Not sure if this is a relish or a hot sauce.  What I do know is that this mixture is both delicious and KILLER HOT!  Fermented peppers are a bit of extra work but add a much more complex flavour to the mix.

Part I – Ferment the Peppers

Fermented peppers?!?  That’s right.  You basically mix peppers with 6% salt by weight, throw in a little yogourt extract to get the fermentation going, and watch these babies percolate over a few weeks.  Thanks to Randy for doing all of the fermenting.  We built a homemade fermenter out of:

• Glass mason jar
• Plastic mason jar lid
• Piece of tubing from the aquarium store
• A drill + bit to make the hole in the lid
• A glass of water to act as a water lock.

The Pepper Fermenter

The Main Ingredients - Those are blue carrots (for sugar)

Some Nice Habaneros

Scotch Bonnets

Ghost Chilis!!! (queue scary music)

Everything chopped and about to be weighed

Everything on the scale

289 grams

Now measure out 6% salt by weight

Put some yogurt in a coffee filter and drain off some of the enzyme/bacteria rich liquid

Throw everything into the fermenter: chopped peppers, salt, yogourt liquid, and a touch of water.

It's fermenting time!

Part II – Make the Sauce

I kind of winged it here using this BBQ recipe as a base.  Basically I BBQ’d a bunch of fresh vegetables and pureed them with the fermented pepper mash.   All of this was cooked with a little salt and vinegar and then put into jars.

Ingredients:

• 2 onions
• 1 bag squash
• 20 chilis
• 2 cups loose cilantro
• 1 smoked ghost chili
• 1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups fermented chilis (from previous part)

Here are some photos I took during the process.

Fresh veggies ready for the BBQ

Grill the veggies for 10 to 15 minutes

A fabulous smoked Ghost Chili. Thanks Shawndra!

The next batch of ingredients. Sundried tomatoes in 1/2 cup of water, the smoked ghost chili, and some fresh cilantro.

I actually put the sundried tomatoes, smoked chili, and water in the microwave for a few minutes to soften everything up.

Ready to be pureed

Pureed mash and BBQ'd veggies

Boil for 15 minutes

Finished product

Recipe yield

Enjoy!