullet, or blender of some kind. Some of the apple/onion can be used here to impart more flavor if you so wish

3. Add a splash of brine, and as much vinegar as needed to get the PH right

4. Blend like mad. At this stage it should turn into a red smoothie

5. Add as much fresh garlic as you want. I usually just go nuts with it, and add like 6-8 cloves per litre.

6. Blend again

7. Add a few table spoons of olive oil, and blend again. This should emulsify into your sauce, giving you a delicious orange sauce that’s just something else

8. Sterilise some bottles/jars and refridgerate until you want it. It should be shelf stable for basically ever if the PH is low enough