How Can I Best Preserve Red Chili Sauce or Paste? Good Questions

Q: We love to make our own chili sauce and red chili paste (especially now that we get a lot of red chilies from the garden). The only thing is that it goes bad pretty fast. We've started freezing it but it influences the taste.

Is there something we can add to preserve it? I've heard something about vitamin C. What do you know about it?

Sent by Jolanda

Editor: I have never preserved chili sauce so I don't have a good answer for you, but I do think that if the acid levels are high enough you should be able to water bath can it.

Readers, any advice?

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(Image: Faith Durand)

Comments (7)

Salt? The peppers themselves have a ton of Vitamin C already.

Do some reading up on the subject at the Natl Center for Food Preservation website http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/, then peruse one of the many canning books (some have been reviewed here) for a recipe that appeals to you. In order to be canned in boiling water, there must be sufficient acid in the recipe. That is why there is an emphasis on using tested recipes.

You could also dehydrate your peppers in the oven and then reconstitute or grind them later to make sauce.

Isn't there vinegar and salt in the mixture? If the ph is right, there shouldn't be a issue.

http://www.shesimmers.com/2010/03/homemade-sriracha-how-to-make-authentic.html

Wow, sorry I have no good answers but thanks for asking this. I was wondering the same thing.

Jolanda, if you've never tried fermenting foods before, this may sound out there, but it's easy as pie: stir in a Tablespoon or two of whey per jar (whey, as in, the stuff you drain from yogurt). Add a little less vinegar than usual, as the whey will sour it a bit on its own. There's an instructional for rendering whey and a bunch of fermented recipe links (sauerkraut, sour pickles, etc.) in this post:

http://www.badmamagenny.com/2011/09/26/homemade-yogurt-cheese-and-whey-or-broke-ass-bad-mama-genny-no-literally-i-broke-my-ass/

You'll just stir the whey and a little salt into the finished chili sauce, let it sit at room temperature for a day or two, and then move the jars into the fridge. Your chili sauce is now probiotic and WHAT WHAT will last you for at least a year. In the fridge. No joke.

I would never joke about chili sauce.

Bad Mama Genny

yes, the whey totally works! I do it for storebought salsa all the time. http://www.cheeseslave.com/2011/02/25/30-second-lacto-fermented-salsa/