Homemade Hot Sauce - Tabasco style

Watch Brad Leone's video on it. I think he just ferments for 2 weeks?

I recently did a batch that came out awesomely, but I need to refine it because it is entirely too spicy.

I used Tabasco peppers and a single vidala onion, and roughly processed it with 5% by weight sea salt. (Take great care on salt you get, preservatives can kill you).

Fermented in a dark place keeping temperature around 55-60 degrees for six months.

Pressed the mash through a strainer, you want some of the pulp to get through. It gives the sauce a nice body.

Cut with cane vinegar to taste.

(And this is where I might lose people: I decided NOT to recreate Tabasco. Why spend months and hours of effort to duplicate what I can get with 2 dollars and a 20 minute trip?)

Add roasted garlic powder to the sauce to add dimension of flavor.

And a touch of xanthan gum dissolved in oil added while an immersion blender was running to keep the pulp suspended in the sauce and stable (not a typical ingredient in home cooking I know, bringing work home as a commercial food scientist and this is a common move we do >.<)


My first attempt came out very very spicy so be aware if you want to try it, but everyone I handed a jar of sauce to asked for more for themselves and if I had any to spare for friends so

My next attempt will have me cutting the heat of the Tabasco with red jalepenos. Will also ferment at a higher temperature to try to encourage microbial breakdown of the capsaicins.

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this is where I might lose people: I decided NOT to recreate Tabasco. Why spend months and hours of effort to duplicate what I can get with 2 dollars and a 20 minute trip?

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I agree wholeheartedly. I want something in a similar style, but completely distinct in flavor. This is the same reason that I started brewing my own beer 20 years ago. I wanted to brew the stuff that I could not buy.

With the craft beer craze, I can now buy more things than I can brew, but I still keep making some of the unusual stuff. There are tons of hot sauces out there, so I doubt I will be creating anything truly "original" with this project either!

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My first attempt came out very very spicy so be aware if you want to try it, but everyone I handed a jar of sauce to asked for more for themselves and if I had any to spare for friends so My next attempt will have me cutting the heat of the Tabasco with red jalepenos. Will also ferment at a higher temperature to try to encourage microbial breakdown of the capsaicins.

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Are you planning to keep the spicier peppers in the mix as well, or just move to something that is totally (or primarily) red jalepeno?

I like the Tabasco Chipotle sauce, which is far less spicy than the original. I have often wondered whether they even use Tabasco peppers in that one at all.

My plan is to go 50/50 and see what I get.

I want to keep as much Tabasco as possible because what makes them special is how “wet” a pepper they are. You have sufficient water in the mash from peppers themselves, and the associated flavors.

You lose that if you have to add water if your own.

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Are there "wet" peppers with Scoville ratings more in the range of a jalapeno?

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As I understand it, Tabasco’s are rather unique in that regard.

It’s why one of the reasons why they selected Tabasco to base their sauce around.

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Could you keep the Tabasco "wetness" with less heat by de-seeding the Tabasco peppers?

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Of course....:but ain’t nobody no one got time for that. Also be advised that they DONT deseed for the real mash, do it is clearly temperable either through time or cutting.

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I just looked at the Tabasco recipe for the Chipotle sauce. It says that they just add Chipotle to the original recipe based upon Tabasco peppers. Given that the chipotle is just a dried jalapeno, this addition would add no water at all to the mix, leaving the sauce dependent upon the Tabasco peppers for liquid. Interesting.

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Well that is after they add vinegar (with is 95% water anyway)


I’m talking about the first step: when you are working with the pepper mash and let it ferment.

One problem is that not all Jalapenos are created equal and a lot of the jalapenos are much milder than they used to be.

For a different heat, try to find the Peruvian 'yellow peppers'. Also some of the Thai peppers might be used to strip chrome off bumpers.

If you've seen the posters of peppers (one is of fresh peppers, the other of dry peppers), there is a whole world out there beyond tabasco peppers.

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Plenty of other peppers have enough water in them to ferment them in a mash rather than a brine. I fermented some habanero and ghost peppers last year in a mash of their own liquid and it worked just fine.

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I stand corrected then.

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The downside of a mash fermentation is that it's a little harder to keep mold from forming on the top as your vegetal matter is right at the surface.

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I found if you put in your salt evenly dispersed in the mash and ferment in s sealed, air locked jar, mold isn't really a problem.

Salt plus zero oxygen snuffs it.

What I use.

I’m starting to wonder if I simply got lucky then. Because I even stirred it every couple of weeks.


Did you have a very active lacto culture? Especially at first?

I had to cool it further (45-50) for week two because gas pockets in the mash volume was causing it to back load into that cap.

ETA: one thing I did do to make sure the lacto won the competition was to sprinkle some extra salt right on top. I don’t have my notes with me so I don’t know the quantity. .3% of overall mash weight I believe?

Creating a locally high salt concentration that will inhibit growth at the air interface until growth underneath can develop, acidity, and displace oxygen so it’s not an issue.

For future opening, the mature culture is already in place so oxygen is consumed quickly.

Plus whatever mold that might be struggling along on the surface is now in the interior of the mash in a very inhospitable environment

Replied to draw your attention to above edit