After 26 years of making my own hot sauce, I’ve learned that the best batches come from the simplest recipe and a lot of patience. Here’s my long-ferment method, step by step.

Hidden Lake Hot Cayenne-Thai hybrid peppers on the plant

For the past several years, I’ve been fermenting a big mixed bag of peppers. Mild ones like jalapeño and serrano, medium ones like Aleppo and Fish peppers, and a few scorchers like habanero and Scotch bonnet. In theory, that sounds like a recipe for layers of complex flavor. In practice, the ferments got a little wild. Some batches came out oddly sweet. Others had a funk I can only describe as “dirty feet.” Neither one is a flavor I want to shake onto my eggs.

So this year, I went back to basics: one pepper, a longer ferment, and more patience. Last year’s version of this post covered the quick, two-to-four-week method. This one is the slow version, and after comparing the two for a couple of decades, I think it’s the better sauce.

Live and Learn: Why My Mixed-Pepper Ferments Went Sideways

Fermentation is a group project. The Lactobacillus bacteria you want are competing with wild yeasts and other microbes for the sugars in the peppers. When everything’s balanced, the lacto bacteria win, the brine sours, and you get that clean, tangy flavor that makes Frank’s and Tabasco taste the way they do.

Throw a dozen pepper varieties in the jar, and you’re changing the balance in a few ways:

• Different sugar loads. Fruity peppers like habaneros and Scotch bonnets carry more natural sugar than a lean cayenne-type pepper. Extra sugar gives wild yeasts more to eat. Yeasts make alcohol and fruity compounds, not the lactic acid you’re after, and that’s where the odd sweetness comes from.
• Different skins, walls, and ripeness. Thick-walled jalapeños, thin-skinned Thai types, and wrinkly Aleppos all break down at different speeds, so the jar is never really fermenting “one thing.”
• More room for off-flavors. When the good bacteria don’t take over quickly, other microbes get a foothold. Some produce compounds like butyric and isovaleric acids. Isovaleric acid is the same compound behind the smell of sweaty socks, so “dirty feet” is more literal than it sounds.

None of this made the sauce unsafe. The salt and acid still did their jobs. But it made every batch a coin toss, and after 26 years I’d rather have a sauce I know I’ll love.

Meet “Hidden Lake Hot”: My Homegrown Hot Sauce Pepper

Fresh picked HLH peppers for the ferementer

The pepper I went back to is one I’ve been growing for decades, a Cayenne–Thai cross I developed here and call Hidden Lake Hot, or HLH for short. I’ve saved seed from the best plants year after year, and it’s become my all-purpose pepper. It dries beautifully, it’s great fresh, and it has just the right amount of heat: enough to get your attention without blowing out your taste buds.

Most importantly, it ferments like a dream. The thin walls and lean flesh break down evenly, the sugar is modest, and a long ferment brings out a savory, slightly smoky complexity that I’ve never gotten from a mixed jar.

It has one more big advantage here in San Diego: HLH keeps flowering and fruiting well into December. Instead of picking everything at once, I can harvest a fresh batch every week and keep feeding the jar for months. That’s what makes the long-ferment method below possible.

Don’t have HLH? No problem. The method works with any single pepper variety, or a blend of two similar peppers (think cayenne and Thai, or cayenne and Tabasco). Pick peppers with similar heat, thin walls, and not too much fruity sweetness, and stick with them all season.

The Long-Ferment Timeline

Here’s what six months of hot sauce looks like on the calendar:

Six months sounds like a long time to wait for hot sauce, I know. But most of that is waiting, not working. And the payoff is a sauce that tastes the same from the first bottle to the last.

Equipment & Ingredients

Equipment

• Glass jar or fermentation crock (I start with a 1-gallon jar). Glass, ceramic, or food-grade plastic all work. Just avoid metal, which reacts with the acidic brine.
• Pickling weight. A glass fermentation weight, or a zip-top bag filled with brine (not plain water, in case it leaks).
• Airlock lid (strongly recommended). For a two-week ferment, a regular lid you burp every few days works fine. For a six-month ferment, an airlock lets gas escape without letting air in, which keeps Kahm yeast and mold down.
• Blender or stick blender.
• Fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth.
• pH test strips or an inexpensive pH meter. Optional, but nice to have at bottling time.

Ingredients

• Hot peppers: About 1 lb to start, plus 8–16 oz per week after that
• Kosher salt: 3 Tbsp per quart of water (2 Tbsp if you’re using fine table or pickling salt)
• Chlorine-free water: Distilled, filtered, or tap water that’s been boiled or left out for 24 hours
• White or cider vinegar: For bottling day

How to Make Slow-Fermented Hot Sauce

Step 1) Make the brine

Stir 3 Tbsp of kosher salt into each quart of water until it’s completely dissolved. Make an extra quart and keep it in the fridge, because you’ll be topping off the jar every time you add peppers.

Step 2) Start the jar

Wash your first pound of peppers, trim off the stems, and pack them into the jar. No need to slice them or remove the seeds. Pour in enough brine to cover them completely, tap the jar to knock out air bubbles, and set your weight on top so everything stays submerged. Seal it with the airlock lid.

Starting the peppers with a little salt and chlorine-free water

Step 3) Let it get going

Keep the jar at room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Somewhere between 65°F and 80°F is ideal. Within a week or so, the brine should turn cloudy, bubble occasionally, and smell pleasantly sour. That’s the Lactobacillus taking over.

Step 4) Feed the jar every week

Once the ferment is active, add 8–16 oz of freshly washed peppers each week. Here’s how I do it:

1. Wash your hands and any tools you’ll use. Every time you open the jar, you’re letting in air and wild yeast, so keep it clean and quick.
2. Lift out the weight and push the new peppers down into the brine.
3. Top off with your extra brine at the same 3 Tbsp per quart ratio. Adding plain water dilutes the salt, which gives the unwanted microbes an opening.
4. Put the weight back, make sure everything’s submerged, and seal it up.

Here’s a nice bonus of the rolling method: each new batch of peppers drops into brine that’s already sour and full of the good bacteria. The established ferment gives the newcomers a head start and helps crowd out the troublemakers, which is a big reason the flavor stays consistent.

Running out of room? If your jar fills up before the peppers stop coming, just transfer everything (peppers, brine, and all) into a larger container and keep going. I move mine into an old 5-gallon homebrew bucket, but any bigger glass jar, crock, or food-grade bucket will do.

Fermenting peppers after week 3’s addition

Step 5) Let it rest through the winter

When the plants finally slow down (for me, that’s usually mid-December), I make one last addition, then move my fermenter to a cool spot in the garage. In San Diego, winter garage temperatures hover in the 50s and low 60s, which is perfect. At that temperature, fermentation slows way down, and the sauce spends the next couple of months quietly mellowing and developing flavor.

Check it every couple of weeks. If you see a flat, white film on top, that’s Kahm yeast. It’s harmless, so just skim it off. If you see anything fuzzy, or blue, green, black, or pink, that’s mold. Throw the batch out and start over. It’s rare with an airlock and a good weight, but over a six-month ferment it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Step 6) Blend, strain, and bottle (late February to early March)

1. Pour the peppers and brine into a large pot and blend them until smooth with a stick blender (or use a regular blender, then pour into the pot).
2. Stir in vinegar at a 1-to-1 ratio with the pepper mash.
3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve or cheesecloth to remove the seeds and pulp.
4. Warm the sauce gently over low heat to cook off some of the water, until it’s about the consistency of Frank’s or Tabasco.
5. Funnel it into clean bottles and cap them.

If you have pH strips, now’s a good time to use them. A finished sauce should read 4.0 or lower. Between the fermentation and the vinegar, yours will almost certainly come in well under that.

Use a mesh strainer or cheesecloth to remove the seeds and pepper pulp

Step 7) Age it one more month

Here’s the hardest part: store the bottles in a cool, dark place and leave them alone for about a month. This lets the vinegar and ferment blend into one smooth, tangy flavor instead of tasting like two separate things. Once you open a bottle, it’ll keep at room temperature for months, though I keep mine in the fridge to hold the color and heat longer.

Fresh bottles of slow fermented hot sauce ready to age for another month

Is a 6-Month Ferment Really Worth It?

After 26 years of making it both ways, my answer is yes. The quick two-to-four-week method from last year makes a perfectly good hot sauce, and it’s a great place to start if you’ve never fermented peppers before. But the slow version is where the sauce gets its depth. The heat and the tang are balanced, the flavor is more savory than sweet, and every bottle tastes like the last one.

Tabasco reportedly ages its pepper mash for up to three years, so six months is practically fast food.

Safety & Troubleshooting FAQs

Is a long ferment safe? What about botulism?

Yes. The salt keeps harmful bacteria in check while the lacto bacteria get established. Once they do, the brine becomes acidic enough that botulism can’t grow (that bacterium needs a pH above 4.6). The vinegar you add on bottling day pushes the acidity even further into the safe zone.

Can I really keep adding fresh peppers to a jar that’s already fermenting?

Yes, as long as you keep everything submerged and top off with brine at the same salt ratio. The established, acidic ferment actually protects the new peppers.

My ferment slowed way down in the garage. Is that a problem?

Nope, that’s the point. Cool temperatures slow the microbes down so the flavors can mellow. It’ll pick right back up if the weather warms.

There’s white film on top. Is it mold?

A flat, white film is Kahm yeast, which is harmless, so just skim it off. Fuzzy growth, or anything colored, is mold. Toss the batch.

How do I know it’s ready to bottle?

The bubbling has stopped, the brine is cloudy, and it smells clean and sour, like sauerkraut or sourdough starter. If you have pH strips, the brine should read 4.0 or lower.

Is this your first time fermenting hot sauce? Start with last year’s quick-ferment guide, then graduate to the long version next fall. And if you’ve ever had a ferment go sideways, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I’ve got a few “dirty feet” stories of my own.

Fresh beef jerky ready for snacking

Actually, because beef jerky is a basic food group in my house, zombies or no, I tend to have a batch on hand all the time. But have you looked at the price of store-bought jerky lately? It’s getting ridiculous. Paying $25 or more a pound for commercially processed meat that could be packed with preservatives just doesn’t sit right with me.

The good news? You can make fresh, deeply flavorful, homemade beef jerky right in your backyard using discounted cuts of meat for closer to $4 a pound.

When I tell friends I make 3 to 4 pounds at a time, they think I have some elaborate setup or a highly guarded secret recipe. I don’t. My marinade is incredibly simple. The real “secret” is that I skip the fake chemical “liquid smoke” and give the meat a short bath in real wood smoke on my patio grill before it hits the dehydrator.

You don’t need a fancy, thousand-dollar smoker for this. A little portable charcoal grill, a hibachi, or even a DIY setup will do the trick perfectly. Here is how to do it, live-and-learn style.

The Master Checklist: Ingredients and Equipment

Before we slice a piece of meat, let’s gather our supplies.

Some cheap meat and a few seasonings are all you need

The Best Meat for Jerky

Any lean, thinly sliced beef will work here. Look for what’s on sale at your local grocery store or butcher.

• Flap meat, flank steak, or shoulder knuckle (often used for carne asada) are fantastic choices because they frequently go on discount.
• Eye of round, top round, or London broil are also backyard favorites because they are incredibly lean.

Homestead Note: Fat is the enemy of shelf-life when it comes to jerky—it spoils much faster than meat—so pick the leanest cuts you can find and trim away any large pockets of fat.

The 2-Ingredient Base Marinade

For every pound of meat, you will want a 1:1 ratio of the classics.

• 1 cup Soy Sauce
• 1 cup Worcestershire Sauce

Want to make it Hot & Spicy? Add these to taste:

• Ground black pepper (about ¾ teaspoon per cup of liquid is my sweet spot)
• Red pepper flakes

The Gear

• A backyard grill or smoker: Anything with a lid (a Weber kettle, a hibachi, or a small portable grill).
• 2–3 pieces of charcoal: Just enough to get a small ember going.
• Hardwood chips or chunks: Oak, hickory, apple, or mesquite all work beautifully.
• A food dehydrator: A standard counter-top model works great.

Step-by-Step: How to Make Smoked Beef Jerky

1. Slice the Meat

First, trim away any visible solid fat. Next, slice your meat into strips about ¾-inch wide and roughly ¼-inch thick.

I picked up some shoulder knuckle on sale for $3.99 / lb

How you slice matters: If you cut with the grain of the meat, you’ll get that classic, tough, leather-style jerky that’s good for chewing on a long hike. If you cut across the grain, the jerky will tear easily and be much tenderer to bite into. Both are great, so pick your pleasure!

Place your sliced strips into a one-gallon zipper bag or a resealable container.

2. Mix and Marinate

In a bowl, combine your soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and any pepper flakes or spices you like. Pour the marinade over the meat, making sure every single piece is well coated.

Pop the container into the fridge for 8 to 12 hours.

Live and learn moment: Resist the temptation to leave it in there for 24 hours. Because the meat is sliced so thin, over-marinating will cause the salt to completely overpower the beef. You want to taste the meat and the smoke, not just dried soy sauce!

3. The “Cold Smoke” Setup

We want to infuse the meat with real wood smoke without actually cooking it through on the grill. To do this, we need to keep our grill temperature low—ideally under 120°F.

Fire up just 2 or 3 pieces of charcoal (I used a little rocket stove made from cans to do this). Once they are glowing, move them to the absolute edge of your grill’s fire pan, as far away from where the meat will sit as possible. Add a handful of your hardwood chips or a small wood chunk directly onto the coals. It should start billowing a nice, thick smoke.

Just a few pieces of charcoal and some hardwood is all you need (this is oak)

4. Smoke the Meat

Lay your marinated beef strips out on the grill grates. Make sure they aren’t overlapping; you want plenty of space for the smoke to circulate around every piece. Close the lid.

The marinated meat on the grill for smoking

Keep a close eye on it. We are looking for the meat to take on a beautiful, slightly pinkish-red tinge from the smoke. On a small portable grill, this might only take 15 to 30 minutes. On a larger grill where the meat is further from the coals, it could take up to an hour.

5. Dehydrate for Safety and Storage

Once the meat has absorbed that rich, smoky flavor, transfer the strips from the grill onto your food dehydrator racks. Again, leave some breathing room between the pieces.

My trusty old dehydrator ready to dry the jerky

A note on food safety: To ensure any lingering bacteria is destroyed, the USDA recommends that beef jerky reaches an internal temperature of 160°F. Set your dehydrator to its highest setting.

Depending on your specific dehydrator model and how thick you sliced the meat, the drying process will typically take anywhere from 4 to 12 hours depending on how much you’re dehydrating.

How to Tell When Jerky is Done

The finished jerky coming off the dehydrator

Storing Your Backyard Bounty

Once your jerky is completely dried, let it cool completely before placing it into an airtight container or a glass mason jar.

Fresh beef jerky ready for snacking

Because we aren’t using nitrates, homemade jerky will absorb moisture from the air if left out, making it soft and ruinous to all your hard work. Kept in a cool, dark pantry in an airtight jar, this jerky will easily last for 1 to 2 months—though, if your family is anything like mine, a batch rarely lasts more than a weekend before it’s gone.

Give this simple real-wood twist a try on your next weekend homestead project. Your wallet (and your tastebuds) will thank you!

Have a summer squash overload? Here are more than a dozen tasty recipes that aren’t the usual

Swimming in summer squash? Here are a few recipes to try

It’s an all too familiar story – you planted a couple of summer squash (or zucchini) plants a few weeks ago thinking it’d be nice to have some garden-fresh veggies. Squash being the crazy productive plant it is, however, you soon find yourself awash in a sea of squash.

Sure, you can give some to friends and co-workers, but there are only so many of them. Plus, a lot of them probably have the same squash overload problem you do. Not wanting the literal fruits of your labor to go to waste, you’re left to come up with clever ways to eat them.

This is a problem I have every year.

I love my husband, but the man couldn’t estimate the number of squash one family can eat in a week if his life depended on it. From mid-June to late October overwhelmed with nearly every type of squash imaginable (and a few you can’t). Right now there’s a wheelbarrow’s worth of yellow squash and zucchini sitting outside my kitchen window, all calling me to come up with creative ways to use them in meals. Sometimes I feel like Bubba Blue from Forrest Gump ticking off all the ways I know how to cook squash –“…there’s boiled squash, fried squash, grilled squash, squash salad, squash sandwich…”

While I am not that creative as a cook, I do like to collect old cookbooks – especially the homespun cookbooks hand-published by churches, clubs, and other organizations as a fundraiser. These little books can be very regional, especially the ones from before WWII, and often have recipes that would never make it in a commercial, mass-produced cookbook (fried squirrel is a thing).

As it turns out, they’re also a great source of foods that went by the wayside after supermarkets and refrigeration replaced them with mass-produced convenience items. This includes an incredible number of squash recipes.

Over the years I’ve tried at least 60 different squash recipes for everything from dips to desserts. A lot are good, but a few were real standouts. I’m sharing my top 14 here so you don’t have to go all Bubba Blue like I did.

Summer Squash & Zucchini Recipes

Author’s Note: While I refer to summer squash and/or zucchini, the two are more or less interchangeable in these recipes. Feel free to swap your squash for what ever kind you prefer or happen to have in the garden right now.

Starters & Snacks

Calabacitas is a zesty combo of squash, jalapeño and corn

• Avocado-Mushroom-Zucchini Salad
• French Fried Squash Sticks
• Spicy Summer Squash Dip
• Summer Squash Appetizer

Side Dishes

• Creole Style Summer Squash
• New Mexico-Style Calabacitas
• Zucchini Delight
• Zucchini Torre

Main Dishes

• Layered Zucchini Bake
• Scallop Squash Stuffed with Pesto Chicken
• Squash-Tomato Cassoulet
• Stuffed Summer Squash
• Ultimate Stuffed Zucchini

Desserts

• Squash Pudding
• Zucchini Chocolate Cake

A summer treat from the garden, scallop squash stuffed with pesto chicken

Have a great squash recipe? Share it with us in the comments below! ↓