A lovely easy Chinese style fermented chili sauce, also known as chopped chili sauce (剁椒) or Hunan Chili Sauce.

If you are familiar with Hunan cuisine, you will be amazed by how many peppers they used. Hunan dishes are even hotter than most of Szechuan dishes in my mind. As a big fan of homemade sauces and paste, I love to introduce this magic and easy to make fermented chili sauce.

Traditional Hunan Chili sauce only use pepper, Chines wine and salt. But we have a modernized version I love to use for couple of years by adding some garlic and ginger, even some Sichuan peppercorns. I highly recommend you making a small bottom with Sichuan peppercorns as a test.

Cook’s Note

1.I use two types of pepper, one is our local large red peppers which have a middle level hotness and more juice. The other one is Chinese small peppers (Facing the heaven) which is the hottest in China. This combination works fine together.

2.For the container, most of the air-tight container can work fine. You can choose a glass container or an earth container. The fermentation needs 3-7 days depending on different temperatures.

3.If you do not want the sauce to be so hot, you can choose milder chili peppers. But I do not recommend removing the seeds, as this will decrease the aroma.

4.The key step of the sauce is to make sure that all the containers, cutting tool, cutting board and your hand are cleaned.

5.Longer fermentation makes the sauce more watery. Following is the sauce after 7 days fermentation.

6. Whenever you want to use the sauce, use sterilized tools. As long as the container is clean, it can be kept up to 2 or 3 months in fridge even no preservatives added.

Steps

1.Remove the ends of the peppers. Be careful and discard any rotten peppers. Wash carefully to remove any dirts on surface.

2.Place under sunshine and until dry completely. If you are in hurry, use kitchen pepper to remove the water.

3.Place the fresh peppers and garlic (if you are using) into a blend and blend with stops. Keep the pepper as larger pieces. If you blend the peppers in two batches, I recommend blending one batch finer and the other batch roughly to create different textures.

4.Mix in salt and white spirit. Place under sunshine, exposure for 1 day. Then covered and place in fridge for about 1 week. Air-tight container (both glass and clay) work perfectly with this chili paste.