Homemade Sriracha

Every year I grow peppers. It seems that I also have an abundance of jalapeno peppers every year. I usually cut them up and freeze them. This year I bought some peppers from Alameda Greenhouse in Albuquerque that stated that these peppers were sriracha peppers. Great! I love sriracha. I’m not so great about cooking but I sure can grow peppers.

I combed the web to see what recipes I could find on how to make fermented sriracha. I tried the quick and easy recipe that didn’t ferment the peppers but that only lasted for about 2 weeks. I wanted to try something that would last longer. Why bother if it isn’t going to last? I don’t cook much so I wanted to get the most out of my effort.

As luck would have it, I found an easy recipe on YouTube called Grant Bakes, How to make your own fermented sriracha. You can follow along. I sure did. Below is his recipe:

First I checked my garden to see how my sriracha peppers were doing. I picked only the red peppers.

I’m sure that you can add a couple of green peppers but I had enough red peppers. I think that these are actually jalapeño peppers but that didn’t really matter. In the video, Grant used different peppers than I did. I would suggest that you use local peppers.

I live a few miles out of town so I always make sure that I have all of the ingredients before I begin.

There is a fancy French term for that, Mise en place. Yes, I pull all of the ingredients together before they are used. It really works! That way you know you can proceed with the recipe.

After making sure that I have all the ingredients, I cut the top of the peppers and de-seeded them. The seeds are where the heat is but these peppers are hot enough so I don’t need or want any extra heat. Believe me they are hot. So hot that I wear gloves to de-seed them. I learned the hard way. Ouch! My hands are much safer in a plastic glove.

Next I peeled the garlic. Then I added the salt and the sugar to this mixture while I poured the peppers into a blender.

I just pulsed the blender and made sure that the peppers were being blended into the other ingredients.

This was exciting! I thought what a beautiful red color. I was on my way to making my own sriracha with my homegrown peppers.

After I had blended the ingredients, I poured them into a glass bowl and put a lid on it.

Grant said to mix this concoction for 6 days. You didn’t have to mix it the first day but mixing was recommended for the next several days.

Grant added another tablespoon of sugar. I have added enough sugar for my sriracha. But I did need to add 3 tablespoons of rice vinegar. If you don’t happen to have rice vinegar, white vinegar with do.

I use my sriracha on a breakfast burrito. Ok, I use sriracha on almost everything every day. I really enjoy the fresh flavor and how really easy it was to make. This makes it hard to go back to commercial sriracha. So Beware!