I grew 4 very large Carolina Reaper plants in the summer of 2020 and none of my friends would take me up on my attempts to foist the fruit of the world record hottest pepper on them for reasons that defy explanation. One person can only eat so many fresh reapers so I decided that making a fermented hot sauce would be an interesting way to put the tail end of my bumper crop to use while also trying out a new fermentation method.
I was also a few dozen episodes into my first viewing of One Piece, so I figured a pepper this hot could most definitely be hypothesized to be a devil fruit with the potential to give the eater strange powers.
Ingredients:
- 130g fresh Carolina Reaper peppers, stems removed
- 11 black peppercorns
- 4 whole cloves
- 1 bulb german white garlic
- 8 dry jamaica hibiscus flowers
- 4% kosher salt / 4% turbinado sugar brine
- 2 organic red bell peppers
Procedure:
Garlic was broken into cloves which were then crushed and peeled. Reapers were crushed, seeds removed and retained for future planting. Bell peppers had their stems, seeds, and pithy ribs removed. All ingredients were placed in a glass jar and then enough brine to cover completely was poured in. Fermentation took place at room temperature for approximately one month. The fermented ingredients were blended to a fine consistency, and then held in the refrigerator in a jar to be bottled as needed for gifts and home use.
Findings:
The heat was significantly reduced presumably both from the diluting effects of the other ingredients as well as the extended fermentation. THe sauce is delicious and the spice level is tolerable to fans of hot food. Scoville scale untested, but not out of line with the regular spectrum of hot sauces. The flavor and character of the reaper is much easier to appreciate in this state. I initially held back a portion of the brine to end up with a thicker sauce, but found that it contained lots of the flavor and heat and was worth adding to the main sauce with the added benefit of being easier to dispense from hot sauce bottles. This project was a great success and exceeded expectations.
