Real Food Fermentation Blog Tour, Q&A & Giveaway

This is awesome Danielle! I have had batches go ‘off’ – You can mostly tell when they are bad – if they are black or something. I have a batch right now thought that seems to have some white stuff in it and I think it is mold. not sure why it happened but it happens sometimes! Just toss it and go again. This is why I like to do small batches because I would hate to have to throw out an entire crock! One rule of thumb I have heard over and over again is to never put your kefir next to your fermenting veggies as they can cross contaminate.

To add to what Lindsey said…

Do keep fermenting things away from potential sources of contamination, if you can. That can include other fermenting things. It can also include shoes and socks, even fruit bowls or fresh fruit and if you tend to neglect them and let them get moldy, as I sometimes do.

Other tips?

Have faith. Cabbage and humans were made for each other. Sauerkraut is not a stretch, or even a coincidence. You are not trying to make it do something weird; you are helping it to fulfill its destiny. It just needs a little guidance from you.

Fresh cabbage, salt without any weird additives, clean jars, pack it down until the liquid rises, open it and pack it down every day for the first few days…it should work out just fine! And taste it along the way, and start eating it when it tastes good to you. Or let it go for a long time and see if you like it even more!

If you make different batches different ways, take notes so you can see what works best for you.

Put masking tape on your jars and write dates on it.

Good luck!

Lindsey asks what kind of kraut. This is a great question. In a previous response (see below) I talked about store-bought, vinegar kraut vs. home-made, fermented kraut. Obviously the home-made is better.

When you say you don’t do well with sauerkraut, do you mean it is hard for you to digest? There are two main potential issues that I know of–starches and sugars, and fiber. Fermenting helps a lot with the starches and sugars, but not as much with the fiber. If yogurt works for you and home-made kraut does not, then it may be a fiber issue.

I really recommend to everyone a book called “The Fiber Menace”. We’ve all been trained to believe that more fiber = better. This is not true! For a lot of people, especially folks with digestive diseases, fiber can be a disaster. The intro and first chapter of this book are posted here: http://www.gutsense.org/fibermenace/fm_intro.html http://www.gutsense.org/fibermenace/fm_chapter1.html

Hope this helps.

I often wind up with kombucha that is too sour. Sometimes even a day one way or the other can make the difference. I hate throwing it away.

When it gets too sour, basically you can use it anywhere you would use vinegar and/or apple cider.

So sometimes I’ll add water and drink it, not as a “fun” drink but as a tonic first thing in the morning. (Some people do this with raw apple cider vinegar.)

You can use it as a probiotic salad dressing, with oil and herbs and whatever.

You can use it as a marinade.

If you cook it down, it can make a nice flavoring for a sauce for pork, scallops. (I have used it with monkfish and skate, too, but I can’t recommend them because they are not sustainably caught…see http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx )

Best of course is if you can buy a young coconut and tap it yourself. It’s a little more work, but it’s worth it.

I’ve seen young coconuts for sale at Whole Foods, also at various ethnic markets. They’re usually a couple of bucks, so not that far off from buying it in cans. And you can eat the coconut flesh–delicious!

Be aware that young coconut and mature coconut are different, and that coconut water and coconut milk are different. I suppose you could kefir either of them, but I think it’s usually the water that’s used.

If you can’t get fresh, my favorite is “Amy & Brians”. No additives, tastes best to me. I like it with pulp, but if you’re making kefir, the pulp could get in the way…

Well…too much salt will make slow down the fermentation and make it too salty. Too much whey will speed up the fermentation and may give it a slight dairy taste. I woud say, if you have some spare veggies sitting around, why not add them? Otherwise maybe add some water (non-chlorinated). Or you could add some water, shake it up, and then dump out some of the water, to get less salt and less whey.

All in all, best play may be to let it do its thing, see how it goes, and if it’s too salty, add water later until it tastes good.

The bottom line: it may not be a problem…and you can probably fix it later.

Hi Maryanne. I usually make sauerkraut in mason jars, and each day for the first few days, I pack it down until the top gets submerged completely. For me, this is usually enough to keep my sauerkraut happy, even the bits on the top. I tend to use narrow half-pint or three quarter-pint jars for packing.

Other things you might try are adding supplementary brine, and/or weighting down the kraut with some inert object(s) like dishes or (clean) stones. Some people use ziplock bags filled with water as weights, but I wouldn’t do this in the long term, because the acidity could break down the plastic.

The cooler it is, the slower things will ferment. Below 40° is basically like a fridge. 55° is like burying it in the ground, and in Korea they keep kimchi like this for months and months…

There’s no “right” temperature, but the warmer it is, the more the ferments will continue to ferment. They will get more sour and less crunchy, and at some point, depending on your taste, you may not like them quite as much.

(But If I had to pick a number, I’d say 58° or lower would be good for medium-term storage.)

Sorry to hear that! Pinkish doesn’t sound good to me. I just searched for “kefir grains pink” on the Internet. Sounds like some sort of contamination. You could throw them out. Or you could try what one site suggests, which is rinsing them off, putting them in fresh water for 24 hours, making a batch of kefir but chucking it, and then resuming where you left off. Good luck!