Fermentation for food preservation

[EatenByLimestone]

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[begreen]

Tasted the green tomatoes in the vinegar brine today. They are great. The paste tomatoes are in for the win. The green cherry tomatoes are ok, but very firm and because the skin is unbroken, the flavor has not fully penetrated. I think they might be better to do as a separate batch. Will not try the peppers for another few days, but looking forward to trying them out.

 

[Poindexter]

I am having much better luck (near 100% success) fermenting stuff we grew here at home, and not doing so good fermenting store bought stuff.

Today I brined up some store bought bell pepper and cherry tomato halves, but spiked the brine with a bit of a pour off from a successful home grown ferment. Will see how that does in a few days.

 

[begreen]

My homegrown peppers were a complete failure. The lactobacillus never kicked in and they started getting a blue mold on top.

 

[Poindexter]

The only chili pewpper I have successfully fermented were home grown with a LOT of salt in the brine...notes not at my fingertips. I weighed both the peppers and the water that were added to the jar and used salt at IIRC about 10% of the weight of the fruit and the water.

Don't give up. The one batch I did succeed on is really tasty even if the health benefits are not measurable.

 

[Poindexter]

I anyone interested in trading live brines? I am not sure how to go about it, but springtime while temps are similar to refrigeration should be a good time to try.

I have about 2 pints of brine that is well innoculated with whatever bacteria were on the surfaces of the green tomato my wife grew at home last year. Mostly Lactobacillus of course, but Fairbanks biome.

I would be looking to trade something like 1-2 tablespoons straight across, I send you 2T, you send me 2T. We should be able to use the smallest USPS flat rate boxes.

What I would do with incoming is halve some store bought cherry tomato into pint jar, splash in 1 teaspoon of your brine, then fill the jar with brine at 1T salt to 2 cups water, let it ferment, then try it out.

 

[Poindexter]

Still looking to trade brine, and am willing to ship a sample to someone having trouble getting started. Pic is recent ferments,

The two quarts rear left are kimchi I made today, spiked with 2 kinds of commercial kimchi live brine, spiked further with some home fermented carrot from a little old lady at my local Asian market, and spiked again with my wife's Fairbanks organic garden.

Front left is apple on my FOG live brine, front right is halved radish, also on FOG live brine. Right rear is asparagus on FOG brine.

I am out to generation F6-F8 on my Fairbanks organic garden (FOG2022) live brine and it seems to be running true, but I will start a fresh FOG live brine (2023) ASAP once the garden is going.

At this point I remind new fermenters I have had extremely poor luck, essentially no good results, trying to ferment store bought produce in plain salt water. I feel confident store bought produce has been treated with some kind of disinfectant that kills off pretty much all of the 'good' bugs on the produce. Start with some home grown produce and save your live brine, or send me a PM so I can send you some live brine.

 

[Poindexter]

At this time my thinking is if I am sending someone live brine I will put a healthy 1+ serving of my kimchi with all the bugs into a sandwich ziploc bag, put that inside a 1 gallon ziploc bag, put that into a foodsaver system vac bag, then into a USPS flat rate box and ship promptly.

I am batting 100% using live brine, about 2 tbs per pint jar, and then dead brine, 1tbs morton kosher salt in 2 cups of water, to cover whatever I am trying to ferment.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I agree with you that it’s much more reliable to ferment homegrown produce than storebought, though I have had success with storebought produce over the years. Your ferments are looking good.

I’m willing to send you a brine from Texas, but I don’t have anything particularly fresh going at the moment. I have some very old peppers still in my fridge, but they are from the end of 2021. Once it’s warm enough for my garden to be producing and for me to be fermenting, it’s likely to be too hot for the mail. If you’d like me to send you the pepper brine despite its age (I don’t believe there’s any spoilage, I just don’t know the activity level in a brine that old), send me a PM.

 

[stovexxx]

fantastic, I did not know these things, very easy and useful

 

[Tonty]

Still looking to trade brine, and am willing to ship a sample to someone having trouble getting started.

About the only thing we have is some sauerkraut made last fall. We used mostly cabbage from our garden, but did add a head or two of store-brought. But we hot bathed canned it after it had fermented for awhile, so the brine probably wouldn’t be live anymore…in summer we have cucumbers in a brine, but now the only ones we have would be dill pickles, green beans, or okra hot bathed canned in a vinegar type solution.

 

[Poindexter]

@Tonty , I will be delighted to try your Kansas biome sauerkraut that hasn't been canned. I suspect canning (either water bath or pressure) will kill off the good bugs, so I likely couldn't grow anything out of your current cellar. Happy to send you some of my kimchi, but I would want the Kansas biome back someday when you have some.

@DuaeGuttae , about to send a PM. Local temps are nearing "refrigeration" next week, we are coming out of the deep freezer here. I would like to sample your TX hot pepper brine. I should be able to ship Wednesday next week if you want to try my kimchi brine.

My fresh kimchi from a few days ago ticks all my boxes. FWIW I used the recipe in the _All New Ball Book of Home Preserving_ often referred to as the Ball All New. You do want to let the cabbage ooze for a couple hours before you jar it up. Napa cabbage doesn't shrink enough to compensate for the water that leaks out, as the puddles around my fermenting jars attest.

This morning I had for breakfast two oatmeal pancakes for a good amount of beta lactan, one serving of pickled asparagus for some inulin and one serving of wheat germ for some AXOS, one of the oligo saccharides. Two servings of my kimchi on top of that, within an hour I was riding a wave of Dopamine/ Oxytocin / Serotonin contentment.

For lunch and dinner I had red rice with black beans, home made BBQ sauce and some tobasco. The DOS wave has been re-enforced twice without needing any more kimchi. I think I am eating something on work days that is knocking back my friends - if I had a stable biome I wouldn't have to keep re-establishing it.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I started my first fermentation of this season’s garden produce this morning. I made two quarts of pickle spears since my whole pickles were quite large and two quarts of dilly beans with Red Noodle Yardlong beans. The jars also have garlic, dill, bay leaves, hot peppers, and some grape leaves for tannins.

My pastor has long been interested in learning to ferment, and he actually constructed some airlock lids for himself. He’s tried sauerkraut, but hadn’t done pickles yet. He came over this morning since my husband and I had the day off from our responsibilities, and I showed him how to make the brine and pack the jars. I sent one quart of cucumbers home with him, so I sure hope that my first ferments turn out well this year.

 

[Poindexter]

At this time I am having 3-5 servings (100 grams each) of fermented vegetables, daily. I feel FABULOUS.

In theory I have factory standard (non-surgical) anatomy. I should be able to establish the microbiome I want and maintain that biome by feeding my gut the various plant fiber those bugs are looking for.

In practice, even with 500 grams (about a pound) of raw vegetables daily, I am using fermented veg (up to another pound) daily to maintain my biome. On my best days I can consume about 1.5 pounds of raw veg from 30 some different species (some represented at minimum half teaspoon each), but then hit the fermented veg a couple days later and get the rumbly tummy.

At this point I am running two bacterial strains in my fermenters. One is my wife's Fairbanks Organic Garden + a bit of each of the commercial live action kimchi I can buy, the second is Texas pepper brine from DG. Both seem to be running true well out past F4. At my next batch I will plan to do 2 quarts of kimchi on 30 plant species with FOG + commercial kimchi + DG as my base strain, but hold back about half of my DG bugs to throw at hot peppers.

One of my colleagues just finished her masters in whole life nutrition. On the one hand she is confused, on the other hand she is impressed. We have no doubt the in the mouth, in the mouth behaviors of toddlers are an adaptive behavior as way way to increase biome diversity before stomach acid production really kicks into gear, but how can adults adjust their biome after gastric pH gets in the way? I will keep exploring this question.

 

[stovexxx]

I did zucchini, already after 4 days I noticed a foam under the cap, the taste is good of the vegetables 😀I started with 5 percent salt but it must be a bit too much, I'll have to go down to 3 percent next time