Lacto-Fermentation Class

Photo Essay from my Lacto-Fermentation Class

Lacto-Fermentation is an ancient fermenting technique that helps repair a stressed digestion and helps maintain a healthy one! It's easy and economical. Now is an excellent time to make sauerkraut from newly harvested cabbages.

Laura Davis, from Long Life Farm & CSA in Hopkinton, Mass, asked me if I would be willing to offer a fermentation class to her CSA shareholders. I happily accepted for many reasons, one being that I wanted to see how my commercial kitchen would transform into a teaching kitchen.

It transformed beautifully, holding 11 participants! We made sauerkraut and kim chi. Check out the photos:

Here's Laura!
    

Here's the kitchen transformed:


Here are the students diligently pressing cabbage into jars:


Here's the Low Salt Sauerkraut I made a few weeks before class:


And the kim chi I made...too hot for me!!!


Now, about a month later, people are opening and enjoying the fruits of our labors.
Learn this easy and ancient technique in my book:

   Lacto-Fermentation Through The Seasons
A  60-page book about fermenting vegetables starting in spring right through to fall.
Purchase in PDF or Hard Copy

Free October Newsletter

October Newsletter! Click here to read This month's topics:Bread Q&A's, Sauerkraut, Veggie Broth, Kohlrabi

Spring Garden in New England

Ingredients for the first salad of Spring:
Claytonia,
Shredded Red Sauerkraut and
Horseradish Condiment made with
homemade herbal kombucha vinegar


Claytonia in the Over-winter cold frame


This week begins the section on “From The Garden”. The snow is almost gone, still a few patches in the woods and in the shade. We’ve had our first salad consisting of Claytonia also known as Miner’s Lettuce.



This week’s video First Spring Salad, shows a thick row of Claytonia/Miner’s Lettuce grown in the over-winter cold frame. It germinates easily in the fall and is thick by March. We start thinning it out by cutting some leaves and using them for salad. I mixed some Horseradish Condiment and Shredded Red Sauerkraut into the salad and topped it off with Olive Oil. I love the spring because we get that first burst of enzymes from the garden! The salad was fresh and potent and full of flavor!



There is also a page, Spring Garden showing photos of the new greens already up in our New England garden.



Future pages will include descriptive photos and videos on the growth cycles of Walking Onions and Green Garlic which are very easy to grow and require minimal work.

My Student's Success!

I received this photo from one of my very industrious students. This photo was taken after a particularly complex cooking/baking session.



Back row from left:
Water Kefir, Kombucha Tea, Red Cabbage Sauerkraut with her new airlock jars, fermented tomato pepper salsa (I have to get that recipe from her.)

Front row from left:
Gluten-free sourdough pancakes, Mock rye gluten-free miniloaves and Buckwheat Buns.

This photo makes me just smile!

Sauerkraut Ice Cubes!

My friend, Cindy, wrote to me asking my opinion.

She said:

I have been a little too over zealous with fermenting and have MANY jars

in the refrigerator. I don't always have time to eat them so I took my fermented

vegetables and ran them through my hand juicer and use it as a

drink. Do you think the resulting juice could be frozen into ice cubes?

I told her I thought it was a great idea especially since the probiotics and enzymes will probably not be harmed by the freezing. She thought she might drop some of the kraut cubes into some veggie juice. I think that's also a great idea. Get the benefits of the raw veggie juice plus a dash of fermented benefits!

Then my mind raced towards this:

Imagine a Bloody Mary with a couple of sauerkraut ice cubes...Wow!

They giggled when they saw rocks in my drawer

I just don’t understand it! I had a class full of eager students and when I opened the drawer to get measuring cups they started giggling and whispering. “Look, she has rocks in her drawer, lots and lots of rocks!”

The reason I have rocks in my drawer is that I use them. I use them when I make sauerkraut and other lactofermented vegetables. It keeps the vegetables submerged under the brine making for a better fermentation.

When choosing rocks look for round, rather flat rocks that will easily fit through the mouth of your jars. Discard any rocks that are porous, flake or get gritty when rubbed. I use wide mouth canning jars for my fermentations so a rock about 3 inches in diameter works well. I soak them in warm, soapy water, scrub them with a stiff brush, put them through the dishwasher and boil them to sterilize just before using. When not in use I store them in the drawer. Where else would I store them?

This fall I actually seemed to run out of the right size rocks so my friend, along with her 2 year old, went and collected from their garden. I was so grateful for the gift!

I recently heard from a Sauerkraut class student that he couldn’t get his hands on rocks but was trying giant marbles. I think that would work very well and would lend a festive air to the jars, don’t you?

Read about making Sauerkraut in my September posting, A month's worth of probiotics for the price of a cabbage.

A month’s worth of probiotics for the price of a cabbage!

Did you know that you can easily make your own probiotics at home in your own kitchen from simple ingredients like salt, water and cabbage?
Lacto-fermented cabbage, aka Sauerkraut, is an ancient cultured vegetable that is loaded with probiotics and enzymes that grow through natural fermentation. I like getting my probiotics and enzymes from a food rather than a bottled supplement. I believe these probiotics and enzymes become highly available to the body because they are live right from the food rather than processed in an industrial plant awaiting rehydration in the digestive tract.

People that have taken many courses of antibiotics usually have reduced and out-of-balance intestinal bacteria opening the door for illnesses like candida, IBS, fungal infections, and parasites. Eating small amounts of lacto-fermented vegetables (1-2 tablespoons) at lunch and dinner on a regular basis helps to gently repair the intestinal environment. The enzymes help to digest the meal while the probiotics repopulate the intestines with friendly bacteria.

Watch Sauerkraut Video!

Here is the recipe for Sauerkraut:

Sauerkraut

Ingredients
1 medium cabbage, green, red or savoy (curly)
For leaf layer: 3-4 whole cabbage leaves peeled from the outside of the cabbage

For the brine
2 quarts filtered or spring water
Pure salt, kosher, pickling or coarse sea salt, with no additives

Equipment:
Large pot for boiling water
2 wide mouth quart canning jars
2 canning lids and rings
2-4 rocks that easily fit through the mouth of the canning jar. Garden rocks are great. Look for a rock about 2-3 inches in diameter and not more than 1 inch high. Alternately, you can use 2 smaller rocks in each jar.
Scrub rocks with a brush, run through dishwasher or wash thoroughly by hand.
Small pot for sterilizing the canning lids, rings and rocks
Something to press the cabbage into the jar, a crab mallet, a wooden food pusher, etc
Wide mouth funnel (optional) for filling the jar
Ladle

Bring the filtered water to a boil for 4 minutes.
After it’s cooled a bit add 3 tablespoons of salt and stir to dissolve.
Allow brine to cool to near room temperature (2-4 hours or overnight)

In small pot sterilize lids, rings and rocks by boiling for 4 minutes.
Let them cool about 10 minutes and pour out the water to let them cool further.

Peel off, and set aside, a few outer leaves of the cabbage for the top leaf layer (you can also use horseradish leaves, raspberry leaves or grape leaves instead of cabbage).

When the brine is almost cool, chop or grate cabbage.
If using herbs or spices put them at the bottom of the quart jars.
Start layering the cut cabbage into the jar an inch or two high at a time, gently pressing it down with hands or pressing tool.
Keep adding 1-2 inch layers of cabbage until about 2-3 inches of space is left at the top.
Press it down again.
Fold a cabbage leaf, or other leaf to fit over the top layer of cabbage and press it in.
Place a rock or rocks on top of the leaf.
Pour brine into the jar leaving about 1 inch of space from the top.
Wipe any brine off top of jar, put lid on jar, and screw on band.

Allow to ferment on kitchen counter or shelf for 3 days at room temperature, 72 degrees.
Gently move to the refrigerator for 3 weeks.
Eat after 3-4 weeks. Store in refrigerator. Taste gets better with time.
Lasts 3-6 months in refrigerator.

Watch Sauerkraut Video!

Purchase Lacto-Fermentation Through The Seasons recipe book!