Volcanic Tomato Hot Sauce
This sauce is made entirely from Pyroclast tomatoes, garlic, and salt. No peppers, no extracts — the tomato supplies both the fruit base and the 250,000 SHU heat. Fermented for a week, it develops the acidity and depth of a craft hot sauce.
Prep
30 min
Cook
7 days
Total
7 days
Servings
24
Peak SHU
250K
Featured Organisms
Ingredients
- 500g Pyroclast tomatoes (SS-TOM-03), quartered
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1 tbsp non-iodized sea salt
- 2 cups filtered water
Instructions
- 1
Pack tomatoes and garlic into a clean quart jar.
- 2
Dissolve salt in water and pour over tomatoes until submerged.
- 3
Weight the tomatoes down. Cover loosely.
- 4
Ferment at room temperature (65–75°F) for 7 days. Burp daily.
- 5
When the brine is tangy and cloudy, blend everything until smooth.
- 6
Strain for a pourable consistency.
- 7
Bottle and refrigerate. Lasts 6+ months.
Tips
- Use Magma (50K SHU) for a milder everyday sauce.
- Add a splash of vinegar if pH is above 3.5 for shelf stability.
Lactobacillus fermentation converts the tomato's natural sugars into lactic acid, dropping pH from ~4.5 to ~3.3. Capsaicinoids are fully stable through this process — the SHU of the finished sauce equals the SHU of the input tomatoes, diluted only by the brine volume.