Last year's experiment with making my own hot sauce had mixed success. The various recipes I put together were not so great, but the jar with all the leftovers came out pretty good. For this round I decided to build on that, and try something a little more advanced. I'm going with a blend of cayenne and habanero peppers, and I decided to try making a mash and aging it. If it works for Tabasco sauce, it's probably worth a try, I figure.
I found a site that gives a rough description of the Tabasco making process, at least more detail than the McIlheny website will give you. The key takeaways for me were that they mix 15% by volume of salt in with the peppers, and then use salt to seal it in the barrels.
I basically chopped up the peppers, mostly cayenne with some habanero thrown in for heat, until I had about 1 cup of chopped peppers. I then mixed in about 2.5 Tablespoons salt. I packed it into a jar, and then layered on sea salt until it formed a solid layer that would hopefully keep anything from growing in there, but let it breathe a bit. I put the lid on loosely, and it's been sitting in my cabinet for a few weeks now. It smells pretty good, a nice, rich and spicy.
Here are some pics from the making of (the last one is after about a week of fermenting):
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