SRIRACHA

Fermented Homemade Chilli Sauce

This is an outstandingly easy recipe for a fresh vibrant sriracha hot chilli sauce that may have you leaving that Famous rooster bottle named after the ship Huy Fong that he travelled with his family in to the United States of America in the store, I know it is for my family!  Only because we like to be as self sufficient as possible, but we are honest and sometimes we just need to grab a bottle of the best stuff as life is super busy.  We grow and raise most of our food and finally this year I have succeeded in a bountiful yield of Serrano chillies just for this recipe.

FERMENTING  eeeek ! 

This is and was a slightly scary word to me...I have kept a sour dough starter alive for the last 3 years, the longest record sour dough starter is around 160 years old, (Boudin's of San Francisco).  In the UK the Baker Brothers ferment is around 55 yrs old.  I have made kimchi countless times but was always a little scared of what if I fermented bad bacteria!  Well we're all still alive!  I am working on the obvious, clean prep, clean jars and clean food and my nose!  So I thought come on just give it a go!  I brought myself a kilner fermenting jar with a charcole filter lid and made sure I sterlized the jar and cleaned the kitchen with vinegar so that would give me the best chance of a clean ferment.

Prep time 5 minutes / Fermenting time 7 days / Cooking time 10 minutes

Ingredients 

(Makes approx 300ml)

 700g whole red jalapeños 

1 tbsp Himalayan sea salt

3-4 tbsp light brown sugar

4 large cloves chopped garlic

125 ml apple cider vinegar 

The Fermenting 

Place all the ingredients except the white wine vinegar into your food processor or magic bullet and blitz, blitz and then blitz some more until you have as smooth a mixture as possible, around three minutes.

Decant into your kilner jar scraping every bit out from the food processor, pop on the lid and just leave on the side somewhere safe where the jar won't get knocked over and out of direct sunlight for 7 days, after 3-5 days you will see the exciting start of the ferment, there will be some movement in the chilli mash like cracks in a wall, this is good.  

After day 5 gentle shake the jar to mix all the fermenting chillies back to a smooth consistency and again on day 6.  Day 7 over a saucepan strain the mixture through a sieve and using the back of a spoon push through as much of the mixture that will go through, you want a really dry pulp left in the sieve.  Add the vinegar and bring to a rolling simmer, reduce the sriracha sauce down to the thickness you require, I like the sauce to coat the back of a spoon well this way it sticks to food better so you get more of a bang of flavour with each mouthful.

Take off the heat and decant into a hot sterilised ball mason jar, pop on a lid and store in the fridge for up to 6 months, IT WON'T LAST THAT LONG!  Enjoy.