Or in general, can you point me toward some good basic info on this? I'm guessing it's like most things and there are some basic categories. And then varieties within the categories.
But not really sure how the vinegar bases and the fermentation aspects fit in overall.
@Hot Sauce Guy and others help me out?
First, I’d never seen that video - funny dude. I’ll watch the rest then provide feedback.
As for your questions, it’s a big topic, but I’ll try to help.
1. Vinegar-based / pasteurized sauces are good.
2. Fermented sauces are also good.
3. There is also a hybrid method that I sometimes employ where I start with a fermented pepper mash as a base & then add ingredients to it, and pasteurize. These can also be good.
They’re all different styles of sauce, and within those styles, you can have a huge variety of flavors, layers, profiles, etc. sweet, tangy, savory, or combinations, and all sorts of different heat levels.
That’s the best part of the sauce-making hobby - you can give the same 10 ingredients to 50 sauce-makers, and get 50 completely different sauces.
The big difference in styles, in my opinion, is as follows:
• fermentation is a process of breaking everything down into a homogenized thing. The fermentation adds a specific flavor, as the natural acids that develop add a distinct characteristic to a sauce. Think Louisiana-style sauces. These can be delicious, but it can be difficult to get complex layering in them because the whole idea of the ferment is sort of the opposite of layering.
• pasteurized sauces can be intensely layered. These are cooked with a hold time at temperature (190 degrees for ~8 mins (longer for larger batches) ) to kill any bacteria, & have a vinegar base. These sauces can be a little bitey, as there isn’t that silky lacto-ferment vibe, but that depends on the vinegar - there are many kinds, and some are sharper than others.
• hybrid - this is my current go-to style. You get hints of that fermented vibe, while also layering in other ingredients.
Which is best?! That’s for you to decide. Some folks love bitey, vinegary sauces. Some folks love that lacto-ferment above everything. Some folks love layering. Some love it all. There isn’t a better or worst here - just different tastes.
Regarding food safety, that is the 1st thing to learn when making any food. With sauce, regardless of style above, it’s all about the science of canning, and the resulting pH.
There’s also hot-fill - the process of bottling at 180°-190°, then invert to sterilize. Basic canning principal - liquids expand when heated, contract when cooled. If that cooling from 180-190 happens in a sealed container, a vacuum forms from the contraction, preserving the contents.
Legally, for commercial products, the pH has to be below a certain threshold. I believe it’s 4.3. But 4.3 is not shelf stable, it will have to be refrigerated always, before and after opening. For a hobbyist refrigerate-always isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve made some extremely tasty recipes in this range. But for a commercial application, or for a hobbyist who wants to take a bottle with them to a restaurant, it’s impractical.
Ideally pH should be below 3.6. In this range, no water activity is present, so there’s no way for bacteria to grow. Sauces in this range can be left out even after opening.
Then there’s the “shelf stable but refrigerate after opening” range, where it’s close - 3.7-3.9, and can be shelf stable for ~2 years unopened.
And of course the food-safety basics, like clean surfaces, sharp knives, non-porous cutting boards, sterilized glass, hand-washing, proper food storage, etc.
All of my commercial products say “refrigerate after opening” - there’s costly processes & licensing required to not say that - but 8 of my 14 commercial formulas don’t require it.
The biggest thing is to make what you like. If you’re not a big garlic person, leave out the garlic, etc. And don’t be afraid to fail up, as the old project management saying goes. If you learn to play piano you’re probably going to sound pretty rough out of the gate. My early sauces were not good. But they had some good elements that could be honed with practice. So learning to taste for what works, rather than tasting what doesn’t work is an important skill. Once you’ve identified something that’s working in a recipe you can build around it.
Regarding recipes, all of mine are vastly different. For a basic idea of a pasteurized or hybrid style sauce, the following is a decent roadmap:
• 30% of the formula should be acid. This can be pepper mash, vinegars of various types (or multiple types at once), citrus juice, etc
• the other 70% can be whatever you like. Peppers, spices, garlic, etc.
• note: spices & dry ingredients, or agave/honey are neutral, while fruits & veggies are base.
Pasteurize for 8 mins at 190° (do not boil) while agitating constantly. Blend and return to pot, bring back to 190, and using a ladle/funnel, bottle hot & invert (put in box upside down)
Be sure to record recipes in gram weight. I use a coffee scale to prototype recipes, as it measures down to 1/10 of a gram. By doing this, it’s relatively easy to figure out those percentages of acid/base, but more importantly it provides a framework within which one can easily adjust recipes for the next batch. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and any good hot sauce recipe is going to take multiple batches to get right.
Pro tip: use 2 candy thermometers to monitor temperature. Thermometers can fail, so using 2 adds a check & balance.
Boiling is bad for 2 reasons:
1. If ya make something tasty, it’s hard to replicate. Boiling is chaos, and there are temperature spikes.
2. Scalding on the edges produces bitter burnt carbon notes. Highly undesirable.
As for resources, I truly wish I’d found
The Hot Pepper dot com prior to starting my hobby! It would have shaved years off of my trial and error. They have specific forums dedicated to making both fermented & pasteurized sauces (with folks sharing basic recipes, food safety tips, etc) - it’s a great community, and pepper growers often sell small boxes of exotic peppers on an approved topic for it. Also seed exchanges, for those inclined to grow their own.
I’ve provided some very high-level stuff here, but those forums will really help anyone here who’s interested in playing with peppers to get started making safe to eat sauces.
I’ll check out the rest of that video - I’m curious what’s controversial. He even mentions botulism, so clearly he’s aware of food safety.
Apologies if I’ve fallen short of answering everything - it’s a very short question with an extremely long, deep and complex answer, and I’m not yet caffeinated.
