Ferments 2019

no pics but I have a kimchi of napa cabbage, carrots, scallions, and chive flower buds which turned out pretty well…it certainly makes my burps smell terrible like authentic kimchi does :slight_smile:

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Kimchi scrambled in eggs

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Fermented cherry tomatoes

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I’ve never heard of fermented cherry tomatoes, what domthey taste like?

Are you fermenting green tomatoes or are those yellow cherry tomatoes?

They are yellow, fully ripe, cherry tomatoes

I put fresh basil and garlic in the brine, so they have kind of a gespacho like flavor. The ferment taste itself is unusual. You don’t expect a tomato to have a lacto ferment taste. And they are effervescent. It’s kind of a shocking and unique, but I find pleasant, eating experience.

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That sounds like a great tasting ferment.

Decided to stop the ferment on my hot sauce at 8 days. Blended up the solids with about 1/3 to 1/2 of the brine and got 8 canned quarts and 1 quart for the refrigerator. The color isn’t quite as bright as the photo, but the flavor is great. Adding carrot to the ferment added sweetness that the green jalapeno’s lacked.

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I picked some wild apples and pears near my orchard. The bugs did not have to travel far to find my trees! This is what they look like.


The pears are rock hard, about 2 to 3 inches. The green apples are pure cardboard. The red-striped are actually pretty good eating, closely resembling a good Jonathan. Overall they have few blemishes, and some are unblemished, although it varies from year to year.

Final product is apple and pear krauts, very good side dish for fatty meat, specially if you are in a no-sugar day, because they bubble furiously and there is little sugar left in the kraut. Ingredients are lemon juice, fruit, water and salt. The pinky hue is a starter from another kraut.

These wild fruits are great for any dish where you don’t want to spend a perfect Northern Spy, and in fact for krauts they are much better than named varieties. I cook them too, with or without cranberries, I put them in green juices to make the juices a bit more palatable, and I flavor kombucha.

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Standard kraut cabbage, salt, and starter. We brought a huge bowl to a neighborhood bbq for the brats and ribs. So good.

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I did some whole Jerusalem artichokes this year. Just washed them and put them in a crock with garlic and caraway, then covered with 5% brine. They were done in just under a week. I used a whole head of garlic, which was probably a bit too much for my 2 gallon batch. If I were to do it again, I would probably scale back to a 3 or 4% brine, use less garlic, and add coriander. Maybe add turmeric to liven up the color a bit, as they don’t look particularly impressive…

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A few questions about your jerusalem artichokes jcguarneri…I was wondering if the ferment process penetrated the whole artichokes or if larger ones would be better chopped? Also, how do you store them after the ferment, move to the fridge, can them, leave them in the crock? Did the artichokes need peeling after the ferment? I want to try this. I read fermenting was a good way to tame the inulin effect on the gut. Thanks.

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They seem to have fermented the whole way through, but I don’t think it would hurt anything to chop them. I left them whole for convenience. I always store my ferments in jars in the fridge after I have them “where I want them.” They stay pretty stable that way and can last close to a year (depending on the ferment) without any real loss in quality. The ferment is still alive, though, and flavor continues to evolve. I did not peel them at any point, but I did slice them for serving.

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@drusket Let me know your results if you try it. This is my first time on Jerusalem artichokes, so I’m curious to see how it turns out for others.

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Will do, thanks for your answers. I tried to ferment some last year but oversalted to the point where they didn’t seem to ferment and were totally inedible. I was put off by the amount of effort to peel them so your convenient method seems like a better choice to try in a few months here after it cools off. Thanks again.

Looks delish!

no pics but did a bunch (like 4 heads of cabbage, it is a bunch when only I eat it) of sauerkraut last fall…tonight as it gets colder and flirts with snow I have one meaty, skin-covered pork hocks and a couple kielbasa buried in a big jar of kraut, slowly cooking in a crock pot. ya gotta actually EAT those ferments, too, and I am looking forward to doing that.

as a side note, also toying with taking a few tbs of kimchi juice from an earlier ferment, and using THAT to ferment a batch of small salami of some sort…….

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Did you ever ferment some salami? I made about 10 lbs late this winter for the first time. Sadly it was a failure.

I have done a couple dried sausages which were very thin to cheat, as I am always worried about case hardening. an actual ferment is on my list…