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Attempting to Lactoferment Peppers (lemmy.radio)
submitted 4 months ago by rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio to c/cooking@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This is my second attempt at lactofermentation pickling. I tried for the first time last year and it went horribly wrong, so I haven't tried again since.

I received some self-burping jars and glass weights as a gift and have decided to give it another try.

This is 1lb of serrano peppers that I hope to turn into hot sauce when it's all said and done. The jars were much more full initially; the glass weights have condensed the peppers considerably at this point.

Today is day 4 (of maybe a 14 day fermentation period). The brine has started to get cloudy and I can see bubbles forming beneath the surface, which seem to be good signs.

Fingers crossed. If the whole process goes well, I'd like to bring some home-made fermented hot sauce to Thanksgiving this year.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 24 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Gotta leave a bit more room at the top. General where the threads start. Other than that, looks like a clean batch.

The biggest thing with fermentation is STERILIZING EVERY.THING.

Bake your jars at 150-170 in an oven for 20m before packing (allow to cool a bit). Wash and boil your weights for a few minutes. Don't use chlorinated water. And always weigh your contents and create a brine by WEIGHT, not volume.

Pretty foolproof otherwise.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for the advice! I used boiling water to sterilize the jars, lids, and weights in this instance. Would you say that's sufficient compared to the oven? I used filtered water from my fridge for the entire process (washing and for making the brine).

Weighed everything out using a scale. Did a 4% salt brine by weight. Last time I did 2.5% so this time I went a bit higher to be on the safe side.

What exactly do you mean when you say "leave a bit more room at the top"? Room for what?

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, boiling works as well for everything, just maybe more involved for entire jars. Oven works as well, especially if you're doing many at a time.

Headspace in the top of the jar. Most ferments really create a lot of activity in bubbles and such in the first 2-5 days. If you fill the jars all the way to the top, that bubbling mess will spill over or clog the venting mechanism, allowing mold or yeast to grow.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 4 points 4 months ago

Ahh, gotcha. I'll keep it in mind for the next batch

The jar on the left initially was filled up to around the threads, but then I added the glass weight and it nearly spilled over the top, lol.

[–] SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Boiling water isn't enough to kill a lot of hardier bacteria and fungal spores and so it's certainly not "sterilized", though it may be 'sterile enough' for your purposes. Water just can't get hot enough and the "shells" are well insulated enough to survive for hours in those conditions.

However, they also become tougher once dehydrated and so simply placing them in a really hot stove has the same issue.

You simultaneously need more heat, pressure, time, and possibly some form of chemical attack to truly "sterilize" something.

Using a pressure cooker and a tiny amount of alcohol, ethanol, is usually enough to do the trick.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeesh. That's a lot of work, but I guess it makes sense that properly sterilizing things isn't easy.

I have a pressure cooker, but would be a bit anxious about putting glass inside it. Another user said they used Potassium Metabisulfite for beer and wine bottling. Would that be sufficient for sterilization, or would one still need high heat and pressure?

[–] SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Potassium Metabisulfite

If you have it, it sounds like it's a better option than whatever easy ethanol source you've got. But the trick to proper sterilization is that certain microbes are resistant to different things. The Potassium Metabisulfite sounds like it's about as nasty, but less toxic, than bleach. However even that alone isn't enough for sterility.

Glassware is usually fine so long as you allow pressure to build and release slowly.

For what you're doing there are additional microorganisms which can outcompete anything you don't kill and so "sterile enough" is probably fine, but putting this here as something to keep in mind in case things go wrong.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If you want to go above and beyond impressing people with homemade hot sauce grab something like these: https://www.nicebottles.com/catalog/5ozwoozyshrinks

I used to make my own hot sauces and printed off custom labels too. Throw them in a woozy with the plastic heat seal and people lose their shit over them

I wrote down a handful of my recipes somewhere if you want any of them

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Haha, I've contemplated buying my own bottles for the extra panache once I get the hang of the actual fermenting process.

Until then, I've recycled a dozen or so hot sauce bottles from my hot sauce rack for this purpose.

I certainly won't say no to a recipe. This is the recipe I'm currently using (though I didn't follow these specific fermentation steps because they are not done by weight) . If you have anything in a similar vein, I'd love to compare and contrast them.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Most of the time I fermented garlic in the jar with the peppers, and depending on what I was doing I'd also ferment them with onion, carrots, or pears. You can also use cheesecloth and twine to make a little fermenting tea bag for things like peppercorns and mustard seed to keep in with the peppers.

As for the post ferment my staples were: caramelized onion, honey, lime juice and/or apple vinegar, msg. I'd often add fresh bell peppers for a little brightness, mango or pineapple, fresh or roast garlic, you can really play around in this stage. You can also run fermented honey garlic alongside and add that in after the peppers ferment.

My better recipe notes are going to be harder to find they're in a notebook somewhere but here's some of my digital ones. The section header shows what was in the jar during ferment (so like 'hab + garl' means habanero and garlic) with the other stuff being what was added post ferment. Ferm juice is the brine, truff is truffle oil. All of these also have an unlisted amount of canola oil I'd slowly add in during blending until the immersion felt right.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

fermented honey garlic

Dear lord. I'll have to look into that one, haha.

Thanks for the recipes! I'll have to experiment with these as I get more comfortable with the fermentation process

[–] metallic_substance@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is the first time I'm hearing of this technique. Seems really interesting. What does the fermentation process do to the peppers? How do they end up tasting?

[–] HeadyBroccoli@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

As the peppers ferment the microbes that are in there are producing Lactic Acid, which gives the sauce a vinegar like twang, and some deep funky notes that are characteristic of lactofermenting. Good for the gut microbiome, and great flavor if you like fermented things.

[–] metallic_substance@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Nice. Thanks for the breakdown

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

And most importantly, fermenting takes fruit/vegetables/whatever, and turns sugars into lactic acid, reducing the pH and making it inhospitable to spoilage microbes.

That's why cabbage spoils quickly, but sauerkraut lasts a very long time.

[–] DrBeerFace@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Good luck! This looks great so far.

I've also sterilized with a three part process of soap/water, then diluted bleach, then a quick spray of Star San before bottling. That process came from chilichump on YouTube, and I've had a lot of success with it.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Don't use Bleach when fermenting unless it has 24 hours to dry, and is then rinsed and heated again before putting anything in it.

Just boiling or heating to above 160F for an extended period of time is good enough. Any residue affects the batch, including soap, chlorine, and bleach.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! I'll check it out -- I've been wanting to find a more comprehensive sanitation process for this, since it can be so prone to going bad if not done correctly.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 months ago

For beer and wine bottling I used to use Potassium Metabisulfite

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So many people way overuse the term "sterilize".

For anyone unaware, "sterile" means zero life remaining, not "really clean". You serilize things with a pressure canner and strict protocols or an autoclave (which is essentially a pressure cooker). With steam, you need 15 minutes at 121 °C or 3 min at 134 °C. Dry heat requires 2 hours at 160 °C.
There are a handful of other ways (like tyndallization), but not common or convenient.

For fermentation, you don't need sterile unless you are working in a yeast lab or something like that where you are trying to grow up pure cultures. Sanitization or disinfection is good enough. Basically you want to kill enough of the bad bacteria/yeast that the good stuff out competes it.

Trying to get jars sterile for fermenting peppers is pointless because the peppers themselves are host to a huge heterogeneous population of bacteria and yeast, and you aren't operating under a laminar flow cabinet or something crazy like that.

Yeah, you want them clean and sanitized, but it's really all about controlling the probabilities. Higher salt concentration helps, being really careful about keeping things submerged helps, using a good airlock and relatively small headspace helps, and rejecting any peppers that seem suspect helps. Also, resist the urge to open the jars a whole bunch of times. Every time you do, you let in oxygen.

Also, OP, buy some pH test paper. It's nice to be able to double check that the pH is in the right range once you think it's done.

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I appreciate the insight. I do tend to erroneously use "sanitize" and "sterilize" synonymously in this context. Good to know the distinction!

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

I thought you were making home made ice lollies