Fun with fermentation!

This is a scheduled post, written a few days ago and scheduled to post now. 😀

I got into fermenting food early last year (2016) because I came into a large box full of vegetables such as golden beets, watermelon radishes, and cabbage - for free! - and didn't know what I was going to do with all of them. I googled various ways to preserve them and decided that fermentation seemed the easiest, especially since I didn't own a pressure canner at that time. I've since made sauerkraut, kim chi, East Indian Lemon Chilli Pickle, and various other pickled veggies and have to say I'm impressed with how easy it is.

In addition to being super easy to do, fermented vegetables are full of enzymes and live bacteria cultures that are good for your gut. It helps keep digestion flowing smoothly and helps your body fight off colds. Make you strong like bull! 😉

One of the things I made last summer was fermented mustard, which my friend Patti liked so much that she requested I make more, so it's currently in process. It's bubbling away in two 20 oz jars. One jar contains a cup of whole black mustard seeds in water kefir with garlic, a Tbsp of pink Himalayan salt, and some juniper berries. For the other jar, I pretty much followed this recipe from Cultures for Health, with the addition of 3 or 4 juniper berries. I used black mustard seeds and maple syrup instead of honey because that's what I had on hand.

Once they are both finished fermenting (when they stop bubbling), I will combine them to make a nicely textured and flavored black mustard. For previous batches, I've stirred in some chopped Meyer lemons when combining the pureed and whole seeds at the end of the fermentation time. Yum!

I've also got a giant jar of dilly beans working in the fridge. We had a giant jar of kosher dill pickles and when it was finished, I insisted on saving the pickling liquid. The next day I found green beans on sale at our local grocery store, so I brought a bunch home, cut them up and put them into the liquid. They should be finished very soon and I can't wait to eat them. I love dilly beans!

Oh, about the picture: since I don't have a fermentation cap big enough for that giant jar and because the green beans float but need to stay submerged and because I didn't feel like diluting the liquid by filling the jar all the way up, I filled a gallon ziploc bag with water and stuffed it into the jar. This keeps all the beans in the pickling liquid and can be easily removed, washed, and reused later.

There are lots of great fermentation recipes on the internet, and I can't post them all here, but a simple google search with the vegetable you have and the word "fermentation" should yield many to choose from.

The equipment I use for fermentation is pretty simple, especially now that I've done the experimentation and have discovered what works for me and what doesn't.

I started out by trying "Pickle Pipes", a silicone thingy that lets the air produced by the fermentation process out of the jar and prevents outside air from getting in. You use them in conjunction with either metal or plastic canning jar rings. Many people swear by these things, but I didn't care for them because some ferments are more vigorous than others and push the liquid up and out of the device, which made a big yucky mess on my counter.  😒

Now I just use the re-Cap mason jar lids with a rubber bung and a water lock, as described at the NW Edible blog.

I already had the re-Cap lids, and got the bungs and water locks at my local hydroponics store for just a few dollars total. Yeah, I live in California so hydroponics stores are pretty much everywhere. While the stores started out as a supply depot for growing "vegetables" (read: cannabis) hydroponically, now they also sell supplies for home brewing, cheese-making, wine-making, etc. The bungs and water locks are used in wine-making, so if you don't have hydroponics stores where you live, look for wine-making supplies. If you don't have a local source for such things, there are plenty of ways to purchase them via the internet such as Amazon.

I see that the good folks who designed the re-Cap lids have designed their own airlock. If mine ever break, I will consider getting these.

I usually use glass weights to keep the veggies submerged in the brine, but as I mentioned above, ziploc bags full of water (or full of more brine in case they leak) also work well.

I still use the silicone Pickle Pipes for fermenting things like chili peppers - because the smell of chili peppers does NOT come out of silicone no matter how many times you wash it! I've also purchased a larger container from Crazy Korean Cooking for making kim chi and sauerkraut. I haven't tried it yet, but they promise that it contains the smell much better than anything else. The device is apparently very popular in Korea and I figure they know about kim chi, so I'm expecting it to be fabulous. It will also keep my mason jars available for other things, such as water kefir (which I'll talk about in a future post).

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