Lacto-fermented chile sauce

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Posted by Radishrain Radishrain
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Here's a recipe I used, which I liked (it tastes awesome and is great on burritos in place of salsa):

    ~1 gallon of blended up raw peppers (mostly Jalapenos); I added a little filtered water to help blend them (but you might want to use some of the vinegar below instead)
    3 cups of distilled white vinegar
    4 to 6 tablespoons of pickling salt (6 might be too much for it to ferment properly, but I don't remember how much I used)
    Some cardamom (I didn't measure)

Stir everything together and boil it for 20 to 40 minutes (my peppers were old—that's why I cooked them, and that's partially why added vinegar and probiotics). Let it cool until it's warm enough for probiotics to live (I just waited until it was cool enough not to hurt when I held the pot). Add a probiotic starter (since it's been boiled and doesn't have natural ones). I added about 3 billion organisms per quart, and there were three quarts at this point (the probiotics were in the form of chewable probiotic wafers containing L. acidophilus and B. lactis).

Put in jars and ferment. I put a tight lid on it with a silicone seal, without an airlock, and just watched (felt the lid for pressure) it to see if it needed burping. It didn't need it very often (my hypothesis is that it's because of acetic acid bacteria in the vinegar), if at all, actually, but eventually, the sauce fermented (the sauce in the cooler location took a lot longer than the one in a warmer location). If you open the lid to taste it, be sure to stir it before you put the lid back on.

The warmer jar tasted fermented after about seven days, but it tasted a lot better the day after I first tasted it (after I opened the jar; opening the jar at some point to taste and stir it seems to encourage faster fermentation).

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