Following the fantastic results of my first fermented hot sauce I was itching to make another but had no other homegrown peppers. I knew that I could use grocery store hot peppers without ending up with something too hot so it seemed best to use the hottest thing available for delivery grocery.

Ingredients:

• 240g fresh grocery store habanero peppers
• 2 bulbs garlic
• 21 dry jamaica hibiscus flowers
• 2.11g whole black peppercorns
• 1.52g whole cardamom seeds (loose, no pod)
• 15.1g organic ginger, unpeeled, a knobby fingery piece
• 5 whole cloves
• 3 organic orange bell peppers
• 700mL 4% kosher salt / 4% turbinado sugar brine

Procedure:

Garlic was separated into cloves, crushed by hand, and peeled. Habaneros were crushed by knife. Ginger was used unpeeled and crushed a bit. All ingredients were added to a jar and then the orange bell peppers were placed on top wedged under the neck of the jar in such a way as to help keep everything submerged. The 700mL of brine was poured over the top and came to a level above all other ingredients. The jar was left to ferment for approximately a month before being blended, jarred, refrigerated, and subsequently bottled as needed for friends and roommates.

Findings:

As with my prior experience, the habaneros’ heat was reduced significantly but present enough to be useful. This is the first time I was able to appreciate why people often describe habaneros as “fruity”, and the cardamom was subtle but sat well in this mix. The sauce was used quite quickly and in the future I will make a much larger batch. The jamaica did not stand out as much as I would have liked, so a future version of this sauce might benefit from either an increase in flowers or perhaps brewing the brine as a strong jamaica tea.