Homemade sauerkraut?
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Wow - you are such an inspiration
I had shoulder surgery in October and am not quite up to slicing/chopping anything with anykind of finesse yet. Sling is coming off soon - maybe I'll be able to weild a knife with some accuracy early in the new year. I could really use some kimchii!!!!!!!
Thank you for posting these.0 -
lauriekallis wrote: »Wow - you are such an inspiration
I had shoulder surgery in October and am not quite up to slicing/chopping anything with anykind of finesse yet. Sling is coming off soon - maybe I'll be able to weild a knife with some accuracy early in the new year. I could really use some kimchii!!!!!!!
Thank you for posting these.
Get well soon! The most basic kimchi doesn't need as much finesse. Chop the Napa big. You can even skip the daikon. All the ginger and garlic and chilies can go in the food processor. Sauerkraut might be harder if you truly want to slice the cabbage the width of a quarter. I think you could also just roughly chop it; it would still ferment. Just be different texture.
The red cabbage sauerkraut came out quite nice. Very basic - just red cabbage, salt, and caraway. Three weeks ferment and packed it up. Without the garlic which is very non-traditional, it's very sweet. Still super crunchy, and also pretty sour. I gave about 1.5 quarts to my friend who gave me the cabbage. I don't have anything fermenting right now, but that's OK. I have to work through two batches of kraut and 1.5 batches of kimchi. And the second batch of cauliflower is also good; next time I might only let it ferment one week. Very tasty and still unusual.
The red kraut:
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That looks good.
I'm almost good to chop 0 -
We had some cold weather in the forecast a week or two ago. My neighbor was out of state, and I was taking care of the house to assure pipes don't freeze and all that. Forecast was COLD weather. I got a text: "Please pick carrots, beets, and kale before the freeze turns 'em to mush." I knew we also had snow on the way that probably would insulate them, but I hedged bets and pulled some carrots. Oh DOG they are tasty. Crisp, but tender. And really sweet.
Short story is they survived. The air got cold, but the ground didn't freeze. The insulation meant that the plants didn't even quite die back to the ground. Good thing. I have beets and kale that would have succumbed. All are well.
So I had all these carrots. And I like fermented vegetables. I cut them, stuffed them in a standard-mouth half-gallon jar with some black pepper, caraway, dill, garlic, and ginger, and I added some brine. It's been a little less than a week, and they are bubbling away. I think they will be awesome. I dared take out a sample today. Totally NOT finished fermenting, but still crisp at tasty.
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Wow, @mtaratoot , those look delicious.
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lauriekallis wrote: »Wow, @mtaratoot , those look delicious.
I have given in to temptation a couple times and grabbed a sample. They remain crisp and tender, and they are still sweet even as the lactic acid makes them sour. The vigorous ferment is subsiding. I will pack 'em up this weekend and share some with my neighbor who grew them and a few other friends and hoard all the rest. I probably should go start another batch as soon as these are done. I also need to think about starting a new kimchi. I have plenty of kraut to last another month or three, but I'll want to make at least one more batch before it gets warm. And yes... spring is on the way!0 -
Today was the day I planned to end the carrot ferment. And I did.
I packed them into three jars - small, medium, and large. I gave the small jar to the neighbor who grew them. I don't even know if she likes pickles. The other two are in the refrigerator. They had been fermenting very slowly the last several days, although they were still fermenting. They are mildly sour. Kind of like a half sour pickle. They may be more sour than the taste would suggest since they were so sweet to start with.
Oh. Yeah. They are delicious.
Some of the garlic turned blue. I've seen this before. It's not dangerous, and last time it actually subsided. Too bad; once I found out it wasn't dangerous, I thought it looked kind of cool.0 -
Decided to follow this!
I haven't fermented any food, only honey, water, yeast...which turns into Mead! 🥂1 -
HotMermaid729 wrote: »Decided to follow this!
I haven't fermented any food, only honey, water, yeast...which turns into Mead! 🥂
I used to make mead. In fact, I still have some that is probably 25 or 30 years old. Some hasn't aged well, but when I pull out a couple bottles, there's always at least one that's not only "not bad," but is still really good. My mead making stemmed out of home brewing beer. I developed a basic recipe for a show mead as well as just basic mead that had a couple other ingredients. Plus things like hydromel, braggot, pyment, and even a rhodomel.
Many people associate mead with a cloyingly sweet drink. Mine weren't sweet. They were pretty dry. I used a very attenuative yeast (Lalvin K1V-1116). The perception was a little sweeter than it actually was because the floral essences from the honey came through. I would never boil it, just boil the water, add the honey, and let it sit at least 160F for at least 20 minutes or so to pasteurize. Typically I'd start with a gallon of honey for a five gallon batch and then add some more honey when I moved it to secondary fermentation. After the second honey addition, I figured that the adjusted original gravity was usually about 1.10, and I'd ferment it down around 1.0 or sometimes less. I think I'd usually end up about 12% ABV.
My favorite recipe was very simple. The final flavor was affected by what the bees collected, but my addition, aside from a little yeast nutrient, was just a tiny bit of fresh ginger and eleven whole black peppercorns. You couldn't taste the pepper, but it added depth that is hard to describe. Once I added two split vanilla beans to the secondary fermentation. That was good too, and I think I still have a bottle of that.
I'm going to open some OLD mead this week!1 -
I was running low on kimchi, so made a large batch today. One big Napa a little over three pounds and another a little over two. Nice crisp daikon. Carrots. Lots and lots of garlic. Lots of ginger. Green onions, jalapeno, Serrano, and gochogaru. Soy sauce and fish sauce.
This filled my gallon jar almost to the top. My guess is that when the ferment really gets going, it will bubble over. Oh well.
Three or four days then I'll move it into smaller jars and put in the fridge for the flavors to mature. I still have about a half a quart left of the last batch, so this one will be ready just in time.1 -
Well, it's cold out, and I don't keep my house all that warm.
I think this batch will ferment maybe at least twice as long as usual before getting jarred up and put in the fridge to mature. It's barely even bubbling after two days.
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I went ahead and put the kimchi in smaller jars yesterday. It fermented a little over seven days instead of three to five. Of course I left some out of the smaller jars so I could eat it. It might be the best batch yet; certainly one of the best. I had to go get another serving. Now I am glad it was such a large batch. It won't last long.0
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I make sauerkraut all the time! I just cut a cabbage by hand into shreds removing the core, salt it, massage the salt into it and let it sit in a bowl with a weighted bowl pressing it down until it forms a lot of liquid. Usually an hour or so. Then I transfer the whole thing to a clean mason jar and press it down as hard as I can making sure the natural liquid covers the top and then I put cheese cloth over the top and secure with a rubber band and leave on the counter for about 3 days until it starts to ferment and then store in the fridge. DELICIOUS AND SO EASY 0
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ColoradoBringItOn wrote: »I make sauerkraut all the time! I just cut a cabbage by hand into shreds removing the core, salt it, massage the salt into it and let it sit in a bowl with a weighted bowl pressing it down until it forms a lot of liquid. Usually an hour or so. Then I transfer the whole thing to a clean mason jar and press it down as hard as I can making sure the natural liquid covers the top and then I put cheese cloth over the top and secure with a rubber band and leave on the counter for about 3 days until it starts to ferment and then store in the fridge. DELICIOUS AND SO EASY
If you let your kraut ferment longer, it allegedly becomes colonized with more probiotic organisms. There are apparently a series of three different lactic acid bacteria that come along in a sequence, and the third doesn't even get started until after a couple weeks. I typically leave out for three weeks for sauerkraut; some do three times that long. For kimchi I do a quick ferment. For cauliflower it's in between - about two weeks. I made carrots this late fall that were really good. I don't remember how long I let them go, but I do seem to recall looking at them and deciding to give them a little more time. I dole them out as special treats. I hope my neighbor grows a lot more this year and gives me some.
Currently I have a gallon of cauliflower that should be done this weekend and cabbage kraut that should be done a week later. Then I reckon it will be time to start something else. I did a kale ferment, but it didn't come out the way I wanted. Oh well.0
