If you are a gardener, then chances are that you also preserve part of your bounty is some way, shape, or form. Freezing, canning, dehydrating, etc. Gardening and preserving go hand in hand.
Today I would like to sing praises of fermenting. Yep, fermenting. I know that it sounds and looks scary but trust me it is so very simple. Mankind has been fermenting to preserve food since the dawn of time. It has only been since modern kitchen appliances and grocery stores came to be that fermenting has fallen by the wayside. For me personally, it was more a mindset shift and learning to trust the process.
I started fermenting food 3 years ago. The first recipe I made was a fermented salsa. I was shocked at how easy & delicious the end result was. It really was as simple as whizzing up the ingredients in the food processor and letting the salsa sit on the counter for 3 days. My family inhaled the first batch. It was that good! By taste, you would never know it was fermented. It simply tastes like a homemade garden fresh salsa. I immediately expanded the number of jars I had sitting on my counter and made quick work of my excess garden produce for the remainder of the growing season. We ended up with 20-something quarts of fermented salsa in our spare garage refrigerator. The real perk was how long it kept- months and months. We were eating salsa that tasted like it came fresh from the garden in March.
Since then I have expanded my fermenting repertoire. This year I made Curtido. Think sauerkraut from Central America. Cabbage with onions, oregano and red chili flakes. Delicious! I am not a fermenting expert by far and I have had some fails. The beauty of fermenting is when it fails; it is unmistakably a fail. No question about it.
A good quality salt with no additives is key to lacto-fermenting. Salt inhibits bad bacteria while allowing the beneficial lactobacillus bacteria to grow. Lactobacillus are the probiotics that cost ridiculously high prices at the store and the reason that lacto-ferments have such a long shelf life. Everyone is talking about gut health these days. In addition to health, I am going to stick to my often reoccurring theme of saving money. Hello! You can make this in your home for pennies compared to purchasing and it will be a far superior product. Other than purchasing salt, you probably have all the equipment you need already in your kitchen. I will confess that after I got serious about fermenting, I did purchase some glass weights and self-venting silicon jar lids.
I recommend that you research to get started. There are LOTS of great sources available online with no cost associated. I can offer a few TIPS & TRICKS from my personal experience.
- Do not wash your fermenting vessels in the dishwasher. Dishwasher detergents can leave a residue on the glass that prevents the lactobacillus from growing (Kind of scary to think that this residue comes into contact with our food. What is that doing inside your body?). Instead I hand wash, rinse well and if I am planning on long term storage I also sterilize by boiling water for 10 minutes. If you plan on eating the ferment within a couple weeks, I have found that sterilizing is not necessary.
- Do not use treated water. If you have well water, then you are golden. You can purchase distilled which I did in the beginning. To save that cost, I now boil my stock pot full for 10 minutes to remove the chlorine, then store for use in a glass iced tea type container with a spout.
- Always use very clean hands and do not double dip utensils or you can contaminate the whole batch.
I hope this encourages you to take a leap of faith and trust in lactobacillus and the lacto-fermenting process. It is so easy and delicious. You will not regret it.
Here’s to growing all the things,
Shannon
What is growing right now:
Inside sowing of transplants like tomatoes, peppers, cabbage.
Outside peas, fava beans, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, radishes, turnips.
