I like hot sauces. My favourite is Ring of fire, a hot sauce that I first encountered in the US. It is a mix of habanero and serrano chillis, tomatoes, vinegar and spices. It is very tasty and (despite the name) not super hot.

However, it has become increasingly difficult and expensive to get ‘Ring of fire’ in the UK. And most of the hot sauces available in UK shops are lacking in either flavour or heat, or often both. So I decided to have a go at creating my own hot sauce. It is surprisingly easy. The basic process is:

• Lacto-ferment chillis with your choice of veg and/or fruit in a brine solution for a couple of weeks at room temperature.
• Chuck away most of the brine.
• Add vinegar.
• Blend it.
• Simmer it in a pan to thicken.
• Bottle.

Lacto-fermentation in brine enhances the flavour and should kill off any bad bacteria. Typically, you want about 2-3% salt to water. Ideally you should also have an airlock to vent any gases created in the fermentation. If you don’t vent the gases, there might be an explosion! You can buy fermentation jars with airlocks or just buy the airlock and drill a hole into an existing jar lid.

Simmering is optional. But I found that it improved the taste and consistency. It also kills off the fermentation. And you don’t really want it fermenting once it is bottled, as this could get messy when you open the lid.

So far I have tried 3 main recipes:

• Lacto-fermented green chillis and onions, mixed with tinned tomato. This was really nice. Comparable to the ‘Ring of fire’ I was trying to emulate.
• Lacto-fermented scotch bonnet chillis and pineapple, mixed with tinned mango. This was amazing. Even better than ‘Ring of fire’ in my modest opinion. Beginner’s luck, perhaps.
• Lacto-fermented scotch bonnet chillis and banana. A hot, pink, textureless sludge. Ghastly. Went straight in the bin.

Here is my scotch bonnet, pineapple and mango sauce (rocket themed, of course).

Making the sauce yourself also means that you can tweak the flavour, heat and acidity to your own preferences.

A word of caution. If you are careless, you could end up with botulism, one of the deadliest toxin known to man! So make sure the fermentation vessel is airtight and everything is clean. A white yeast forming on the surface is probably ok. Anything furry forming is definitely not ok, and you need to throw it all away and start again. Note that garlic cloves can turn blue or green during lacto-fermentation and this is ok (I only found this out after I had thrown away a batch).

If your sauce has a sufficiently high salt and/or acid level it shouldn’t grow anything nasty. But you should keep it in the fridge and use within a few weeks to be on the safe side.

So far I have used shop bought chillis. But I am now growing my own chillis as well.

There are plenty of good videos on Youtube about making hot sauces and growing chillis. I recommend Chillichump (recommended to me by my friend John Moodie).