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Comment by sbf501 | Hacker News Reader

I started making fermented hot sauce during COVID in 2020. There's a fancy grocery store near me that sells scorpions, ghosts, and reapers, as well as burdock, tamarind, mango, etc. I usually fermented for a week, and I've tried longer with little difference. I made an entire spreadsheet full of recipes that I tried, but ultimately I thought the fermented sour flavor overwhelmed everything. So, I started making them without fermenting, but with a little cooking to help break down some of the fruits and veggies and blend the flavors, and suddenly everything tasted 10x better. I was surprised, because for some reason I got it in my head that hot sauce must be fermented, when that's totally not true. Anyway, my $0.02 on fermenting hotsauce.

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The fermentation slows down after a few days so the difference between one and two weeks isn't huge but the difference between a week and 4 months is significant. Consider that Worcestershire sauce is mostly fermented onions and fish... It's amazing what a couple years of aging can do. Also, there's no reason your final product can't be a mix of both! Get the best of both worlds.

Yeah was going to say the same thing. I've been making kombucha for a while, and I have a process down where at the final stage I blend kombucha from various fermentation stages to get the mix of tartness, sweetness, fruit flavor, and alcohol content I'm looking for.

It doesn't need to be binary. You can always mix cooked sauce with fermented to get the flavor profile you are looking for.

I was making kombucha too! Again, too vinegary. I wasn't sure if it was too much heat, too much sugar, etc. But again I was only doing 1-2 weeks. Good idea to mix.

I'm not the expert but have access to some ;). if it's turning into vinegar you've fermented it for too long.

It never occurred to me to mix, thanks!

No prob. Often metal guitarists have a some portion of the amps on stage pumping out clean, undistorted sound because it adds a ton of depth. Occasionally this is super useful in cooking, too. Mixing raw and roasted garlic in an aoli is a pro move, as is mixing cooked and raw fruit in a coulis or sorbet being sure to add enough acid to brighten it back up.

I always mixed a little phaser into my dry bass mix, for that Tony Levin feel.

"It'll phase, it'll fuzz, it's flexible. Feel those frets."

Totally different artist, but thanks for reminding me that I haven't listened to Tony Levin in a really long time :-)

I'd hesitate to even call myself a musical dilitante over the past decade, but it was my primary medium from my teens to mid twenties. Having graduated culinary school in my late twenties and now getting my first actual degree– a design BFA– a bit over a decade later, I'm often struck by the similarities among creative endeavors. Conceptual elements like texture, metaphorical or otherwise, can interface with so many of the same underlying emotional triggers in such interesting ways. These realizations certainly would have made me a better musician. Too focused on the composition and not enough on the feel. I think it was because my first guitar teacher, my dad, is a mechanical engineer. He's a far better musician than I am, but he's just used to communicating ideas in cut and dried technical terms.

Technical stuff is important, but for menu development, I'd partner with an experienced creative musician who can confidently manipulate abstract concepts over someone who'd memorized a food science text book, any day.

> it’s amazing what a couple years of aging can do

At a certain point don’t the cultures you’re fostering run out of food?

it’s cultures all the way down

Generally at some point the microbes die but some of the enzymes they've produced are still active and slowly breaking things down into tastier chemicals.

I see, thanks!

It's not just microbial activity. Chemical/physical ingredient breakdown is important, too.

Visited a manufacturing facility of one of the big Louisiana hot sauce brands, and they basically have a got a guy that mixes all these pepper mashes of varying ages to get their desired flavor profile - similar to blended scotches! (No idea if these are fermented)

Cool! Almost certainly fermented.

I find fermenting more trouble than it's worth, even if you like the taste (which I personally don't overly do).

I make a lot of hot sauce (grow my own peppers) and usually just make a mash, boil that for a bit, and then essentially can it. If the pH is low enough and you pasteurize everything & sanitize your equipment, it's shelf stable for a long time.

I grew up on home made hot sauce and I don't think anyone ever fermented anything. I just remember ground chili peppers, salt, chop up whatever firm fruits (green mangoes, etc.) or vegetables were on hand and add enough vinegar or lime juice so it wasn't dry. Put that in a jar and there's your sauce.

One huge advantage of fermentation of peppers is the fact that it becomes preserved for many months if kept in the fridge.

I also started growing peppers, and this was the only way we could keep the many gallons of hot sauce a tiny bed of peppers can produce.

It does change the taste, which for some, might be a downside.

You can neutralize some of the acid by adding alkaline ingredients. Sodium bicarbonate or calcium hydroxide are two common ways. But this may neutralize the pH to the point where the sauce isn't naturally preserved from molding or otherwise spoiling.

Would you mind sharing your favorite recipe? <3

> fancy grocery store near me that sells

I'd love to have one of these. What's the store?

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