You Can Ferment Anything!

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Making grape soda... or possibly wine

Our latest fermentation experiment is grape juice. We're using natural fermentation to turn it into a soda... or possibly a sparkling wine, depending on how it turns out! Other things we've got fermenting in the kitchen right now are sourdough starter, sauerkraut, salsa, honey wine, kombucha, beet kvass, and two types of kefir. It's so easy! Follow the links to see my tutorials on each of these.

Fermentation is a natural preservation method. The idea is to control the growth of bacteria with certain cultures, and sometimes the addition of salt, to promote the good stuff and create an inhospitable environment for the bad stuff. In a dark cabinet of my cool pantry (OK, just a corner of the garage) several jars of my homemade sauerkraut lasted for several months without any problems; no refrigeration needed! Kombucha will keep, tightly sealed in a cool dark place, for months. And fresh salsa, which normally would need to be used within a few days, will last for a month or two after 3 days of fermentation! Unlike canning or freezing, fermentation preserves food while enhancing its nutritional profile.

Refreshing, healing Beet Kvass

It's astonishing how many of our modern day foods were traditionally naturally fermented. There's the obvious ones, like sauerkraut, pickles, and beer, which are rarely actually fermented anymore. Large scale production requires a kind of uniformity that can't be so easily achieved through natural fermentation. Plus it's just quicker and cheaper to use large amounts of vinegar and/or sugar to mimic natural fermentation. Ketchup was also traditionally a fermented food. Think how much healthier we would be if all these ubiquitous products were still prepared in a nutritionally beneficial way! 

Sometimes fermentation changes the flavor or consistency of foods, or creates carbonation or alcohol, and generally fermentation makes things more digestible and nutritionally accessible. It's amazing to watch a jar of milk thicken overnight into kefir. How does it do that? Twice a day I stir my gallon of soda, and suddenly it bubbles ferociously, letting me know it's alive and ready for bottling. It's so exciting, like some kind of hybrid between a garden and a laboratory.

Honey Wine ready for bottling

During my early attempts I made some batches of foods that had to be tossed. The pickled ginger I was so excited about, and spent two hours peeling two pounds of organic ginger for, ended up tasting like rotten cheese, and my second attempt at making sauerkraut just went completely off, for some reason. The pickled grape leaves I tried making just seemed moldy. It was almost enough to make me give up on the process, but fortunately I had enough successes along the way to keep up my enthusiasm; my curiosity and quest for nutritious recipes also helped me try, try again... These days I have several recipes I know by heart, and am always trying new fermentations as well. There's a whole world out there of things to ferment!

From left: Honey Wine, Kombucha, Rootbeer
For a whole world of fermentation ideas, check out the original source of my inspiration, two books by Sandor Katz. Both probably available from your local library, but also definitely worth owning. If you buy either through my ad links below, Amazon gives me a tiny bit of cash. Thanks in advance!

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You Can Ferment Anything!

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Oleh Mellow

Mellow January 18, 2012 44 Comment