Many years ago our garden produced a mountain of fiery chiles, so I decided to make chili sauce. My friend Raul—a rancher in the Sierra Madre Mountains, east of Hermosillo—told me his mother made smooth and tasty chile sauce with no vinegar or lime juice and never refrigerated it. Just how could that work? I wondered for a long time, until I read The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz.
After some experimentation, I developed this recipe for the café at Prescott College. Sandor Katz visited the campus and students were in a roar of excitement over the world of fermentation. We made our spicy chile sauce in five-gallon buckets and served it at the free community lunch every Wednesday. Students loved it so much they named it Ocotillo Loco.
This recipe will give you a crazy-delicious chile sauce with a smooth, full, complex flavor and live lactobacilli probiotics (the same that turn milk into yogurt). The process is completely safe and very easy. If you want to learn more about fermentation, I recommend you start with Katz’s books—Wild Fermentation (2003), The Art of Fermentation (2012) and Sandor Katz’s Fermentation Journeys (2021)— and website wildfermentation.com.
Preparation
4 cups hot tap water
4 ounces dried chipotle peppers and 4 ounces dried chiles de árbol, stems removed
(Alternately: 8 ounces dried chilies, stems removed (I prefer pasillas, anchos and/or mulatos.)
½ cup peeled garlic cloves, left whole
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 whole allspice berries
1½ tablespoons dried Mexican oregano
1 tablespoon whole cumin seed
Water, as needed
Put water and chiles in bowl; weigh down to keep submerged. Soak 1 hour, or until soft. Pour into blender; add remaining ingredients. Blend until smooth, adding water as needed to achieve pourable consistency. Don’t worry about making it perfectly smooth.
CAUTION: Keep blender lid ON and face away from blender. Do not breathe—the agitated water/chile vapor will irritate your throat and make you cough. Once fermentation begins, the heat level of chiles reduces, so the sauce will mellow as the lactobacillis bacteria digest and deconstruct the spicy chile molecules.
Pour into large glass jar; cover with loose lid or with plastic wrap held in place with rubber band. CAUTION: DO NOT seal jar tightly; fermentation creates pressure. Explosive fermented chile sauce has been known to make a mess.
Place jar in cool, dark cabinet at room temperature (60–70°F). Label with date and stir every day. After a week or so, start tasting regularly. If mixture develops a film of white mold, skim it off or stir it in—white mold is completely harmless. When flavors have become, mellow and delicious, you can refrigerate and start using. This will take 3 weeks to 3 months.
Blend again for a smoother sauce; add water to adjust consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings; store in glass jars. Refrigeration isn’t required, but sauce will continue to naturally ferment when held at room temperature. I screw down the lids tightly and refrigerate. Will keep this way a year or longer—but share, enjoy and start another batch.
