Kimchi Hot Sauce

Do you love a hot, spicy sauce? Are you also keen to add more fermented food to your diet for the taste and probiotic goodness? Combining the two may be the answer. Our kimchi hot sauce is made with all the probiotic goodness of our famous cauliflower kimchi, supplemented by special Queensland winter-grown chillies.

Let’s take a look at the process of how our renowned hot sauce is made, its benefits, how it is used and the full ingredients used in the delicacy.

At Gutsy Ferments, we pride ourselves on taking the extra steps in our fermented foods to ensure excellent quality and probiotic goodness. One of these is using our renowned oak barrels for the ferments and the second is the length of time we ferment the produce. Usually, we ferment in the oak barrels for between four to six weeks. This gives the vegetables a wonderful, sour taste so typical of krauts. (Hence the term sauerkraut). 

However, the hot sauce is fermented in a slightly different way. We take the existing spicy-tasting cauliflower kimchi — which has been fermented for over a month, then add the locally-sourced winter chillies and age well in oak barrels for three months. The result is an exquisite savoury fermented sauce which is graded as medium to hot.

Science has now firmly established the consumption of fermented foods and drinks to have great benefits for, not just physical health, but also mental health. This through the close connection of the gut to the brain through the vagus nerve. We at Gutsy Ferments make our products to be as probiotic as possible and believe eating these regularly, as part of a balanced diet, can help maintain good health.

The longer the time taken to ferment the sauce means the more it is brimming full of healthy bacteria. But there’s also the goodness of the cauliflower and the chillies to consider. Let’s briefly look at the benefits of both.

Cauliflower

We use cauliflower rather than the traditional cabbage as our own variant on the traditional spicy kimchi. The health benefits are similar though. Cauliflower is high in fibre, has many nutrients and contains a high level of antioxidants. Scientific studies have therefore linked cauliflower to a number of health benefits.

Chilli

Rich in a number of vitamins and minerals, chillies are also a potent antioxidant. They are high in the hot capsaicin and also an excellent source of the antioxidant carotenoids. 

Hot sauce fans will tell you that any spicy sauce is fine with any food. Well almost anyway. However, our hot, fermented sauce is versatile and can be combined with other sauces and eaten as a hot, probiotic-friendly dip or with eggs, drizzled on a salad or a vegetarian-style Buddha bowl. 

It lends itself to all styles of cooking, from fried, to grilled or poached. Try on fish, chicken or even as a topping on rolls or sandwiches. Love sushi? Try a dash of hot sauce with the dish, it’ll give it that extra flourish.

Increasing your intake of fermented foods, as part of a well-rounded, healthy diet, is now one of the key ways recommended by nutritionists for better physical and mental health. Fermented foods come in a variety of ways. They include: yoghurt, cheese and pickles. However, the two best known are sauerkraut and kimchi. Both are well-known for the trillions of helpful bacteria they add to the gut and the role they play in balancing the gut microbiome in favour of the “good” bacteria.

But if you want to add a little spicy “bite” to the goodness of our probiotic kimchi, please look at the kimchi hot sauce.

We’re very proud of this, our very own famous oak barrel-aged hot sauce with a kimchi twist.