Have a Bubbly New Year
Resolutions should be delicious
There are two kinds of people when it comes to New Year’s resolutions: the kind that like to make them and the kind that like to mock them.
I don’t see the issue: if someone finds the beginning of a calendar year a useful marker on which to begin a new habit or drop an old one, good for them. The problem comes in though when we decide that New Year’s resolutions have to be painful or some form of self-denial.
Let’s be honest, giving up our less-than-fetching habits cold-turkey and/or admonishing ourselves to DO YOGA EVERY SINGLE DAY are often doomed to fail because they deprive us of our precious dopamine or force us to squeeze in an activity that (let’s be honest) we may not love into an already busy lifestyle during the time of year when our energy is often at a low point. No one loves the first few weeks of a running regimen and they love it even less when it’s dark and cold outside.
But what if your resolution was both healthy and delicious?
2022 is the year to eat more fermented foods and learn to make them yourself!
Fermenting food sounds intimidating, but I assure you that it isn’t. It’s a simple hobby that can transform the way you cook and eat, is thrifty (have you seen the price of fancy sauerkraut at the farmer’s market?!) and is a fun way to get creative with flavours. You don’t even need a heap of fancy equipment!
The science of fermentation is pretty simple. The easiest type to harness at home is lactic acid fermentation (aka lacto-fermentation). Essentially, we create the right conditions for lactic acid bacteria to use their enzymes to turn the glucose in our food into lactic acid. What makes this ideal for the home cook is that lactic acid bacteria are EVERYWHERE on surfaces and in the air, are resistant to salt, and thrive in an anaerobic (low oxygen) environment. And even better, a lot of the nasty bacteria we don’t want to eat HATE those conditions. The salt keeps the bad guys at bay until the lactic acid the bacteria creates starts to drop the pH of the environment (making it more acidic and pickle-y delicious).
Wanna give it a try?
You will need a small food safe container (pint-sized glass jar is perfect), some carrots, some kosher salt, some filtered water, a vegetable peeler, a knife, a bowl, a spoon, a clean dishtowel, an elastic band, a calculator, and digital scale.
Now, I’m not big on telling you to buy stuff, but a digital scale is one of the best tools you can have in your kitchen. It’s great for baking, portion control (ahem!) and means you aren’t Googling conversions every time you pick up a European recipe. They aren’t even expensive – check your nearest general merchandise store or favourite online retailer for an after-Christmas sale.
The reason you need the scale instead of measuring spoons? One of the keys to fermentation is accuracy – it makes the difference between overly salty and rotten. And the most accurate measurement is a Baker’s Percentage. A Baker’s Percentage calculates the percentage of an ingredient relative to the total weight of the recipe – it’s how a bakery can take the recipe for 20 loaves and adjust it to make 50, or 100, or 1000, or even scale it back to one. And since I don’t know the exact size of your container, the weight of your carrots, or the size of the salt crystals you have, I can’t say whether two tablespoons of salt is enough; I have to give you a percentage.
You’ll need two percent salt by the weight of your recipe (the ingredient + brine).
Here’s the easiest way to do it:
Make sure your tools are clean. Run them through your dishwasher on the hottest setting, or wash very well in hot soapy water, rinse thoroughly, and dry with a very clean dishtowel.
Put your jar on the scale and note its weight.
Peel and slice enough carrots to fit your jar. Any shape your want is fine, including grated. You want to pack them in fairly tightly so they don’t float, so get gravity to be your friend and tilt the jar on its side.
Pack your carrots into the jar and then fill the jar with filtered water until the carrots are covered. Weigh the full jar and subtract the weight of the empty jar. This will give you the weight of the carrots + water.
Haul out your calculator (or ask Alexa) to calculate two percent of the weight of your carrots + water. In my case here my carrots + water were 470.5 grams. Two percent of 470.5 grams is 9.41 grams.
Scale out your salt (I rounded 9.41 up to 10 grams)
Dump the water out of the jar into a bowl and stir in the salt until completely dissolved.
Pour the water (now a brine) back into the jar, ensure the carrots are completely submerged, and cover with your clean towel and secure with an elastic band.
Put the jar in an out-of- the-way-but-not-out-of-mind place and ignore it for a day or two.
If find that your carrots want to float find something a bit heavy-ish to keep them submerged. A clean jam jar or juice glass that fits in the mouth of your jar works well. If you get super into fermentation you can buy special jars, weights, airlock lids, etc. but for a quickie batch like this it isn’t strictly necessary as long as you keep the carrots submerged. Just cover the whole thing to keep dust and other crap out.
The length of time you want to leave your carrots depends on two main things – the temperature of your kitchen and how sour you want them to be. A warmer kitchen speeds up the process considerably, and your taste is your own, so the best way to determine if they are done is to taste them. Pull out a piece and taste it. I usually give mine a quick rinse so that I’m tasting sourness instead of salty brine. The smaller the pieces the faster the process will go, but it may be done in a day or a week – it depends on what you want. I let my carrots ferment about three and a half days. They stayed mostly crisp and developed a mild and pleasant sour flavour.
But how can you be sure that they aren’t going bad? Bubbles are good, but you shouldn’t have any scary-looking mold or a gross smell. A briny/sour smell is good, the smell of mustiness or vomit are bad. A little softening of the carrots is fine, sliminess is a sign of something gone wrong. The brine will even turn a bit cloudy depending on the salt you use and the length of your ferment. Humans have thousands of years of evolutionary experience in detecting rot; trust your instincts here, but if you have doubts get rid of it and start again. Every now and then it just doesn’t work thanks to a little cross-contamination, a miscalculation, or some errant bacteria running amuck.
And, of course, if you are pregnant, nursing, or have any condition that compromises your immune system in any way you should be extra careful. Talk to a licensed medical professional about your proposed new hobby and don’t listen to randos on the Internet (like me!)
You may encounter a dusty looking growth on the top of your ferment known as Kahm yeast. Kahm yeast is a bit unsightly but not harmful and can be spooned off.
When your carrots are fermented to your liking you can put a lid on the jar and keep them in the fridge. They will keep a long time and continue to ferment, but much more slowly. It’s worth opening the jar now and then or keeping the lid a bit loose to relieve any carbon dioxide pressure that builds up. Glass jars don’t expand and you definitely don’t want a jar exploding in your fridge. I recall an incident involving purple cabbage and it wasn’t pretty.
Fermented carrots are delicious in sandwiches, on salads, or even on their own. Want spicy carrots next time? Tuck in a few slices of jalapeno. Add a little extra zing with a few slices of ginger. Or try a branch of dill. As long as you factor the weight of your add-ins into the recipe you’re good to go.
Carrots are only the beginning. Celery? Peppers? Cauliflower? The two percent formula takes the mystery out of fermenting and means that you are only limited by your creativity. You can even ferment soft fruits but there’s a little more to consider, so perhaps we’ll save that for another day.
There’s a lot of hype about the health-benefits of fermented foods, some no doubt real and others wishful and magical thinking. I’m not a dietician, but I am a chef and I can tell you that learning to ferment is easy, fun, and a great way to get more healthy vegetables into your mouth in 2022.
Have fun and enjoy a delicious New Year!