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Comment by mrcms | Hacker News Reader

Author of the open sauce here. Coolt to see this on HN for the second time(!) Still making fermented sauces and pickles. Set Moroccan Salted Lemons this week actually. Happy to answer any questions. :-)

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Hey,

Thanks for the recipe! I am also into fermented recipes.

Quick question, where do you buy Habanero Chilis in Germany? I somehow never saw them in supermarkets or "wochenmarkt"s.

I am growing them myself! Last year I grew some Reapers and Scorpions for fun :-). I am from Austria though.

I'm from Germany and while I grow some chilis, if I need more I order from Westlandpeppers.

I can second westlandpeppers.

I'm buying them regularly from the Asian shop in my town. They have fresh Habaneros, Jalapenos, and Thai peppers

Not in DE myself but scotch bonnet chillies are more easily found in the UK due to the Carribbean/West African connection. You may have a better chance of finding them instead and I'm told they are quite similar.

Usually you can find them at super markets (Rewe, Edeka) sometimes Discounter have it as promotional item (Aldi). I recommend growing yourself just use seeds from the bought fruits. They are rather easy to grow. I can also send you seeds, if you like.

Habeneros aren't common there, but in general for cheap chilis, try the Turkish grocery stores (EuroGida or similar). Basically for any Mexican / Latin-American stuff, they're great for sourcing ingredients: chilis, dry beans, corn meal, flour tortillas (durum) and will be a lot cheaper than specialty shops. Chilis are also easy to grow (I'm growing 4 kinds on my balcony in Berlin), and one habanero plant goes a long way.

Do you always do a 5% brine? I usually do slightly over 4%. My brother in law does them at about 3%.

I grow all my own peppers in a community garden. My favorite to use for ferments are Buena Mulata. If you like to order seeds check out rareseeds.com.

I love this recipe, I'm so happy you made it available. I have made it multiple times. I might suggest you let potential chefs know of possible increased gastric activity with fermented foods, especially ones that like to give you painful reminders on the way out. But I'm sure as hell not submitting a pull request for that :)

Hi, thanks for putting this online! Can you put the moroccan salted lemons on github as well?

Why chlorine free water?

Chlorine kills bugs = reduces scope for fermentation.

This is really, really important for any kind of fermentation (including things like sourdough starter). I believe it's possible to get rid of some kinds of chlorination from municipal water sources by boiling the water first, but it is not possible to get rid of "chloramines," which are widely used (at least in the US). The web page for your local water supplier should be able to tell you whether they use chloramines or not, but I pretty much always just use bottled water that I know has nothing in it that would inhibit the fermentation.

You can also buy dechlorinator for use with aquariums - super important to not accidentally kill the bacteria maintaining your nitrogen cycle. A bottle goes a very long way (ratio is drops per gallon of tap water).

It may be what's used in dechlorinator products, but vitamin C (ascorbic acid, or Sodium Ascorbate) does a good job of converting chloramines (or just chlorine) to salt, NaCl. I used an ascorbic acid shower filter for years when living in a city that used chloramine in their water. It worked well and I could tell every five months or so that it needed to be refilled because my skin started itching from the chlorine.

My sourdough starter is absolutely fine with chloraminated water. I do use bottled water for pickles though because each batch is starting from scratch.

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