When is whey necessary for a successful lacto-ferment? Why do people call something “lacto” fermented if it doesn’t contain any dairy? This article answers your questions about whey, dairy starters, and their relationship to lacto-fermentation.
Fermentation
Lacto Fermented Spicy Korean Kraut
Think of this as kimchi for wimps. It’s more accessible in flavor than a traditional Korean, long-fermented pungent cabbage or turnip ferment. But it’s not so unlike kimchi that it won’t stand in well as a spicy, pungent addition to rice bowls, soups, and noodle dishes of all kinds. For the best results on this…
Lacto Fermented Curtido Cabbage Salsa
As regular readers know, I love a good taco. In fact, I even have a formula for delicious homemade tacos. One of the essential components of a great taco is something crispy and crunchy. The Central American, lightly fermented cabbage slaw called curtido fits the bill perfectly, and has all the benefits of other fermented cabbage condiments like sauerkraut…
Miso Sesame Kale Salad Kraut
This is one of many similar fermentation experiments I make that I think of as “Salad Kraut.” The idea here is a moderately fermented condiment that you can enjoy as a ready-to-go vegetable side dish. It’s somewhere between a salad and a sauerkraut…so, Salad Kraut. This particular variation was so good I had to share. Miso,…
Lacto-Fermented Tomatillo Salsa
No shock to any of my regular readers – I pretty much want to ferment all the things, all the time. I’m basically a jewel case away from being a Portlandia sketch. My new favorite fermented condiment is this Lacto-Fermented Tomatillo Salsa. It’s super easy. You just chop up a bunch of stuff in a…
How Much Salt Should I Use For My Fermentation?
Controlled fermentation is one of the easiest, cheapest, lowest-tech ways to preserve the harvest. With nothing more than salt, water and the microbes already living on your vegetables, you can turn highly-perishable cucumbers into long-lasting pickles, raw cabbage into more-digestible sauerkraut, and churn out dilly beans without ever heating up the canning kettle. Plus…yum! Fermented food…
DIY Lacto-Fermentation Weight for Mason Jars
There are three things to manage if you want the most successful lacto-fermented vegetables: Salt levels Fermentation temperature Oxygen exposure When it comes to that third thing – oxygen exposure – the goal is none. The Lactic Acid Bacteria that ferment veggies into tangy deliciousness are anaerobic. They do their best work far away from…
Do You Need To Heat Milk For Yogurt Making?
I recently chatted with my friend Margaret Roach on her radio show, A Way To Garden, about yogurt making. One of the things we discussed was if home yogurt makers can skip the traditional step of heating the milk to 180-degrees and then cooling it back down to 110-degrees for culturing. As it turns out,…
How To Make Salt Preserved Meyer Lemons (The Easy Way)
It’s Meyer lemon season and I’m going nuts. (Meyer lemon curd, anyone?) Regular readers probably already know how much I love salt-cured lemons. They are an essential condiment around my house, worked into salad dressings, braises, rice pilaf, fresh salsa and more. Last year, I ran out of salted Meyer lemons in July, with months…
How To Turn A Mason Jar Into A Fermenting Crock
You can spend a lot of money on specialized pickling crocks. Go ahead, be my guest. You’ll learn all about how your $25-$200 is buying you an ideal anaerobic environment in which to nurture your precious anaerobic bacteria…blah, blah, blah. Me? I don’t need another unitasker in my kitchen. I like to be able to use a…
Lacto-fermented Cherry Salsa
It’s been cherry-palooza around here. I’ve dried, frozen, canned in lime-almond syrup (fabulous, by the way), given away and eaten (and eaten and eaten and eaten) fresh cherries by the pound. We’ve even got my 2 year old saying “cherries make ya poop a lot!” which seems far more adorable when it’s coming out of…
Ack! My Sauerkraut Has Mold On It!
So you picked up a copy of Wild Fermentation and became a lacto-fermentation groupie, huh? It happens, I get it, it happened to me. And why wouldn’t you want to ferment everything in sight? The result is tasty, nutritious, rooted in the oldest traditions of food preservation and kinda badass in a “I dance with the…