About a year ago I read an article in a magazine about fermenting vegetables. It was all new to me, but people have been preserving vegetables by fermentation for thousands of years.
Several things caught my attention. First was how many vegetables – almost all of them – can be fermented. Next was how easy the process sounded and how simple the equipment necessary – a mason jar and a weight. Third was the description of the complex tastes of the vegetables after being fermented and the health benefits of fermented food. Lastly was how huge the topic of fermentation is. I was going to say that learning about fermentation in all of its variants compares to learning everything there is to know about wines. In fact, it is an even larger topic, because wine itself is made by fermentation. But you don’t have to know everything there is to know about the topic to begin.
The concept is simple: Food + salt + microbes + time = fermentation. If you’ve done any canning, you know that all the jars and equipment must be sterile. For fermentation, things need to be clean but not sterile because without microbes, fermentation won’t happen
I thought I’d try something easy the first time. I layered radish and onion slices in a salt water brine in a wide-mouth mason jar, and covered them with a weight to keep everything under the brine. A week later, I had some great tasting fermented vegetables. Next I tried making a basil paste. It didn’t turn out so good, probably because it was late in the season and the basil was tough. The third attempt was amazing. I combined cauliflower, carrots, garlic, onion and dried oregano in the brine. A week later I had a jar of delicious fermented vegetables that will keep in the refrigerator for up to a year.
The microbes in the air and on the skins of the vegetables are what cause fermentation to happen. It is interesting that two people could follow the exact same recipe and have two different results because there are different microbes floating around in the air their homes.
For my first couple of ferments, I used a zip-close bag of water to weight down the vegetables. It was kind of messy so I asked a local potter to fashion some fermentation weights for me. They turned out fantastic and made me feel like a serious fermenter. Since the weights need to come back out of the mason jar, they don’t entirely cover the food, so under the weights I placed a wild grape leaf to keep it everything under the brine. Oak leaves and cabbage leaves are also commonly used.
This article isn’t intended to be a directive on how to ferment. It is meant to pique your interest so that you can further learn about the process on your own. I recommend two books to get you started: Fermented Vegetables by Kristin and Christopher Shockey and Ferment Your Vegetables by Amanda Feifer.
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