Fermentation Station general. This thread is for discussion of any type of fermented food, from krauts and chis to alcohol and vinegar. any questions you have about this feel free to ask here. Also please post any experiments in fermentation you are trying.
Here's the ingredient line up for this batch. About 5+ lbs of peppers (serrano, wax and jalapeno) along with a head of garlic, bunch of cilantro and a pound of tomatillos.
I'm gonna be using the brine method on this batch so rough chopping in fine. The wax and jalapeno I cut into 1/2" discs, sliced the tomatillos thin and smashed each clove of garlic.
by the time I got to the serranos I washonestly getting tired of chopping so I took a short cut. could of done this with the other peppers but I wanted to make sure everything would compact enough into my crock for the weights to fit in.
now all ingredients get stuffed into the crock. I left the cilantro whole since chopping it would do little to increase surface area and it would have possible that small bits of it would float to the top and grow mold.
I also preceded to smash these in by hand. Despite these not being particularly hot peppers I'd recommend gloves or some other implement to pack them into a vessel if you were doing this. Hands felt like they were covered in something camphurous for the next few days. Rinsing my hands in vinegar did help alot though.
I had 2 quarts of a 5% by weight brine ready to pour over the peppers to get fermentation started. It didn't quite cover all the veggies, which is what you need to make sure happens. However I'd yet to place in the weights at this point and the brine will help with pulling some water out of the peppers.
Weights get placed in to keep all solids under the brine. Turns out I had plenty of room to fit these in and could have fermented more. Now I just place on the lid, pour water in the water channel and wait for bacteria to start doing it's thing.
Altogether this ferment has a little over 2lbs of solids and with the brine i hope to be able to blend it into 2 gallons of hot sauce when done in about a month in a half.
Did all this a few days ago, and fermentation has started. Will post what that looks like later today.
One time I fermented something and it grew mold...
Kayden Ross
I'd love to get some quality primer to using different kinds of vinegar in cooking. Any recommendations?
Matthew Allen
>The peppers you almost always have to cut up otherwise you have space in the middle that the brine never touches Well, I always cut the top and tips off mine so the brine does get everywhere. I'm not sure it matters, although maybe you could make the argument that your way there is more surface area for the fermentation process to act upon. Idk. I've just always seen the chopping/blending part as the last step. It's possible that you are able to scoop out any stray kahm if it isn't chopped. It's also possible that if you ferment without chopping then you have more control over the amount of brine that is in the finished product. Yeah, I get a lot of bubbles/fermentation without chopping so I think I'll stick with that way.
Adam Williams
I actually don't normally do the brine method. when I was doing smaller batches I used the sauerkraut method which is massaging salt into the finely sliced solids and letting that pull the water already in the veggies out then pressing it under the liquid once enough has been drawn out.
What I've done here was almost like meeting the bring and kraut method halfway and the main reason I chopped up the peppers was so I could press them down to the bottom of my vessel as tight as possible.
As far as controlling the amount of brine in the final sauce I plan to completely separate brine from the solids when fermentation is done then slowly add the brine in while blending til it's reached a desired consistency.
pic is last 3 hot sauces i made, all using varying methods and obviously different ingredients. Recipe I've made for this thread is a retry of the green one which tasted great at first but quickly went downhill after i put it in the fridge. Hoping the addition of more adjuncts keeps this one more stable.
Huh. Makes sense. I think I differ from most in these threads in that I really don't like much brine in the final product.
On a side note, it's funny to me that the habanero sauces always turn out the best for me but are the least appealing in terms of color. I've really liked the habanero/tomato ones I've done. Can't wait for the farmers markets to open again as I live in a cold climate and I can only do this for about 4-5 months out of the year max.
OP did you eyeball the amounts of brine and peppers or did you meet a global 2+ % salt on purpose? Also, do you plan to retrospectively take note of how much brine you will add for consistency so that your recipe is reproducible?
Grayson Murphy
Not OP but in previous threads everyone basically agreed on 5-6% brine. I do 6%.
Levi Cook
When I get home i'll snap a pic of my now half empty sauerkraut jar from some time ago and I made a three colour one (white cabbage, carrot and green paprika) but that one is still closed
Aaron Ramirez
not enough salt, shit sticking above the liquid or bad hygiene practices. just try it again
Christopher Allen
you can eyeball but why risk it.
Justin Diaz
why do they put sugar in kimchi? seems unnecessary
Charles Watson
Is Kombucha hard to make? I heard you cab die if you make it wrong, but I wanna make some
Julian Reed
OP here, did not eyeball, I weighed everything that went into this batch since I want to know what exactly I'd like to change should it come out with a flavor I'm not crazy about. Even measured the water and salt by weight to make the 5% brine. when you do sauerkraut that's typically when you 2% salt by weight per solids with no brine,
what does the green bell add to the kraut taste wise, I haven't come across any recipes that use that. I jarred my first big batch of kraut from the crock I showed for making my hot sauce and came out with 6 qts of it, green cabbage and carrot.
also yes I do plan to take note of how much brine i have to add back to get it to perfect consistency. I've done alot of small batches over the last year. With this crock that allows me to work in bigger batches I want to decrease the margin of error so as I do more i can slowly close in on something that is perfect to me. So I've recorded everything, the weight of each ingredient as well as weight and volume of brine that went into it.
it was a why the hell not kind of thing, but I prefer super sour sauerkraut so that one needs a bit more time before I destroy all the pretty layers by tasting it
Brandon Walker
Not necessarily, the resulting concentration depends on the vegetable mass that dilutes the brine's salt.
I wouldn't do that because under ~2% salt may be dangerous if you don't use a reliable live starter culture.
Props for getting serious and keeping on making these threads, OP, good luck with your scale-up!
so on the left we have a white cabbage, carrot and green paprika with just some caraway seeds. on the right just white cabbage with peppercorns, juniperberries, peppercorns, caraway, mustard seed and a bayleaf
the one on the right has been going since new year or something and is getting nice and acidic. the multi colour is just a week or three old and probably not there in any way for my taste
the small jar is just on a small leak but the mason jar has to be degassed regularly
Mason Wilson
Besides delicious bigos, what other recipes do you know which rely heavily on fermented ingredients?
Jeremiah Flores
Prepared some Kimchi today. Will probably let it ferment for two days at room temperature.
that's the one rough thing about fermented foods I've noticed is that it's often a close ended process. Saeurkraut has the exception of being a base in bigos, but besides the the only use any of the fermented gods I've made is as a condiment.
But also because of it's nature, I don't normally want to cook anything that's been fermented cause it has all those good bacteria in there
I did something similar to john's recipe here but in a brine and I let it ferment for longer. Was actually my longest lasting hot sauce and kept getting better even a year and a half later as it aged. I only suggest doing it without adding the vinegar and cooking. After it's fermented as long as you like just blend to a consistency you like, bottle it and put it in the fridge to stop the fermentation.
Asher Martin
Crossposting because not sure which one's the real one.
Owen Ross
>as a condiment The point is that homemade lacto-fermented foods are too acidic and salty to be reasonably eaten on their own for a proper dish. 2% salt is twice too much, therefore it has to be diluted. Interestingly, in bigos, there is as much sauerkraut as regular cabbage. So nice sides and dishes can be made by mixing equal parts of fresh and fermented vegetables. The result will be sour but not too much (no need for vinegar) and salty but not too much.
At La Réunion they make these achards de légumes (spicy pickles and vegetable salads) that are godly but I haven't been able to reproduce that correctly. I've had interesting results, tho. I guess even a sort of coleslaw could be made like that. Cooked or not, depending of what fermented jars you have at hand the possibilities are endless.
Jacob Johnson
too acidic? my man I eat my homemade sauerkraut straight from the jar. It all depends on personal flavor though, i love acidic stuff to the point of eating lemons and there is a delicious stew with endive where you put straight vinegar over it as dressing that I absolutely love
Ayden Walker
>too acidic/salty I eat sauerkraut as a side to fatty meats, like sausages, or skin-on chicken thighs. It's pretty delicious. I've tried bigos and loved the stuff, but am too attached to the idea of improving my gut health with probiotics to really cook with my fermented foods.
