Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. Great book with lots of ideas and recipes! This book did not disappoint. A huge collection of condiments, from pickles to spices to salsas. Thanks for the opportunity to read it!

I loved this wonderful book! The recipes are easy and delicious, and the photography is gorgeous. It will add spice to the recipes in anyones repertoire, and will inspire them to be made over and over again. Very highly recommended!

Yum! Gave me lots of great ways to use the glut of hot peppers from my garden (why do I always grow so darn many!)

I love exploring super outlandish new recipes and this book really provides in that arena. Definitely if you are of the variety of person who will try ANYTHING, this is the book for you. Be prepared to lose all feeling in your tongue.

This cookbook is phenomenal both for its deliciously spicy recipes and its detailed instructions. Fermented foods are one of those areas where many of us grew up with no idea how to make them. This book fills that gap, especially for people who like spicy foods. Since I never learned how to make kimchi from my friend's Korean grandmother, this book fills the gap.

I have previously been reluctant to attempt making fermented food. It all seemed so overwhelming and dangerous. This book has changed my thinking!

Fiery Ferments is full of explanations of the best containers to use, chopping methods and tons of recipes. The photography was my most favorite part as everything looked so delicious. The troubleshooting at the end seems like it could be a big help.

I recommend this book for anyone who is a beginner and nervous to start in preparing fermented food as well as the pro and everyone in between.

Excellent title to bring new flavour and spice to your fermented foods. No need for years of experience either, these recipes are easy enough for new fermenters to try.

Nonfiction
Adult
If you follow food blogs, you’ll know that fermented foods are gaining new interest, beyond sauerkraut. Turns out you can ferment almost any vegetable, though obviously some lend themselves better to the pickle-y flavour than others. Having made my own sauerkraut with surprising success, I am interested in furthering my forays into fermentation (sorry – I simply cannot resist a powerful alliteration). In this follow-up to their first book, Fermented Vegetables, the Oregon couple has put together an excellent recipe and instruction book for creating “hot sauces, spicy chutneys, kimchis with kick, and other blazing fermented condiments,” according to the lengthy sub-title. My brother and I inherited a love of fiery foods from our Hungarian mother, so this title really appealed to me. And it delivers big-time. They begin by explaining how fermenting works, how to be successful using a myriad of methods, and that if something does go wrong, you won’t die. (Admit it, it’s the one thing that stops you from trying to make your own sauerkraut!) You can go big-time with high-end equipment, or give it a try with a couple of mason jars, regularly “burping” the CO2. Each recipe includes suggestions for appropriate methods, and tips if you choose an alternative method. The focus here is on peppers, so the Shockeys include a section on the various peppers you might use for your spicy concoctions. I was delighted to discover guajillo peppers in the list, as I have planted this in my own garden this year, having discovered it at my local seed exchange earlier in the year. There are recipes for simple pepper sauces, salsas, salads and so much more. The book includes many gorgeous full-colour photos that will certainly motivate readers. I’ve already added the easy-peasy and spicy fermented carrot and lime salad to my file! There are a few recipes for suggesting how to use your fermented foods, from smoothies and soups to sausages and small plates, as well as drinks and desserts. Finally, a troubleshooting section provides guidance for making sure your ferments result in a tasty outcome. I’m pleased to see there is space allocated for an index but it had not been included in my advance copy. Simply terrific – I will certainly be adding a print copy of this superb resource to my cookbook collection. My thanks to Storey Publishing for the advance reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this title: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30648724

I have been waiting for Fiery Ferments by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey since I first read their previous book, Fermented Vegetables, in 2014. I had owned preservation supplies and books for a decade without using them because I was afraid of killing someone. The Shockeys were the first to convince me that I was unlikely to be the Canning Killer enabling me to take the plunge. Fermented Vegetables works as both an inspiration and a solid reference book, the kind you can look to every time you are confronted with a new excess in your CSA box. Its only drawback, in my eyes, was that I wanted more salsas.

Now comes Fiery Ferments, to perfectly satiate that need. It covers fermented hot sauces, salsas, and other spicy items such as kimchi. After a beginning introduction on how to ferment, the Shockeys treat you to a history of the chile, which wasn’t always available worldwide for use as a spice. Prior to the chile’s expansion around the globe, the Eastern hemisphere had other solutions for how to spice up a meal, from the common horseradish and peppercorn to more unfamiliar ingredients. The Shockeys provide an entire chapter of recipes using early chile precursors before several chapters devoted to chile-influenced recipes. n addition to the core of spicy ferment recipes, the book also includes two further chapters of recipes incorporating these ferments, even in drinks and desserts. This book is as comprehensive as one book on spicy fermented foods could be.

Like Fermented Vegetables, Fiery Ferments really shines in the cheerful confidence with which the Shockeys teach. “First of all: you’ve got this!” they insist at the very beginning, and over the next several pages they convince me that I do indeed have this. I feel not only comfortable that I won’t be killing anyone, I have no stress about a ferment gone “wrong” at all. They describe possible troubles that may arise and how to course correct along the way. At the end, they even provide a “fermentation doctor” section that shows images to help you diagnose your ferment and fix it. They coddle the reader a bit, assuring them that it’s ok to use special products that let the carbon dioxide escape, if it makes them feel better, or to use the simplest of items they have in their kitchen like Zip-locs.  It will all work out.

They manage to provoke such confidence in me because they don’t just provide recipes and steps. They teach how fermentation works and provide a firm grounding on everything that can go wrong or right. Before you get to the first recipe, you have enough knowledge to make a hot sauce or pepper mash from any pepper combination. Before they teach how to make fun things like rhubarb kimchi, they teach how to make a universal fermented pickle. Even the recipes for using the ferments follow this pattern. Instead of a disparate grouping of things that just happen to have hot sauce in them, they focus on adaptable basics. There’s a discussion on how to make toasts and crostinis using ingredients of your choice and another on how to put together a balanced meal in a bowl. There’s not one sausage recipe but several, depending on your protein of choice. The recipes sometimes suggest which ferment to use but often instead just describe the category so that you can experiment with flavors on your own.

If I sound like a huge fan girl, it’s because I am. If you are interested in fermented veggies like sauerkraut or kimchi, I cannot recommend the work of Kirsten and Christopher Shockey highly enough.

As a dedicated fan of fermentation of all kinds, I was especially looking forward to this book, and it did not disappoint. A huge collection of condiments, from pickles to spices to salsas. Includes comprehensive sections on equipment to use, chopping tips, etc. The Habanero-Carrot Sauce is outstanding! Definitely a must-have.

Fiery hot chutneys , salsas from around the world.............

I love the combination of flavors and techniques in Fiery Ferments, but I stuck to the basics in the past or bought the pasteurized version of a hot sauce before I tried to make my own without researching properly. Big mistake.

Making my own chili powder was a painful experience, blending dried chile peppers on a vitamix was a great idea, removing the lid after that not so much, even cleaning the vitamix got me coughing.

Thanks to Kirsten and Christopher Shockey I learned that I inhaled capsaicin (the compound that gives chiles their heat), so next time I have to check for a ventilated area, and be careful even during the cleanup.

Also I’ve had problems during the fermentation process of sauerkraut (Recipe on Fermented Vegetables) as well. However, after reading Fiery Ferments and checking their website fermentworks.com I’ve learned from their experience how to work spicy+fermentation properly.

Fiery Ferments recipes bring life to spicy foods not longer alive because of pasteurization.

"…Our favorite spicy foods and condiments were likely preserved through lacto-fermentation, with all the flavor, nutrients, enzymes, vitality, and other elements of goodness that accrue from working with probiotic bacteria. Then methods of quick acidification with vinegar and pasteurization came along, and our traditional spicy foods lost their probiotic love."

According to Rodney Dietert, PhD the microbiome “is a collection of thousands of different species of bacteria, fungi, and viruses,” that take residence in different parts of our bodies. Moreover, the microbiome is so relevant that “breast milk is probably the first probiotic food the baby will consume.”

The microbiome as part of our human ecosystem is fascinating, and it’s important to keep it healthy to protect our second genome, our microbial genes, to be healthy for us and the next generation.

Because of the old paradigm Rodney Dietert, PhD explains “…we only thought about shared microbes in a very negative context since they most often led to infections that swept the globe…But your resident microbes that don’t normally cause a disease and support your body’s maturation and function have circled the globe as well.”

We have microbes that we have to take care to be healthy, and they are even international travelers!

Besides health benefits, other reasons to ferment food are to preserve the aliments to have a longer shelf life, and to enhance the flavor.

Fiery Ferments Content:

Part I. Getting Started

In this section, you’ll get information about the ingredients, techniques, tools and tips.

The tools aim for simplicity. You can buy different systems according to your budget, but in Fiery Ferments, the authors assume you are using a basic jar method. You’ll get information about different fermentation vessels + systems, a description, ease of use level, what is great about the systems, and each system challenge.

A section will cover everything about additional gadgets for slicing, shredding, chopping, and grating. Furthermore, an explanation regarding the use of salt, water, time, temperature, and burping the ferments.

The techniques present visual guides such as basic pepper mash, brine-based sauces and pickles, pastes and mustards, kimchis, relishes and salads. You can check several recipes here. Scroll down until you find the step-by-step visual guide to Brined-Based Sauces and Pickles.

The ingredients are divided into two sections:

Spicy ingredients such as ginger, turmeric, mustard, horseradish, peppercorns, and more.
Chiles such as aleppo, cayenne, chile pequin, fresno, jalapeño, habanero, and more.

Part II. Fiery Ferments

A chapter with pre-chile spicy recipes that turn up the heat without a chile. The fermentation process with pre-chile ingredients as ginger, horseradish root, mustard, peppercorns, etc.

All these recipes are fermented and include a heat index from mild heat (1) to fiery burn (5). Two techniques to create the pre-chile recipes:

Kimchis, relishes and salads,
Pastes and mustards.

The recipes with chiles include sauces, salsas, relishes, chutneys, flavor pastes, kimchis, fermented salads, and hot pickles. Besides the different chiles used in each recipe, you’ll find unusual combinations with ingredients such as tamarind, coffee, vanilla, cinnamon, mango, plantain, pineapple, mint, etc.

Different techniques to create the chile recipes:

Brined-Based sauces and ferments,
Basic Pepper Mash,
Brined-Based sauces and pickles
Condiments, relishes, and fermented salads,
Pastes and mustards.

You will find popular recipes as Sriracha and Gochujang (Korean pepper paste), but also unexpected combinations like Habanero Basil Paste.

Part III. On the Plate

As a vegan, I didn’t enjoy Part III of Fiery Ferments. Recipes include meats, eggs, dairy with vegan meals or ways to veganize some of the recipes. If you aren’t vegan or have a mix of vegan and non-vegan family meals you’ll be happy.

The techniques in part II are mostly vegan or vegetarian except for kimchis, and the authors offer a vegan version. However, if you are easily offended for non-vegan meal pictures skip this book as you can find a roasted chicken in all its splendor in part III.

If I have to make an exception to buy a non-vegan cookbook, it would be Fiery Ferments, even though part III is the least useful section of this book to my lifestyle. Additionally, the authors never claimed the cookbook had 100% vegan content.

Part III presents different meals from blazing plates to spirited sips, and racy desserts.

Toasts and different top ingredient combinations,
Smoothies,
Buddha Bowls,
Empanadas,
Fire Cider,
Kvass,
Fried Bananas,
Persimmon Ginger Sorbet, to name a few.

Finally, Fermentation Doctor to deal with safety concerns.

"With fermented products there is not safety concern. I can flat-out say that. The reason is the lactic acid bacteria that carry out the fermentation are the world’s best killers of other bacteria." Fred Breidt, USDA microbiologist

The section Fermentation Doctor shows several cases where the fermentation process can go wrong or concerns about what you think is going wrong with the fermentation process, but it’s doing fine.

In Fiery Ferments, Kirsten and Christopher Shockey mix their love for spicy and fermented food. Even though plenty of recipes include mostly chiles in their preparation, other spices as ginger, mustard, peppercorns, etc., make their appearance in their recipes. The authors describe their recipes as “fun, a bit crazy and full of flavor.”

I like spicy hot sauces and pickles but never thought I would be considering fermenting my own. Reading Fiery Ferments has changed my mind and I'm going to give some of the great recipes for salsa and achar a try.

The Spicy Onion-Mango ferment truly sounds like one I will enjoy and there are also some wonderful sounding kimchi recipes. Not quite sure where to start!

This book is filled with all you need to know to make ferments, delicious spicy recipes for creating them and a selection of recipes using the prepared ferments. I will definitely be adding Fiery Ferments to my cookery book shelf and I know a few people who will also enjoy a copy.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a digital review copy.

This is a very informative book on fermentation - it gives you a list of the tools you will need as well as the the fermentation systems, with a description of each and how easy it is to use - important for a beginner! It also tells you what you will need to use for preparing the ferments and how to grate, shred, chop and slice the peppers and other ingredients!
This chapter also gives you a description of some tools you will need to handle and prepare some of the spices and peppers, such as a mortar and pestle, gloves and silicone lid liners for the jars.
I was amazed at the quantity of recipes, there was everything from breakfast ferments, smoothies, and toast toppings, to appetizers, entrees and desserts!
This book gives you step-by-step techniques for the recipes, along with amazing photographs of each item.
There is also a section that tells you what properly fermented food looks like, so that you can know if you followed the directions correctly.
These are some of the recipe titles:
1. Green Peppercorn Mustard
2. Hawaiian Chile Pepper Water
3. Coffee Sauce
4. Thai-Dragon Mint Cilantro Paste
5. Simple Buttermilk Cheese
6. Hot and Fruity Smoothie
7. Hot Chocolate Cherry Balls
Enjoy reading and making these Fiery Ferments!

some great recipes in here for lovers of pickles and heat

This is a feast of a book and so complete. I found its clarity so appealing and it’s also beautiful to look at, as colourful and lively as its recipes are tasty and full of flavour! The book is peppered with interviews, tidbits of information and numerous recipes and ideas to keep you busy. It’s a great reference book, beginning with the origins of spices and explanations of fermentation and the different tools needed, and different methods used. There are detailed lists of spices (with such an intriguing focus on peppers but not only) as well as the extremely tempting recipes (sauces, kimchis and fermented salads, drinks, deserts and meals). I particularly found the Fermentation Doctor section extremely helpful.
This is a book to keep at hand in order to be able to delve into at whim, the enchanting photography is mesmerizing and a definite plus. This book is a must have for anyone who is interested in fermenting with a weakness for hot spices.

Overall, this is a very unique and interesting cookbook. If you love hot sauce and/or spicy food or just love cooking and are looking for something unique to add to your repertoire, then this is a great book for you. The pictures are great and the recipes are pretty easy to follow. Personally, I don't have the time or patience to make my own fermented foods at home, but this book broke down the steps and make it approachable. Now, I just need to wait for my peppers to finish growing in the garden so that I can make these recipes!

Great recipes! They look like a lot of fun to try and delicious!

Beautiful book, well written with very doable recipes.
It does inspire you to run to the kitchen and start "creating" right away.