Hot sauce question

[blissful]

Usually when we make hot sauce it is for canning, we follow the NCHFP guidelines. No problems.

Last month my son and I made a similar recipe but smaller, and added smoked dried serrano pepper, for the heat. It was good. After it sat for a while it wasn't as hot and obviously needed more serrano pepper. The recipe had tomatoes and vinegar and salt (probably garlic).
Any reason why the hotness might have mellowed so quickly?
@anyone, and @pepperhead212 any ideas on why that happens?

 

[hunanbadass1995]

The thing about spicy food is that you can't expose it to oxygen for long. It will lose its flavor. Try sealing it in vaccum.

 

[pepperhead212]

I really couldn't tell you why this happens sometimes, while other times hot things seem to get hotter! If it was oxygen or acid that suppresses the heat, why do some things get hotter, as they sit? Maybe those dishes have larger pieces of pepper, than something like hot sauce, and there is more capsaicin to be infused from the pieces?

 

[hunanbadass1995]

I really couldn't tell you why this happens sometimes, while other times hot things seem to get hotter! If it was oxygen or acid that suppresses the heat, why do some things get hotter, as they sit? Maybe those dishes have larger pieces of pepper, than something like hot sauce, and there is more capsaicin to be infused from the pieces?

It is the acid and smoke, pretend you are Ellen Ripley in Alien and go from there

 

[blissful]

After having killed the Alien by thermal shock, Ripley sacrifices herself by diving into a gigantic furnace just as the alien Queen begins to erupt from her chest.


Now that's an answer I wasn't expecting.

 

[blissful]

Make Homemade Fermented Hot Sauce with Dried Peppers: An Easy Recipe to Make Any Time of Year — All Posts Healing Harvest Homestead

NOTE: This post includes the directions for how to make the perfect, BEST fermented hot sauce with dried chili peppers. It’s an easy recipe, with complete directions, and probably the BEST hot sauce you’ll ever eat…not to mention healthy with all the probiotics! This is the best kind of condiment to

healingharvesthomestead.com

I'm using serrano peppers, dried and crushed. I have more than 8 oz but that 8 oz will make a gallon, more than enough for me and to share. I have it in 2 -1/2 gallon jars.
Picture from recipe website.

 

[taxlady]

That fermented hot sauce looks interesting. Please keep us up to date on how it goes.

 

[pepperhead212]

I tried making fermented hot sauce one time - something like the stuff used in Szechwan cooking - chili paste with garlic. It was almost too hot (imagine me saying that!), but the taste just wasn't the same - probably because it couldn't have been aged nearly as long as the original. It needed the milder peppers, too, like the nam prik pao, when I started experimenting with that. SOW, I have a new (to me) milder variety I'm growing this year - called simply the Thai Big Pepper, which is supposed to be much milder than the usual, skinny Thai peppers. I'll see how it works out.

 

[Badjak]

I had/have a similar problem with some chili's just being so hot, you can only use a few for a jar of sauce/sambal/paste.
I started growing lomboks. They are also called Spanish pepper.

 

[pepperhead212]

Those lomboks are good, relatively mild peppers, to use in things like pepper pastes, that you don't want too hot - only about 10-15k. I used to grow them and dry some for a guy that had no way to grow them, and he made me some ceramic things for the kitchen - something he did in a class he would take, sort of to rent a space in the room, as he already knew what he was doing in there. Another friend used a couple of them, in addition to the 40k variety I use, to dilute the heat, but not reduce the flavor, in that nam prik pao.

 

[taxlady]

I tried making fermented hot sauce one time - something like the stuff used in Szechwan cooking - chili paste with garlic. It was almost too hot (imagine me saying that!), but the taste just wasn't the same - probably because it couldn't have been aged nearly as long as the original. It needed the milder peppers, too, like the nam prik pao, when I started experimenting with that. SOW, I have a new (to me) milder variety I'm growing this year - called simply the Thai Big Pepper, which is supposed to be much milder than the usual, skinny Thai peppers. I'll see how it works out.

SOW?

 

[pepperhead212]

SOW is one of those abbreviations used - speaking of which.

 

[blissful]

I check the fermenting peppers daily, stirring them, adjusting the bag of water in the top. They have bubbles so it probably is fermenting. They sit on a plastic mat with some paper towel and stirring chop stick in case any liquid flows over the edges. So far so good. They ferment until around march 7th. The ferment should taste a bit tangy by then. I haven't talked with my middle son lately but I'm betting he'll want some.

(I'm still using some from my last time making it. Serrano peppers, hot but not too hot if used in moderation.)

 

[blissful]

I stir the brine daily, and today I tasted it because the bubbling was less. It tastes a little tangy. I'm looking forward to blending it into hot sauce on Thursday.

 

[blissful]

Done blending it. It is good but so hot-not only hot, lots of flavor. I'm hoping this batch calms down a bit and it is the same peppers that became much more tame in a previous batch. I think my son that loves hot hot peppers will like it. I know I'll use it.