Now Is the Time to Pickle Some Chiles

Making a batch of fermented hot sauce is one of the great pleasures of late summer for me. The full array of peppers in their various shapes, sizes, colors, and heat intensities have turned up at the farmers market at last, and they’re dazzling enough to make you wonder if we should be making jewelry out of them.

They won’t be around for long, so it’s important to act fact.

But I’ve recently learned that I don’t have go the full distance of hot sauce. I can make a simpler condiment instead: lacto-fermented chilis. My friend Paul taught me this when we were in the kitchen together — he spotted my “mash” (the chilis packed up in a jar and fermenting on the top of my fridge, destined at that point for hot sauce) and said, “You can snack on that!”

Unlike vinegar-pickled chiles, where peppers like jalapeños are covered in a sweetened vinegar brine and ready to eat almost immediately, lacto-fermented chilis pickle over the course of a few weeks in salt or a salt brine. They’re packed into an airtight environment (a jar), and over time bacterias convert the sugars in the peppers into lactic acid, creating tangy, salty, complex flavors. If you were making hot sauce, you’d blend them up with a few other ingredients.

Fermentation is one way to preserve fleeting summer flavor, making it last for many months to come. But fermented peppers are also just such a fun, flexible ingredient for adding distinctive personality to all kinds of dishes. And very easy to do.