Smooth Hot-erator does exactly what it says — smooth as it goes down, then a slow-building fire underneath. It's my second fermented hot sauce, made with plums from Taze's garden and chillies we grew ourselves. It's got that Chinese plum sauce flavour, sweet and rich, but with way more heat than my last one. Blended silky smooth and strained through a chinois, so there's nothing chunky about it — just heat that creeps up on you.
It's a fermented plum and mixed chilli hot sauce, with garlic and onion in the mix too. This time round I used four different chillies we grew ourselves — Fresno, cayenne, Basket of Fire, and scotch bonnet — so there's a proper range of heat going on, not just one note. The plums do a lot of the work on flavour, so it ends up tasting close to a Chinese plum sauce, just with a serious background heat that keeps building the more you eat.
The plums and chillies both ripened at different points over summer, so I had to freeze them as they came in to stop them spoiling before I had enough to work with. Problem is, freezing kills off a lot of the natural bacteria you need to get a ferment going. So before doing the main batch, I made a small starter first — just plums and salt, vacuum bagged — to build the bacteria back up.
Once that starter was fermenting well, I used the whole thing to kick off the main mash: fresh plums, all four chillies, garlic, and onion, vacuum bagged and left to ferment for a week. Once it was ready, I blended it smooth, passed it through a chinois to get rid of any bits, then added vinegar and a touch of sugar and brought it up to temperature to pasteurise, with a bit of agar agar in there to thicken it. Hot-filled straight into pouches from there.
Once fermented, I blended the mash smooth and passed it through a chinois to strain out any bits. Added vinegar and sugar, brought it up to temperature with a bit of agar agar to thicken it, then hot-filled it straight into stand-up pouches. Made 8 pouches from this batch.
Stored in the fridge. Given the vinegar and pasteurisation, it should keep well for months.