I am a Tabasco man, always have been. Sure, I love lots of hot sauces, but for me the alpha and omega of pepper sauce is Tabasco. What I didn’t know until I visited their plant was that it is a fermented hot sauce.
This slow fermentation makes sauces like Tabasco something more than just heat and vinegar, something more refined and mellow. I had no idea what that something was until I got a chance to visit Avery Island, Louisiana, and meet the McIlhenny family face to face.
Touring the plant, I was shocked to learn that the recipe for Tabasco is not some closely guarded secret. They’ll gladly tell anyone who asks what it is: Tabasco peppers, 2 1/2 percent salt, vinegar… and time. Lots of time. Winemaker-style time. Tony Simmons, the company’s CEO, walked me through it.
The Tabasco chiles are chopped up, mixed with salt mined right from the island itself, then poured into old oak barrels to ferment in a barn for up to five years, although most of the mash is fermented only (!) three years.
They then mix the mash with distilled vinegar (they used to use white wine vinegar) and let this pickle for a month, mixing all the way. Finally, they strain out the pulp and seeds and bottle the sauce.
I was fascinated by this. Aged in oak? For three years?! Damn. Gauntlet thrown. One I will gladly pick up.
Two years later, here’s how it went.
I decided to not even try to replicate Tabasco Sauce exactly, because why would I want to? Even if I succeeded, I can buy the stuff easier at the supermarket. I’d use the method, with different chiles, to make my own fermented hot sauce. Rather, two sauces: One red, one green.
I grew a lot of chiles that year, so I used an eclectic mix of serranos, Tabascos, ripe padron chiles, and a few Thai chiles tossed in for good measure. Yes, I know doing this makes this sauce unrepeatable, but so be it. No vintage of a wine is exactly repeatable either, and since fermented hot sauce keeps almost as long as wine, it’d be fun to play with annual vintages.
I waited until late September 2012 to harvest all my chiles, and I grabbed both the red and green.
I stemmed them all and chopped them roughly, then tossed them in a food processor with that critical 2 1/2 percent salt — this is enough to protect the chiles from bad bacteria but not enough to prevent fermentation by the good bugs.
Into quart Mason jars they all went. Within a day they were fermenting, with an acrid, slightly yeasty smell that was something like a cross between Mace and a loaf of bread. Not that unpleasant, actually. I stirred the mash every day and let it breathe. After about 10 days things settled down, so I moved the jars into my salami fridge, which is a cool 55°F. But before I did that, I grabbed some toasted oak cubes I had from winemaking and tossed them in. Instant oak barrel!
And then I forgot about my hot sauce. For two full years. OK, that’s not totally true. Every few months or so I’d check on them, and once in a while a film of mold would grow on the surface; this happened three times. I just picked it off and called it good. After all, we’re dealing with chiles and salt here, both of which are pretty inhospitable ingredients to any truly bad wee beasties.
Finally, earlier this year I decided to make my sauce. I stared at that awesomely fermented mash, which was at once mellow and smooth yet muy picante, if such a thing can exist. I just couldn’t discard it. So I pureed it even smoother and added a little xanthan gum to stabilize it.
The result is a lovely hot sauce. Tangy from the fermentation, hot but not overbearing (a result of the mix of chiles I used), vinegary and a bit salty. It’s not Tabasco. It’s something different. Something… better? Perish the thought.
Fermented, Tabasco-Style Hot Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 1/3 pounds chile peppers, about 1.5 kilos
- 1 ounce kosher salt, about 37 grams
- 2 cups water
- 3 ounces oak cubes
- 4 cups white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum (optional)
Instructions
- Roughly chop the chiles and compost the stems. Blitz the chiles in a food processor or blender with the salt and water until you get a rough paste or slurry, depending on how much moisture there is in the peppers themselves. I keep the seeds in the chiles, but if you want a milder sauce, remove them.
- Put the mash into quart mason jars and cap them loosely. "Burp" the caps at least once a day to let out escaping gases and let air in. The chiles will ferment like this for at least a week, and sometimes up to 3 weeks. When the chiles settle down, add the oak cubes, distributing them evenly throughout the jars. Tighten the lids and store the jars in a cool, dark place. I kept mine in my salami fridge, which is 55°F. A basement is fine, as would a fridge. Tabasco keeps their mash barrels at ambient temperatures, which in Louisiana can top 100°F. I am working on a batch fermented this way now, and I see no reason it won't work. Don't let the mash freeze, however.
- Keep the mash like this no less than 3 months, and up to 2 years. When you are ready to finish the sauce, mix the mash with the vinegar.
- You now have two choices: You can do what Tabasco does and return the mix to the jars, shake them every day for a month and then strain out the pulp and seeds. Or, do what I do and keep all that pulp, which will give the sauce body and thickness. If you choose my method, you will need to really blend the sauce and stabilize it -- otherwise the sauce will eventually separate and will need to be shaken up before each use. To do so, dissolve the xanthan gum in 2 tablespoons of water and add it to the blender. Blend for a solid minute. Let the sauce rest for 1 hour before bottling so any trapped air in sauce (from the blending process) can escape. Bottle and store. The sauce will keep for a year or more.
Hank,
I have gathered my gear, gathered my ingredients, read enough to be thoroughly confused, and am ready to start! Do I wash my home grown peppers? Or do I leave them “dirty”?
Al: Either way. I rarely do because I don’t use sprays of any kind and they never touch dirt. But it can’t hurt.
I have cold smoked my peppers, as much heat as possible without drying them, then ran in the food processor with just a bit of filtered water to make a paste. I then place in wide mouth quart jars with a couple tablespoons of kosher salt and a table spoon of liquid from fresh sauerkraut. I place the lids on barely finger tight. I stir once a week for a month, then once a month for 4 months, then once every 4 months. This sits on my counter, center of kitchen at between 64° and 72° for at least a year. I have a batch running at 2.5 years and another at 1.5 years now. When I am ready to make sauce I use about 50/50 mash to a good vinegar ratio, 1/3-1/2 cup, adding in a heaping teaspoon of crushed garlic and a teaspoon of kosher salt, to taste.
Hi again
getting ready to bottle 2019 crop of Ghost, Carolina Reap, & Habanaro!
i would like a slightly thicker than tobasco sauce consistancy-
should i COOK the pepper/oak/vin mix when adding Xanthan gum or can i add X gum at room temp for proper blending/thickness?
Darrell: I do it at room temperature, then blend until everything warms. It doesn’t need to boil.
Actually, you should never cook a fermented sauce, this would kill all the beneficial bacteria that makes the sauce so good tasting, long lasting, and shelf stable. When you blend in a Vitamix, make sure it does not heat up too much by using cold water(with ice) and cold vinegar. Xanthan gum works wonderfully to keep the sauce from separating, just add very slowly to desired thickness.
Whenever I see percentages mentioned, I wonder a percentage of what? So, if you’re asking for 2.5% salt, does this mean 2.5% of the liquid? Example: If you have 10 tablespoons of liquid, 2 1/2 tablespoons of salt will be added? I’ve never understood the percentage ingredient. . . percentage of WHAT?
TT: 2.5% of the weight of the pepper mash plus any liquid you add.
I have been fermenting vegetables for around 3 decades; sauerkraut, kim chi, pickles of all kinds: turnip, szechuan pickle, vinegar free dills, piccalilli and hot sauce.
Here are a couple of pointers.
1) It isn’t true that raising the salt content will necessarily limit fermentation. While there is a limit, the limit is quite high. Fermentation will still take place with a salt content as high as 10 %. I suspect that the limitation to 2 1/2% here, is to match the tabasco recipe. Typical salt contents for such products are as high as 5%. Personally, I use 4% sea salt for hot sauce, which is only about 95% NaCl. Mined rock salt is purer.
2) Technically, the white film that grows on the surface is yeast, not mold. They are opportunistic yeasts, encountered on the surface of many vegetable fermentations and are oxygen dependent. Fermentation, releases CO2, which is heavier than air and when the fermentation is active, creates a blanket over the vegetables. Opening the container allows an in rush of air, displacing the CO2 but if the CO2 volume is sufficient it gets quickly replaced. Once yeast is seen forming, the fermentation has slowed to the point that very little CO2 is being created but the yeast growth has been there for 2 or 3 days already.
The idea is to limit the exposure of air to the surface of the vegetables. There are several techniques that work.
1) Use a wide jar with a tight fitting lid. Fill the jar only about 1/2 way. Each day after filling, rotate the jar in one direction only, 360 degrees in four increments. Do a complete rotation about 3 times. The process is similar to a front loading washing machine. Each 1/4 rotation will cause the back side of the rotation to spill over the foreside. In 3 or 4 rotations the original top contents will be well under. This not only serves to homogenize the contents but kills any yeasts that have started to colonize the surface. When the fermentation is very active, the lid of this fermentor will dome a little. These types of fermentations are much gentler than an alcoholic fermentation and there is virtually no danger of a sealed container bursting but if you feel the dome is too great, just undo the lid and burp the contents occasionally but be careful towards the declining side of the fermentation to not release important volumes of CO2. The rotary technique, really keeps the yeasts down. It is possible to keep them down to nothing, with care.
2) Another technique is to establish an airlock. Specialized jars exist for szechuan pickle that have a moat around the lid, and an overhanging lid that dips into the moat, allowing CO2 out and no air in. One could also fashion a jar with the type of fermentation lock used for wine.
3) Stirring. Stirring the contents well daily, will inhibit yeasts but you also release the protective layer of CO2. If you opt for stirring, it must be regularly and rigorous in order to suppress yeast growth.
4) Skimming. Skimming is by far the least effective method of inhibiting spoilage because by the time you see the yeast bloom, it has already been there for a while. Yeasts can cause off flavours and mushy structure. You also need to dig pretty deep in order to get to the lower levels of yeast growth, so you lose contents. It could be argued that due to the fact that some fermented foods go back to extreme antiquity and even tabasco back almost 200 years, and that no fancy yeast controls were available then, so why are they necessary? It also could be argued that a certain amount of the flavour imparted by yeasts is integral to the flavour of many fermented foods. Kim Chi for instance can be divided into fresh kim chi and aged kim chi where the flavours of yeast can be very evident. Many Korean children will attest to the undesirability of having to eat yeast imbued Kim Chi soup in the summer, 8 months after the yummy fresh stuff warmed their tummies on a cold fall day.
It is hard to get around the fact that with vegetable fermentations,yeasts cause spoilage. Keep the oxygen down and the CO2 up.
Limit the air space as much as possible with all techniques except 1). While this in theory limits the volume of oxygen that the yeasts can feed on, in practice, even a 1/4″ of head space will provide enough oxygen for the yeasts to thrive on. Exclusion of air is the key, not the limitation of the space it can take up. It is true though, that with a small head space, a weaker fermentation can fill that space better with CO2.
Keeping the vegetables submerged under the developing brine with a weighted plate or wooden lid is also adesirable technique and makes the skimming of surface yeasts on the brine really easy, while also removing the worry about head space.
One other piece of advice is that, once yeast is detected, the fermentation has slowed to a trickle. Advisories to ferment for weeks, sometimes as long as 6 are putting the integrity of the product at risk. I use the suns energy as much as possible and when it isn’t enough, I cozy up to some artificial heat source. I run my fermentations at 80-90 F. for about a week, after which I cool things down. Almost nothing is left to ferment by then. In the case of hot sauce, I then keep the tumbler system going for another week, by which time it might as well receive it’s vinegar dose. It will age nonetheless and the lactic ferment component will continue to completion in concert with the vinegar anyway.
The correct vinegar percentage will relieve one of the necessity for diligence when it comes to yeast contamination.
Hi Phil, I’ve been fermenting too for a few decades, and the info you’ve given above is just fabulous! I hope others read and follow your advice. Newbies to this process have to understand that if your product is heated, boiled, or canned, it will not ferment since all the bacteria are now dead. One cannot ferment without these little beasties!!
I did the same thing a few years back minus the oak, this year I added it though. One change I did try, I used my speed pot to can the mason jar. Got it up to the perfect temp. I’ll come back in a few months to let you know how the fermenting is going in a sealed jar.
Head space! That’s my problem!
Transfering mash to smaller jar w/ oak!
Post ya in a couple of months!
Thanks!
hey there!
been spending alot of time on this recipe/process/patience thing!(this is my 1st batch)…
100 pepper(ghost, reaper,habanero,red)mash is fermenting. White mold already forming after 1 week. You say you skim and this shouldn’t be a problem. I was thinking about adding more salt? Wondering if that would ward off any evil brewing in the jar?!?
waiting for oak chips to arrive to add in tomorrow and getting ready for a long winter.
Darrell: The way to inhibit mold is to not have a ton of head space in your jar. It’ll happen regardless, and I only skim like once ever month or thereabouts. Don’t ever go higher than 3% salt by weight you won’t get proper fermentation.
Nice write up, going to do tabasco peppers today. Last year did this and it was excellent.
17 jalapenos, seeded.
35 Thai chili’s. Not seeded
1 red bell pepper
1/2 yellow onion
4% saline solution
In quart sealer jar with airlock
Four weeks ferment
Oh that’s hot.
Food processor, then simmered for a couple of hours. Process with immersion blender.
2 tbs cider vinegar
Half tsp salt
Half tsp sugar
Tsp garlic powder.
Strain
Hot!! And good
Looking for clarification…you state that the critical salt ratio is 2.5%, per Tabasco. Then you say to remember the key ratio of 2%. You’re recipe uses roughly 2%. What happened to the other .5% or did I miss something? Thanks!
Jason: Sorry about that. You have wiggle room. I prefer 2%, but I’ve seen it as low as 1.5% and as high as 3%. Tabasco itself uses 2.5%.
Hank,
With your recipe, how much liquid (separate from pulp) does this yield?
Al
Al: I puree it all in a blender, so however much that is. The only thing I measure is salt by weight. Every batch is different in terms of chiles + water.
Hank, my pepper mash is fermenting currently but it has separated quite a bit, most of the water is at the bottom and the thick mash is on top. Is this normal?
G.S. Yep, totally normal.
A few years ago when we had a bumper crop of hot peppers including Tabascos, Habaneros, Vietnamese, and many others, I bought one of those little aging kegs on amazon, filled it with Moonshine for 2 weeks (Tabasco uses Jack Daniels kegs, but we’re in West Virginia… 🙂 put the pepper-salt mash in the keg, and totally forgot about it for 3 years. It was THE best hot sauce we’ve ever had in our LIVES! And, as you said, inimitable! I Highly recommend doing that if you have a bumper crop of peppers! This year, with only a couple of bowlfuls of peppers, I am fermenting the mash in brine in a Mason Jar- and will dole it out like a controlled substance for the next year!
Hi have been making a similar recipe for 10 uears . But have always used only 15ml viniger per litre of mash once fermentation is finished usually 3 mnths. I would like to sell this comercially at markets but have found that when left out the fridge for a few hours it does build up co2 in the jars. So you get a pop sound when opening the jar. Is there a way of preventing this gas build up…..or could it he a health risk????
Dino: Then it is still fermenting. You need to wait until the ferment is done. The vinegar helps stop it.
Mr Shaw, after i use your recepe for 2 years i would like to comment that it is a simple but with great potential for experiment recipe. I have made several experiments with different recipes but this one gives the most satisfying results. It happened that i found a pepper plant that had some chillies that smell and taste exactly like tabasco ( but are a bit smaller than those in your pictures) so i started to grow my own “breed”. I will try them your way and when i get my results i will let you know.
Thanks for the great recipe.
I made this in Jan 2019 using cherry bomb peppers. Since I had some wood chips for smoking I toasted those in my oven and put them into a tea bag, then into the ferment. It’s now July and I just scraped off about an inch of mold and blended everything underneath (that still looked and smelled great!). I strained it after blending and now have an amazing hot sauce! I just went and bought a variety of peppers to make it again. So good!
I just poured my fermented hot pepper sauce out of an oak barrel I had purchased for the experiment. I put it in the barrel on 9/28/18. I was so excited, and am now horrified to have found a big blob of black mold. Makes me want to shed a tear, and not because of the Scovilles. Waah! Next year I use your oak block idea and put it in a container I can look in.
Well, Hank. I have been making hot sauce for three years now. I found your article here about the Tabasco brand and the faux method of trying to imitate it. It was a huge success and I thank you for the tidbits of advice. I have a huge garden and grow all kinds of things. Mostly I like peppers! Sweet ones and hot ones alike. I grow a variety of heirloom pepper that I call paprika pepper (a heavy walled sweet yet hot pepper) and also make smoked paprika. Back to the hot sauce. I used three kinds of peppers in my toasted oak batch, I toasted my own white oak pieces too. I used 50% Hungarian, 25% Portugal and 25% jalapenos (red ripe). I pretty much did as you except I used a dark cooler closet instead of a fridge. My three months were up and I finished processing it. Simply amazing stuff thank you! it has a very unique flavor and it is so mellow. The heat is fairly warm and am not going to try and rate the Scoville number but I will say this. The flavor will make even the heat naysayers ask for more. I witnessed this several times and have made new hot sauce fans of some.
Do you strain out the water before you add the vinegar or just keep them all together?
Josh: I tend to strain off a lot of it, but some is OK. You want a sauce with a little body, but not so thick as, say A1 Sauce. Unless of course that’s what you like. Then go for it! It’s just that Tabasco is a thinner sauce.
Hank- do you think it would be safe to keep the mash in the quart jars at room temperature, and not in a refrigerator like you do? I don’t have refrigerator room. After reading what the Tabasco company does, it would seem alright PS-thank you for answering my other questions.
Donna: I think it will be fine, but you might get more mold to skim off.
Hank,
You start your story saying Tabasco uses 2 & 1/2 % salt but your recipe calls for 2 %, I use 2% in my sauerkraut, why the difference ?
Bob: I prefer 2% as you get a more fermented flavor.
Hank- do you know a good source for gallons of white wine vinegar? It is too expensive on Amazon and places like GFS food service stores just carry the red wine vinegar.
Hello, can you tell me where to find oak cubes and xanthan gum? Also, at the end where you can strain out the pulp and seeds, or blend as you do, how do you blend and completely break down the seeds? Wouldn’t there be a grittiness to the hot sauce because of the seeds? Sorry for all the questions! I just have one bag of tabasco style chilis from the garden that I want to use and that is all I have. Don’t want to mess this up!
Donna: Oak cubes and xanthan gum on Amazon, and I blend everything completely, seeds and all. But I have a badass blender… 😉
Does water need to be added periodically for long term fermentation? I assume there must be some evaporation.
Guillermo: Nope. But you would if you did not limit fermentation.
Hey Hank,
I’m kind of a newb at this. Can this recipe be proportionately decreased or increased? I want to use the peppers from my garden and I don’t have 3.5 pounds.
Thanks!
Timmy: Absolutely. You can scale up or down as needed.
I recently made a batch but was unable to burp the jars after the first three days. When I returned home there was mold on top. You mentioned removing the mold and continuing. My concern is how much mold is acceptable. A skin on the top or a few specks?
Barb: I get a skin that I skim off every week or two.
Hi, Hank – I really like what you did here, and intend to try it or something similar.
I had one question: your write-up mentions 2.5% salt, while the recipe says 2%; is that a range, or would one number be better than the other?
Thanks –
Ron
Ron: It’s a range. If you are planning on fermenting it for a long long time, go with the higher amount of salt.
I have a fermentation jar with a one-way valve in the lid to let gases out, used for making fermented pickles. Would that work?
John: Yes it would.
Ok I don’t have 3 lbs of pepper. I can get the 2% salt easy enough but how much water do I put in?
Lonnie: Just enough to make a paste.
Hank,
Does roasting the pepper hurt the process? It’s almost Hatch Chile season.
Ted: Nope. It’ll be extra good!
Do the peppers start out green and turn red?
Mike: All peppers start out green.
I wanted to comment and thank you for this recipe as your recipe has formed the basis for all my fermented hot sauces and from it I have started fermenting large amounts of chilies. I live in Thailand which has a surprisingly limited selection of chilies to choose from.
The tropics would seem to be a place great for growing chilies but the sun is too intense and there are a bazzilion ways a chili plant can die via insects here.
So I use red Thai chilies which are much hotter than tabasco or jalapeño. Turns out great, and I use it on pizza, wings etc.
Ocasionally I can get jalapeños here and I have tried using those little nuclear prik kee nu chilies using your recipe proportions. Prik kee nu chilies are hotter than the typical red and green thai chilies and much smaller. Didn’t have a great flavor but may try a mix of them and the Thai chilies to up the heat at some point.
Again thanks for this!
Do you need to store in the fridge once complete or is it shelf stable?
Misty: It’s shelf stable.
Do you add yeast to begin the fermentation process?
Daniel: Nope. It goes by itself.
I would like to try and make it in a barrel, any experience
Wow. Just wow. I am inspired. I love that you went all in on this sauce, including the gardening. Maybe I can make my own version! Thanks for the story and the recipe.
Thanks!
Made this with a big bunch of Tabasco peppers I had. Used 2% sea salt, and blended for a couple of minutes. It took a couple of days before it started fermenting, but once started, it went to town. It finally settled down after a week or so and I added some charred oak chips I’d made from a live oak I’d trimmed. Left it for three months and ran it through a food mill earlier today. I added 20% by volume of rice vinegar, and put the wood chips back in and plan to leave it for a month. I tasted it before putting it up and man, this is good! Beats Tabasco in my opinion. Now I need to figure out how to make Tabasco Chipotle . Ha! Thanks for the instructions!
I fermented a ton of chilis i had grown this summer. it tasted amazing. I bottled them, capped them and left them on the counter. Is that safe, or should I place them into the fridge? a few bottles have slight white layer on the top 🙁
Mary: They’re fine to eat, but that mold will occur at room temperature. I skim it off and put the sauce in the fridge.
Thanks for this! I actually ran across it last year and just tonight I made a batch of sauce from my imported New Mexico peppers that I smoked and then fermented 90+ days. It’s a green sauce.
I wanted to point out that a food mill is a great way to separate seeds/flesh if so desired. Then save the pulp and soak it in a mason jar full of avocado oil for a few months, strain & use it for sautéing.
Thanks again for your recipe!
I’m gonna use ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers in mine. I also have some habanero and jalapeño peppers to throw in. Im not sure about the salt. I have 32 oz of peppers. Not cut yet. The ratio calls for .625 oz of salt. Correct??
Jim: Go by weight. 2 to 2.5% salt is what you want. And DAMN, that will be some HOT sauce!!
One of my friends grows a large variety of peppers, including the super-hots, which he eats like candy. We swapped some of our garden bounty and while I use a lot of peppers for cooking and preserving, I’m not sure what to do with a pound of ghost, scorpion and chocolate morugas. Google isn’t much help, and I’m wondering if you have any suggestions.
Jan: A pound of ghost, scorpion and morugas?!? Um… I’d weaponize them. Would be too hot for me to eat!
Thank you for the great information on Tabasco sauce is I have been looking for such a recipe I am going to use the white wine vinegar
Your description says 2.5 % salt but the recipe calls for 2 % which one is it ?
James: I’ve settled on 2% because I get more fermentation. Tabasco does 2.5% and ages longer.
Have you tried to make a hot sauce with lemon or lime juice (citrus)? Like the vinegar, it has a low pH so it should (might) prevent bacteria. I like the taste of tabasco but not the taste of vinegar so much.
Paul: I’ve used lemon juice and it works.
Hi Hank. Is washing the peppers not advised ?
Dick: I wash them only if they are visibly dirty.
Eric, grilling the peppers will kill any wild yeast found naturally on the peppers. You may want to add some type of yeast to get things going before mold hits first.
I used this recipe quite successfully with Thai chilies since I live in Thailand. Yesterday had a different situation where my jalapeños were about to go bad. Some had developed a little bit of mold so I washed them thoroughly , cut off the nasty parts, and grilled them.
Now some of you might say, why not just buy some new ones? Well, jalapeños are not easily found in Thailand. 🙂
Some of the outside of the chilies were blackened,and then I threw them into a blender added salt ,water, blended them completely, and then put it into a mason jar.
So far since then, which is been overnight I have not seen any bubbling from the fermentation process. Wondering if the grilling of the Chili’s change them in someway that fermentation is not possible or will not be visible to me. Thanks in advance for your help!
Hey just wondering the amount of oak chips to chilli mixture you used??
Dan: Not too many, just a small palm-full per quart.
i can’t get past the part where you have a salami fridge…
When I make the mash and add the 2% salt… Is there a Ph I should be looking for?
I have done this three years in a row now. I ferment mine in a glass jar so I can follow the fermentation. It takes about 2-4 weeks to finish. At this time, I strain it and do nothing else, since it already tastes exactly like tabasco, so I don’t oak it. I store/lager it in my refrigerator where it doesn’t seem to go off – I still haven’t finished my first batch, and it’s still good.
This year I fermented 1 kg of Bhut Orange Copenhagen – it is HOT !!
I made my own style Tabasco this autumn from a big harvest of birds eye chilli from my veggie garden.
My method:
Blitz chillies with salt and transfer to mason jars. Threw in a couple of red peppers and cloves of garlic. Fermented for about 10 weeks. At this stage the chilli paste was a great additive to cooking too.
I then returned chillies to blender with apple cider vinegar and blitzed it up. Then strained out seeds and pulp and simmered in sauce pan for about ten mins. This thickened up the sauce a touch. I also added a bit of raw sugar to taste. Very happy with the sauce !
This is an awesome procedure – thanks very much! I started a few different batches – a mild one one with shishito and poblano peppers, a really spicy one with habañeros and golden cayennes and another batch with straight cayennes. I added garlic to a couple, as well as carrots to the habanero one. I’ll let you know how it turns out in a couple years.
Thanks again!
mark
I have found that smoking the pepper sauce before bottling puts it over the top. Mesquite and hickory are excellent choices.
Questions: Can I used dried tobasco chilies? Can I use tobasco chilies instead of chiltepin chilies?
Robyn: Yep.
Made several bottles for my family last year and its become a family favorite My son prefers Cholula Hot sauce so going to try that this year as well
Cheers for the recipe. Im making a batch now with a mix of jalapenos and habaneros. Is the water needed? Does most of it evaporate during the process? Thanks!
I made a green sauce…but forgot to add the salt; there is a white mold and the smell is foul. It has been about 5 weeks so far. Will adding the salt now help? Can I just heat the sauce to insure it’s safety? Must I start over? What sort of symptoms might I expect if I ate it with “bad” bacteria? Will the smell clean up with more time?
Raye: It is ruined. Toss it.
Hi hank, is it normal for the mash to taste really salty when you blend it initially or have I stuffed up?
Thank you!
Steve: Yep. It’s salty. You need 2.5% salt by volume for safe fermentation.
Do you sanitize your equipment, like you would for brewing beer, prior to mixing and placing into jars for fermentation?
Richard: Nope. I just make sure everything’s clean.
I believe I have discovered that it is yeast as opposed to mold.
Is it typical for mold to grow in the first week of fermentation?
Have you ever added other ingredients to the beginning of the fermenting process? i.e. garlic, fruit, spices, etc.
Rick: Only garlic. Pretty sure it would be OK to add other things, though.
Hi Hank, can you use any type of salt or does it have to be kosher salt?
Ant: Any kind will do.
Great recipe and instructions. I have my mash ready. My question is what is a good amount of each vinager to mash ratio to make the Tabasco style sauce? My mash has fermented for 10 months and I plan to use half now and then continue to let the rest ferment for another year or so. I have a quart of mash. How much vinager for half a quart do you think might be a good amount?
Thanks in advance for any advise.
Bill
William: Enough to make a pourable sauce when it is all combined.
I can also vouch for the excellence of this technique, great post. I have made several variations (but my versions are harvested in 2-3 weeks, not Tabasco-style, no oak). My favorite so far is a 50-50 blend of fresh and dried chiles. About a pint each. Last batch was serranos, and a mix of pasilla, ancho, arbol. After fermentation I pureed them and mixed in a tablespoon or two of tomato paste to thicken. Seriously addictive.
I am going to be making an anaerobic sauce much like this however I was not planning on using oak chips. If I do, would putting the chips in the mash from the start possible affect fermentation? I dont want to let any air in that I dont need to so I can keep this as anaerobic as possible.
Nice one Hank! I’ve just started my batch off. I have green and red chillies to try out and I used some Scottish whiskey salt!!! Interested to see how that goes.
Jamie
Hi Pete,
I have bucket loads of Thai chillies I’m going to use for your tobasco recipe. I’m a little excited! Maybe I could add some other Thai flavours. Any ideas what might work? Thanks for the recipe ?
You can try using pectin which is a thickening agent in jams.
I just pulled a mason jar of this stuff dated 8/23/2014 out of the fermentation fridge, made with Tabasco peppers and bourbon soaked oak cubes. Thank you very much for the inspiration, this recipe is the bomb.
Is this shelf stable once opened, or does it require refridgeration?
Jim: It’s shelf stable.
So I tried this in a small batch and my fermentation turned a slight brown color. No, I did not add wood to the process. What did I do wrong, or is this normal and I can salvage what I have?
Brad: It’s oxidation. Should be OK to eat. Try to keep more air off the mash next time.
Hank! Love the recipe, thank you! I want to add a small amount of garlic and onion to my 30 pound batch of peppers. Is there anything to worry about when adding these two extra inhredients in? I’d like to be able to leave it out at room temp for about 4 weeks.
Thank you!!
Mariela
Also, based on your reply to Anna, I will not add vinegar to the first batch which has too much salt. Eventhough it has been fermenting for 3 months, shall I still add more chili and ferment for another 3 months?
Earthmother: Can’t hurt. Fermentation this way is pretty forgiving…
Hi Hank. Thanks again for sharing this great recipe. I am following your recipe using New Mexican Hatch Green Chili, Garlic and Onion. I made the mash in two batches. The first batch, I realized after I jarred them, that I used a higher concentration of salt than you recommended. Still, I am following through to see what results.
The second batch, I properly calculated the percent of salt. I found that the jars began to overflow with a liquid. A lot of the liquid leaked out pushing through the loose lids. I then transferred some of this batch into two additional jars. The liquid level didn’t seem to return. Do you think loosing the amount of liquid that I did will affect the fermentation process?
Now, both batches are in the phase where I am adding the white wine vinegar. I did so, leaving in the cubes as there were no instructions to remove them at this point. I am very excited to enjoy the finished product!
Great advice and great insight from Tabasco. Like you I’m a Tabasco aficionado(no other sauce comes close, not very keen on cooked sauces at all) and experimented with a fermented sauce from my UK home grown chilli harvest last year. This year I’m making more, refining the technique having found your site and laying down batches so that I can eventually have a 3 year rolling stock.
The big addition this year is the oak cubes. I’ve sourced some from barrels used in whiskey ageing, that were originally used for sherry and bourbon storage! They have a sweet and powerful aroma and have just been added to this year’s ferment.
I added too much salt…how do I fix it now?
Anna: To the mash? Only way is to add more ground chiles.
Thanks! Looks great!! I’m going to make this today. What type of oak do you use? American? What toast?
Thanks
i can’t find my favorite sauce anymore so i will try this to replicate it. It’s Picka Peppa from Jamaica. it’s hotter than Tabasco and a little sweet. it has cane vinegar in it and i believe that’s the key…i hope. thanks
Just finished jarring my peppers and placing them on the shelf! Thanks for the recipe, looking forward to it!
Wow, great stuff. The addition of oak cubes is a great idea. I’m inspired to try this too!
so far this sounds like the best recipe l have researched. Makin it now, but l will have to make a quick recipe to tide me over. Do you have a like a 2-3 week recipe? I made a quick one last year and it was damn good and lasted for almost a year, am interested if you do have an idea for a quick one.
This sounds wonderful. Question: Can the final product be stored on a shelf?
Earthmother: Yes, but I prefer a cooler place like a basement.
Hi great site, I think you should check out http://phickle.com it’s amazing what doesn’t need to be used when fermenting. We regularly pickle all sorts of hot peppers that we prepare whole, in chutneys or in a variety of dips that get consumed as fast as we can make them! I really like the oak chip idea sounds delicious!
Most people think hot sauces are made by cooking the peppers in some way. Few people know about fermenting peppers to make a hot sauce. Yet, in my opinion, fermenting peppers is the way to go! And the taste does mellow out and even completely change as its refrigerated over the course of a year. I also beleive that the vitamin C content of the peppers is preserved during the fermentation process. In comparison, cooking the peppers breaks down the vitamin C. So, a cooked hot sauce won’t have a significant vitamin C content. I once made a fermented hot sauce from habanero peppers and at first it was so hot that I could only tolerate a smear of it on my food. After a couple months, the heat didn’t bother me and I started to crave the flavor of the sauce and would eat it by the spoonfull. A year or so later after I have finally finished it off, I think I went through withdrawals for a couple months. Ever since, I’ve been trying desperately to grow my own habaneros since I just can’t find the quantities I need for sale where I live. BTW: poblanos make an excellent fermented hot sauce by themselves.
I made several batches of tabasco sauce. I grow the tabasco pepper. 2 plants are all you need. This years finished product will have been aged 7 and 10 months. I haven’t used oak and everyone that has tried it say the flavor is superior to tabasco brand, I may try the oak. I do use a combination of white wine vinegar, white balsamic and white vinegar.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this!!! I can’t ever even grow chillies properly, they always end up getting black around the stems then it goes onto the chillies themselves :0( any tips? Anyhoo I’ve just found this site and it looks great, I look forward to trawling through :0)
I would like to add another flavour can I add garlic to the mash then ferament
I’m going to try this today. I wanted to make it with my own peppers but didn’t produce enough.
By the way, you have great recipes and insight, it’s my go-to hot sauce site.
Thank you Hank Im a big fan of Tabasco as well. I’ve been giving some thougth in making a sauce similar to Tabasco and this is very useful information.sry i called you Frank lol my eyes are tired its 1:45 am over here in South Texas.
Dear Hank,
Thank you very much for your recipe. We live in Tuscany, Italy. I typically make a sweet and sour sauce for our table (thai style). This year we have 4 lbs of Chocolate habanero chiles from one isolated plant. We were stumped as to what to do with them as they are mighty hot! So, we are going to brew them up in Louisiana style and see how they turn out, I will keep you posted. Kind regards,
Malvin
Just got ours started today–green and red. We were blessed with a grocery bag full of variety peppers (jalapeno, cayenne, hot banana, thai, serrano and poblano that I know of) so this should be really awesome. Adding the oak cubes per your instructions and I expect the family to be very happy with their Solstice gifts. Thanks for all you do! Keep it up, and good luck hunting in Idaho!
Quick question – I’m fermenting some peppers per your instruction and every few days there’s a layer of mold, which I’ve been scrapping off. Having fermented other things, I know that can happen, but I just want to make sure it’s cool here or if there’s something I can/should do to keep this from happening.
Thanks for the great recipe!
Yep. It happens. It seems to die down after the initial ferment, when you can put it in jars.
My hubby grows peppers, mostly cayenne.
Last year, he planted some poblanos just for me (that’s love right there).
Unfortunately, they sucked the heat right out of the cayennes sitting next to them.
His recent obsession is with ghost peppers. He figures he’ll starve them of water so they get even hotter. He can really take the heat and will love your Rx here.
That sauce looks amazing! I think I’m going to give this a try.
Making some Hatch Green Chile sauce right now. Helping fermentation kick off by adding 1% kimchee juice.
I hope one day you can travel to the Tapa Tio factory and learn those secrets!
So much more of a fruitier, rounder flavor, IMO
Do you think it’s possible to add more peppers (as they ripen and become available from the garden) to the batch I started five days ago? Or should I just start a separate jar for each ripening period?
I bet that would work for a few weeks – it should lengthen the fermentation as the new peppers are added. Don’t forget the extra salt you’ll need!
Two Years! Four Quarts! Somehow I don’t think I’ll be making this, BUT I bet it is amazing stuff. Impressive.
Not to start a religious war, but have you ever tasted “Texas Pete”? It has nothing to do with Texas, comes from NC, but IMHO is superior to Tabasco. Perhaps you are like an old friend of mine who put Tabasco on everything, including dinner rolls 🙂
Of course I’ve tried Texas Pete! It’s fine, but I like Tabasco better.
This is something I definitely want to try this season. I’m working on a homemade granite metate y mano, so I’m confidant that I have the patience to wait a few years…
I’d probably omit the xanthan gum though. In very simple terms, Xanthomonas campestris, the same bacterium that causes broccoli rot, exudes ‘snot’ when fed a diet of corn syrup. The slime is dehydrated, pulverized, and used as an emulsificant and to keep particulates in aqueous suspension.
It’s now under suspicion for causing symptoms mistaken for gluten intolerance.
Huh. Good to know!
This will be my afternoon project. The brewing supply store here has oak chips rather than cubes. Do you think it makes sense to use less chips given that they will have more surface area than the cubes? Or will it matter that much?
Thanks
Yep. I’d use a little less. You can always add more down the road.
I believe that xanthan gum is a thickening agent. Hank explains in the article that to stabilize the sauce is to keep the pulp from separating from the liquid and if you don’t you will need to shake it before each use.
I’m curious where to purchase xanthan gum? I’m guessing it’s not found in your average grocery store, is it?
Weirdly, it is widely available now! It’s a prime ingredient in a lot of gluten-free baking. I’ve seen it in Whole Foods a lot. But a health food store will definitely have it, too.
I like the way you think. I’m aging a batch of green walnut catsup (tasting like worcestershire sauce) and have been pondering fermented pepper sauce now that peppers are piled high at the tailgates. Thanks for the formula and method. I think I’ll do it with cayennes and garlic.
Great post- my garden will provide.
Talk to us about the Xanthan gum. What do you mean when you say stabilize ? What would it be like without?
Damn Hank, this is amazing. i’m way too impatient to leave anything in the fridge that long – very impressive indeed!! I’ve made many a hot sauce in my day, but never fermented. Truly impressive. 🙂
Wow—awesome! I’ve done sriracha- and cholula-style sauces for a while, but this ups the ante. I’ll put in a few jars while hot peppers are popping, and… get back to you in a few years. 🙂
Wow this is serious stuff. I once made my own green Tabasco, but that was instant gratification, nothing like this. And I’m fascinated by those oak cubes, I have to get some and play.