Ghost Pepper Málà Savory Hot Sauce

Considering my sphincter is still stinging, this is an excellent time to tell you about my hot sauce and ghost pepper experience as the memories are still very much fresh — and ongoing.

A couple of weekends ago, Julie and I were in (one of) our grocery store(s) and we saw that they were selling Ghost Peppers. Since I’d been talking about making hot sauce out of them for some time, I of course had to get them — along with some habeneros for good measure. For those of you who don’t know, ghost peppers are among the hottest peppers in the world (it used to be the hottest in 2007, but lost that title quite quickly). In India, they’re used to repel elephants. They’re not typically eaten. This similar to the trinidad scorpion pepper, which is hotter than the ghost pepper and which is also not eaten and is instead rubbed along the bottoms of boats to prevent barnacle growths. And yet, there’s a regular cottage industry of people putting these things in their mouths, swallowing them, and then recording the aftermath (this is one of my favorite shows and a quick google search will turn up many many more).

Who am I to criticize these stupid-human tricks? And how can I possibly not join in?

And so I decided to make hot sauce out of the peppers I found. Not just any hot sauce though. I wanted to make my own savory hot sauce with a Málà twist. Why and what does that mean? First, I started to notice with people’s recent obsession with Sriracha sauce, pretty much every hot sauce started mimicking it. That is to say, hot sauces started being mostly sugary-sweet with a dash of spiciness. I mean fine, it’s tasty the first fifty times or so, but it’s really just the same flavor profile. I wanted to try something that didn’t give you a sugar rush. That’s why I thought of adopting a Málà flavour profile.

Málà is very common in Sichuan cooking. It translates as “numbing” and “spicy.” The spicy of course comes from chilies, while the numbing part comes from sichuan peppercorns. If you haven’t ever tried sichuan peppercorns, you should really really try it out. It’s utterly delicious, and yes, if you use it correctly, it will make your mouth kind of numb. Interestingly, it’s only shaped like a peppercorn, and has absolutely no relation to peppercorns. It’s in fact in the citrus family, and the part that gives the taste is actually the peel.

Point being is that I wanted to make a hot sauce in the Málà style, but not based in oil, as it usually is, but instead more similar to the common Western-style vinegar-based sauces. Sadly, I’m not the only one to have thought of this (see here and here). However! I still think my version of this is worth recording because HOT DAMN it came out delicious!!!!

Here are the ingredients I used:

• Ghost peppers, habanero peppers and jalapenos
• Garlic
• Fermented beet-juice brine (instead of vinegar)
• Sichuan peppercorn
• Star-anise
• Toasted sesame seeds

As you can tell, it’s the last 4 ingredients that are the most significant departure from the norm. Unless you’re a fermentation nut like I am, I highly doubt that you’re even familiar with beet-juice brine. It’s basically the resulting fluid from fermenting beets. I won’t go into too many details, but due to the activities of lacto-bacilli, the brine becomes both sour (from the lactic acid) and also on the sweet side (from the beets). That’s why I didn’t use vinegar. Star-anise is a spice commonly used for “red-braising” meats, and I added it as an after thought. I’m really glad I did, as it made a massive difference in the flavour. The toasted sesame seeds also made an incredible difference, but not so much in flavour, but in the texture and mouth-feel of the sauce.

So here below are the steps I took:

1. Here are some of the base ingredients, I used. Note that I actually used double this quantity of peppers, because I roasted one half and I fermented the other. I figured the combination would add a pleasing variety in tastes.

2. Here are the roasted parts of the ingredients.

3. And here are the fermented peppers. I fermented them in the beet-juice brine for about 3 days. I guess I should have mentioned this before, but using the brine also meant I didn’t need to add extra salt, since the brine already contained it. I gotta say that it smelled amazing. The fermenting peppers had an incredible floral-fruity smell to it.

4. Here are the spices I used. The top right is the sichuan peppercorn, the bottom is the toasted sesame, and the top left is the star-anise. I have no idea what quantities I used, but I definitely used only a small amount of star-anise. I’m happy I did, as otherwise, it would have overtaken the entire sauce.

5. After dry toasting all the spices, I ground them up. The top is the combo sichuan peppercorn and star-anise. The bottom is the ground sesame seed. Note that it appears like a paste. I didn’t add any oil or water to make it that way. I suspect that it’s because of the oils within the seeds, an aspect that also made a rather large difference in the sauce.

6. I drained the fermented peppers, combined them with the other ingredients into a larger container, and paid close attention to Oxford commas. I wanted to go for more of a chunky texture instead of liquidy texture… mostly because I knew I didn’t want want the solids and liquid to separate. This is the lazy person’s method to keeping everything in solution. So I used a small quantity of the brine on the right to make sure I was able to blend it properly.

7. It blended together remarkably easily!

8. This is the final product.

9. A closer image of it to see the texture. Oh, I needed to change it into a larger container because… the sauce “exploded.” Not like fireworks explosion, but like bubbling out of the container explosion. This is because the sauce is still “live,” fermenting, and continuing to produce carbon dioxide.

How did it taste?

AMAZING!!!

It most certainly was a success. You may of course wonder if it’s edible due to the heat, but though, yes, it is blazingly hot, there is an insane amount of flavour in this. And smells too! I can’t exactly pinpoint the smells, but for some reason the dominant odour is cucumber. As mentioned, star-anise is the “star” (see what I did there?) of this sauce. Despite the quantity of the sichuan peppercorn, I didn’t really get any numbing feelings, though that could be because the active ingredient is alkaline, and it could have been deactivated by the acidity of the brine. There was still a background flavour of sichuan peppercorn that was pleasing. The sesame and roasted garlic weren’t that evident either, but I think they both added to the depth and complexity of the sauce, giving it a rounded mouth-feel that was slightly oily. Now that I write that, it sounds weird, but I think the oily-part was critical to it tasting good.

All in all, I highly advise trying to make your own version of this sauce! If you’re thinking of ways to eat it, I suggest using it in sandwiches. Having the bread sop up the sauce attenuates the heat and really makes the flavours jump out!

 

BONUS

“Obviously” I had to try eating a raw ghost pepper. Just to know what it feels like, you know?

 

I’d read about the effects, and it was mostly accurate. There was a very slow build, but after about 20 seconds it really started to blaze in the back of my mouth and on my tongue. Then my chest was aflame, and my limbs were tingly. It felt like how I imagine what a heart-attack might feel like in the beginning stages.

I’d watched a very useful video about ways to mitigate the pain, so I knew NOT to drink water, because that would just move the capsaicin around in the mouth and make it worse. Instead, I gargled with oil (coconut) and spat it out to get rid of the capsaicin. That actually helped bring the pain down from a 10 to a 7. I then tried to gargle with vinegar because the acid is supposed to break down the capsaicin. That did NOTHING. For your reference, what really did help was eating an entire container of sour cream. God that was good.

I’m sort of sad I had Julie stop filming me after I ate it, but very shortly after eating the pepper, I ended up tearing off my clothes and collapsed onto the futon. Apparently, I was squinty eyed and drenched in sweat. No surprise, I guess, since my body was trying to process what the hell I had just willfully done to it. Interestingly, my chest and shoulders were sore later. I suspect because I was clenching every single fucking muscle in my body in agony.

Fortunately, the pain really did stop after about a half hour. Now that was the bulk of the pain. No one seems to mention there’s more that comes after the pain itself. For about four hours after, I had an insane amount of gas. It felt like someone had pumped me up with gas and there was no easy release valve available. Every burp and fart I managed to squeeze out felt like I was briefly touching the ethereal joys of nirvana. And I already really enjoyed farting and burping on an ordinary day.

And yes, the morning was… painful. I’ve had the ring-of-fire a few times before, but nothing like this. After what must have been a dozen farts, my colon made its existence known in a very new and painful way, and I rushed to meld my ass to the toilet. Oh, man. That wasn’t fun. Most incredibly though, the sheer spiciness of the poop gave me another endorphin rush, and when I got up, I was light headed and tingly for about half hour later.

Anyway, not that I’ve done this, I’m in no rush to experience crazy hot peppers like ghost peppers any time soon. That said, if you’re thinking of trying it, my comment to you is, yes. Definitely go for it. Your sphincter may hate you, but damn, it’s something that needs to be experienced to be understood.