We've dipped our toes into the world of fermentation for a long time, but it feels as if in the past few years we've finally got things down. We're eating fermented foods nearly every day, and it's wonderful. I won't make wild health claims about the benefits of fermented foods, such as them curing every ailment under the sun. It is known, however, that fermented foods are quite healthy and can have a positive impact on your overall health. Fermented cabbage, for instance, has higher levels of certain vitamins than non-fermented cabbage. And, long ignored, our gut microbiomes have an impact on everything from digestive health to mood. But many fermented foods are expensive, and might not be as fresh as one would like them to be.
It's also much easier to customize fermented foods if you make them yourself. Want it a certain level of spicy or tangy? You can do that. You can mess around with the flavor profile by adding different herbs and spices quite easily, or syrups or sugars. The only thing that MUST be constant is how much of the crucial ingredient is necessary, such as salt used in salt fermentations. Too little can mean spoiled food that has to be thrown out.
Beer and Cider
Beer, not long after college, was one of the first ferments our household made. I don't drink beer so the brewer was my partner. I had fun watching the whole process, and helped with things like bottling. It was fun to experiment with new batches, to see what worked and what didn't. I took a small sip of each batch, just to experience them, and that was fun too.
For a variety of reasons my partner doesn't drink much beer these days, but we usually make hard cider when we do our fall apple pressing. Since we get the apples for free and do the pressing ourselves, the cost for the hard cider is the brewing equipment, which we already have from beer, and some yeast, if we use a cultivated yeast. Sometimes we've done a wild ferment, using only the yeasts already on the skins of the apples. Those can be hit or miss, however.
Our household still buys hard ciders, to be clear. We've never made enough to keep up with the total household consumption. We'd have a hard time storing all of the equipment and bottles for such a feat, honestly. Plus, it's nice to have variety, which is harder to make on a home scale. But it's also fun to have a small backyard fire on a spring evening drinking homemade cider, especially if friends can join.
Saurkraut
We love to eat cabbage. My family would never say so, but cabbage is actually one of the favorite vegetables in our house, and I grow a lot of it. So it seemed pretty natural to dip our toes into the world of making saurkraut. I tried a few times years ago, and it was okay but not great. At the time what I was reading all said that you needed to make kraut in a crock, and I didn't have one. I did have a Crockpot, but I didn't have a lid or plate or anything that fit down inside to keep the cabbage under the liquid and, eventually, it got moldy. Plus, we needed the Crockpot for meals.
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| Saurkraut on the left, kimchi on the right. We like the half gallon mason jars for storage. |
Years later my husband was the one who decided to start making saurkraut. And, as it turns out, he's really good at it! When your German friend comes over and eats an entire jar of your saurkraut, you know it's good. One of the biggest switches was to making it with purple cabbage. I don't know what it is but purple cabbage makes an incredible saurkraut. Last summer, for the first time, I grew the purple cabbages that we turned into kraut and we're all very pleased with the results. My husband uses a variety of spices (which I don't know) and doesn't slice the cabbage super thin, actually. Having some small stuff would be good to go on, say, burgers and hotdogs, but it would also go mushy really fast. Keeping the slices a little thicker (by cutting with a knife rather than using a grater, as is often recommended) means that the kraut keeps a bit of crunch even after months of storage in the fridge.
He usually makes it in mason jars these days, although I've also heard good things about those flip top glass jars with the rubber rings. The only special things I've bought are some fermentation weights and we're trying a few fermentation lids for mason jars. The regular lids and rings get rusty very quickly when used for fermentation, even if you only use them for storage.
Kimchi
Since saurkraut was such a hit, why not kimchi? And indeed, it has also proven to be a winner. Homemade kimchi is delightful because you can make it as spicy or not spicy as you want. We like ours moderately spicy, with plenty of cheek-puckering tang. We add it to fried rice and after cooking to certain stir-fries. But probably the favorite way to eat it is over leftover plain rice with a runny fried egg or two. So good.
I don't know what it was, but the last batch of kimchi made, last fall, was particularly active. My husband made it just before leaving town to go visit family so I was in charge of "burping" it all. Despite vigilantly doing that multiple times a day, several of the jar lids exploded off one afternoon. Silicone lids, so nothing was broken or damaged. But I happened to be standing in the kitchen when it happened and there was kimchi juice on everything, everywhere. Including me. I had to call my brother-in-law up from the basement to take care of the kimchi (ensuring that it still had enough liquid, salt, spices, etc., since he has also made kimchi) while I cleaned up. We like beets in our kimchi and it took a while for some of the stains to go away. So be careful with this one.
Yogurt
Some friends gifted us an Instant Pot a few years ago. Knowing us, they figured it was a kitchen tool we would end up using a lot and they were quite right. It's become one of the best kitchen devices for this ADHD household, because it automates a lot of things (like cooking rice), reduces the time spent (on things like beans or roasts), and can be started whenever I think about getting dinner ready so it's just ready when we need it. On afternoons when the kids have sports and playdates and whatnot, it's a lifesaver because I put together dinner while they are at school and I have time, ready to be eaten when we get home in the evening.
It also has a yogurt setting, which made me curious. After looking up a few tutorials about how to use it I dove into the world of homemade yogurt. And it turns out to be genuinely pretty easy. The only thing is the timing, because first you have to boil the milk (to get other bacteria out so they don't compete with your yogurt bacteria), then let it cool but not too much!, then go back to add the starter (and anything else you want, like sweetener or vanilla), and then let it sit. Since I've had the best results by letting it sit for 24 hours, that means my IP is out of meal planning for over a day. I need to plan well, since the IP is generally used 5 days out of 7 here for something. But, it's worth it. I can make really decent to excellent yogurt for much cheaper than buying it. Then I save a tiny bit as starter for the next time.
To make Greek style yogurt, it has to be strained. I find this to be sort of a messy process, and only necessary depending on how my family is going to eat the yogurt. If we're eating it as yogurt, we prefer it strained. If it's only going in smoothies or being cooked/baked with, I don't bother to strain it. If you do strain it, don't throw away the whey! It's super good, and quite healthy, and can replace part or all of the liquid in baked goods or pancakes/waffles. It also freezes well, if you won't use it all immediately.
The two big catches to homemade yogurt are that, first, the yogurt loses vitality after a few batches. I'm not sure why this happens, exactly, but I end up buying a little bit of yogurt every once in a while to refresh it. But that's okay because I don't make yogurt all the time anyway, so occasionally I'll find that I saved some starter and it went moldy because the last time I made yogurt was a month ago. Whoops. Yogurt is a cyclical food in our house, where everyone eats a whole bunch for a few weeks and then moves on to other things for a while. If you start making yogurt regularly, maybe you can figure out why it needs fresh store-bought starter every few batches, or if it's simply that I let mine sit in the fridge too long.
Sourdough
When we lived in Fairbanks, a friend gave me a bit of sourdough starter that's one of those ones passed down from generation to generation. I made a few batches of bread and then, of course, killed the starter by leaving it out on the counter, unfed, until it got moldy. Go me. (Don't worry, the original starter was just fine. It's easy to divide and give some away.)
At the start of 2020, hilariously enough, I decided that I was going to really learn how to make sourdough. My family loves sourdough bread, particularly my eldest kid, and while she can't be termed "picky" compared to many kids I know, getting enough food into her is a challenge. So what she will eat, we try to make sure we have in the house.
So I made a sourdough starter, which is pretty easy. Mix flour and water, and let it sit out with a light cloth over it to keep dust out. Feed it more flour and water sometimes. When it bubbles, there you go. Starter! I made a few batches of (rough, but edible) bread, and told a friend about this project. She said that she'd been meaning to do the same thing so I shared my starter with her.
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| Sourdough cranberry-orange bread with salt preserved oranges. |
I've pared my sourdough routine down to being as simple as possible, because I just don't do fussy. Who's got time? Or energy for that?
I keep my starter in a large jar. It formerly held olives from Costco, and is probably half a gallon. I try to never let it get below half full because it seems to like having a solid base. Remember, it's a living thing. Or a bunch of living things? Whatever. Just keep it bulked up as much as you can. Occasionally I move it into a clean jar of the same size (olives are another thing my kid likes to eat), and clean all the crusty bits off the old jar and put it back in storage for the next time the current jar grosses me out.
I don't measure the flour and water, I just know the texture of what it should look and feel like while I'm stirring it when I feed it. I also, here, don't fuss with distilled or filtered water. If we were back in Alaska with the crappy hard water I probably would, but here is fine. We have some chlorine in our city water but not enough to make too much difference. However, we also generally have a little bit of water left in the bottom of our electric kettle after making coffee and tea in the morning, so if it's cool enough I reach for that first. Any chemicals have burned off, or gone away with time.
I keep my starter in the fridge almost all the time. I feed it when I use it, then put it back in the fridge. If I remember, in the morning when I'm going to make bread that evening, I pull it out and feed it again so it has time to warm up and get bubbly.
Last, I never discard. I hate the waste, and when I thought about it I couldn't imagine my foremothers--frequently living in poverty or on the edge of food security, worried about famine or getting their kids through the winter--throwing away so much food. Because if you feed and discard even just once a week, that's so much good food going to waste! Yes, there are sourdough discard recipes galore but also...why? If you don't have to discard at all, then you don't need to come up with ways to not waste that starter. So I tried it and, as it turns out, nothing bad happened. In fact my starter seems to like getting big and bulky before I use it. Since I'm using it at least once a week, and frequently more often, this works out fine for me. And it's one less thing to remember.
Some of our favorite sourdough recipes are:
White sandwich bread (I generally do half whole wheat flour) - This is BY FAR the best homemade sandwich bread recipe I've ever tried. It has the texture of store-bought white bread, being not too crumbly while staying soft. But the taste is so much better.
Maple oat sandwich bread - A fantastic toast bread
Sourdough English muffins (big batch)
Sourdough English muffins (small batch)
Crusty Dutch oven sourdough - Delicious paired with soup or stew for dinner.
Sourdough cranberry orange bread
Sourdough pretzels
Sourdough bagels
For the English muffins, I have two recipes depending on if I want a large or small batch. Since our chickens are producing a lot of eggs, one way we enjoy them is as breakfast sandwiches. I'll make a big batch of English muffins and freeze some so we can pull them out as needed. The smaller batch recipe makes muffins with more of the holes, however, so it's really good for toasting up and putting preserves or jam on.
I had a friend over the other day who saw me making the above cranberry orange bread and some English muffins. This friend used to be a professional chef and shuddered at using sourdough. She said she thrives on a fast pace, and waiting for sourdough to ferment takes too long, she loses interest. I also know others with ADHD who've mentioned that sourdough just doesn't work for them. For me, it really works. If I get distracted while sourdough is rising, an extra hour on the counter won't hurt anything. Normal yeast has, to me, much more specific needs on timing. It can be a little tough for someone who struggles with distraction and time blindness to be there at the exact time yeast bread needs to get formed into loaves, or put in the oven. Don't get me wrong, I really like yeasted breads. I enjoy baking them. But not as much as I do sourdough.
The fact that I can break up sourdough making into small chunks of time and attention required is wonderful. A little bit in the morning, pulling out and feeding the starter. Then nothing until evening (hopefully--if I remembered that I was going to start bread that night; if not, I feed the starter again and set a reminder alarm on my phone for the next evening, and set the starter on the counter in a spot that I can't miss it so I remember to feed it yet again in the morning). The next morning there's no rush, I get around to shaping or cutting or otherwise setting up the second rise whenever I get around to it. Then I go about my business for a few hours, and check on it whenever I happen to be in the kitchen, until it's finally time to bake. If I have to leave and go get the kids, no worries. It'll wait the half hour until we all get home.
A lazy baker's secret: I don't actually preheat the oven. I just stick the bread in, then start it heating up. I generally add 2-5 minutes to the bake time, depending on the recipe, and maybe a little more after that if it needs it. Many of the above recipes call for multiple bake temps and multiple times, and I do some of them. The maple oat bread says to preheat the oven to 400F and then turn it down to 375 when you put the bread in. Um, I don't do that. I just set it to 375 from the start and it turns out great. This also means it doesn't get super dark on top, so I don't have to fuss around with making a foil "tent" for the top of it. So feel free to play around with things like that, rather than taking everything in a recipe as gospel.
I also don't spritz anything with water or use a baking stone. The one recipe above that calls for the baking stone, when I've tried using it (very carefully following the recipe as written, including preheating the oven) my bread has ended up with a large bit of uncooked dough in the center. I'm happy enough to drop the extra steps, and the bread turns out better. Maybe your oven is different, but it works out better for me not to do the fussy parts.
Shaping also doesn't have to be a big production. Shhh, sometimes I just get it into a loaf blob that fits into the pans and call that good. No one has noticed the difference. The stiffer the dough, the more shaping matters. For soft, loose, moist doughs, though, don't do more than you have to.
The few tools I have found necessary: a Dutch oven and loaf pans. A bench scraper really does help a lot, though it's not strictly necessary. A rolling pin, for some things like the English muffins. And I almost always proof my doughs in a mixing bowl with a lid. We got these as a wedding gift and they are insanely useful. I've also used a regular mixing bowl and put the lid to a pot that fits (well enough) over it. For the long bulk ferment that sourdough needs this keeps the dough from drying out far better than anything else, and doesn't create a bunch of unnecessary garbage like plastic wrap and proofing bags.
The friend I mentioned sharing sourdough starter with? She shared it back with me when I once again left mine on the counter until it got moldy a few months ago. Go me.
Salt Preserved Lemons
A couple of years ago my kids begged and begged and begged me to make lemonade from real lemons. So I bought a big bag of lemons at Costco, and we did. But then I had a big bag of fresh lemons and no idea what to do with them. I made lemon curd (THE BEST!!) but I'm the only one in the house who eats it so I didn't make much. I looked around for other ways to preserve lemons and, aside from the million and one ways to freeze lemon juice and/or zest, I found recipes for salt preserved lemons. Wut? I'd never heard of them before but was willing to give it a go. And it turns out it's really easy. Basically, put a teaspoon of salt in the bottom of a glass jar. (I use an old peanut butter jar.) Then put in a layer of lemon slices, peel and all, and more salt. Keep going until the jar is full, topping with salt. Make sure the lemons are under the level of the juices, adding a bit of water if necessary. Let sit out for a couple of days until they've fermented, then put it all in the fridge until you want to eat it. Ta-da! There are tons of recipes to use them. I've even used a slice or two instead of lemon zest in recipes, including cookies. I just omit the salt when I do so. It works surprisingly well.
I know there are preserved lemon and pasta recipes out there. I need to find those and try them.
This year I've expanded and made some salt preserved oranges. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with them but I'll figure out a use.
Kombucha
Last spring my entire family caught a nasty tummy bug. I mean nasty. Short-lived, thankfully, but absolutely wretched to experience. Everything hurt for 24-48 hours and nothing could be kept down, or in. I'm so thankful my brother didn't catch it, because he ended up watching the kids while both of us parents were sick at the same time.
After, for many weeks, my stomach hurt every time I ate. I thought it would go away but, like clockwork, half an hour after each meal or snack my stomach would start cramping up until I was doubled over with pain. That's no way to live, and even worse is trying to parent through that. I finally realized that the only times I ate that didn't cause excruciating pain were when I ate anything fermented, particularly still live ferments like yogurt, kimchi, and saurkraut. As best I can figure, being so horribly ill upset my gut microbiome in a way that made digestion difficult, and live ferments added back the things I needed. But I needed to keep eating them so they could repopulate my system.
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| Kombuch with the mother on top, and vinegar fermenting. |
I started eating a lot of those fermented foods, even just as a side, with each meal. But they got old and tiring, eating the same things at least three times a day. Four, if I had a snack. I was at the store one day and saw bottles of kombucha, remembered that it's fermented tea, and decided to try some. Delicious. But also, expensive. I would treat myself to one each week, generally spread out over two days (since I needed a little bit of fermented something at each meal to avoid pain).
Since it's pricey, I started looking into how to make my own. Like many of these things I had tried it once before but didn't keep up with it. This time, however, I had the incentive of making my stomach not hurt. So I used this guide and pretty soon I was making my own. At first I made plain kombucha, which is plenty good on its own. But I missed the flavored ones I'd been buying and wanted to play around with that. By happenstance, I made strawberry top syrup (from the tops of strawberries I'd used to make jam) and thought that it would probably go really well in the kombucha, with no fruit parts to strain out later. I was correct, and over the summer I made several types of fruit syrup. Good on pancakes, good in kombucha.
For bottling, I use the flip-top bottles we already have from brewing beer and cider. They are, like David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, under pressure. It's important to not just use any old bottle but one made to handle the forces of carbonation. Otherwise you'll end up with a kombucha explosion and glass everywhere. If you ever buy it from the store, take note of how thick the glass bottles are.
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| Fresh kombucha on the counter for the secondary fermentation. It'll go in the fridge in a few days. In the meantime, I cover it with a cloth so the light doesn't bother it. |
Kombucha is the only one of my ferments which makes a "mother" SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria & Yeast) and she often has "daughters". I generally use a strainer over the cup I pour it into (I almost never drink a whole bottle at a time) so I don't accidentally drink the daughters. They won't hurt you, and might even be good for you? But it's got a rather mucus-y texture if you drink it straight that is unpleasant, so I try to avoid it getting in my drink.
Since it has a tendency to make daughters, however, that makes it super easy to share. I've given several daughters away that friends then turned into their own full SCOBYs to make kombucha for themselves. It's fun to pass kombucha around the group to try all the different flavors that everyone experiments with. One friend prefers making kombucha with yerba mate and while that's not generally to my taste there have been some epic flavor combos, like yerba mate kombucha with blood orange. Yum!
Vinegar
This year I'm trying to make my own vinegar. Apple cider vinegar, to be precise, from some of the cider that we made last fall. So far I've made an acceptable dry hard cider, to which I added a Tbsp of raw cider vinegar not too long ago. Making real ACV, rather than scrap apple vinegar (which is most of what you'll see if you search for "how to make apple cider vinegar", and which I've made before), is a fairly long process, but I'm hopeful it'll be worthwhile. I realize that ACV is not exactly expensive, nor do we need tons of it each year. I'm only making a half gallon. BUT, it's something fun to try, and we happened to have both extra cider and the dregs of a raw vinegar to use.
I've seen other recipes for how to make vinegars that look fun and interesting to try, and I'll probably branch out in the future. Particularly to make into things like salad dressing, it would be fun to have a variety of small batch vinegars around.
Are we nuts?
When it's all written out like this, it seems like the work of crazy people. Why do so much extra work? I can't even assure you that we aren't nuts, because we're all a little mad. However, it seems like more work when it's written out like this than it is in real life. And a lot of the work is stuff that we find enjoyable. I like making sourdough, and so I've made it part of my routine. I like making yogurt and kombucha, and my partner likes making saurkraut and kimchi. If we didn't like it we would quit. And there are plenty of times we don't do these things. The last couple times we've had yogurt in the house I just bought a big tub of it, because it's spring and I have limited time. Making yogurt was not worth it at that moment, but it will be again. Many of these things are also made seasonally, like the vegetable and fruit ferments. It would be silly to buy a bunch of expensive lemons out of season to preserve them, I do that in winter when they're cheap. Saurkraut only gets made when we've got a purple cabbage that's ready to go, and even then we only make kraut if we're running low. Same for kimchi, which tends to get made once or possibly twice a year, then kept in the fridge while we eat it down. This, by the way, is why our fridge usually looks so full.
It's nice to have skills that we can depend on even if we don't have to. If there's another yeast shortage then I probably won't notice because I'm already using wild yeasts most of the time anyway. If nothing like that happens again (please!) then at least we get to enjoy the benefits of good, healthy foods, as well as the joy of making them.
