Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Today we have another exciting episode for
you, and it is actually coming at you from
the Mother Earth News Fair here in Pennsylvania,
and I just got here today.
I’m only here for one day; if you guys saw
the last episode it was basically a tour of
this place and some of my favorite booze and
what-not.
But today, I have a very special opportunity,
like the first in a lifetime for me literally,
to interview someone really special that you
guys will want to hear from, and incorporate
some of his vast amounts of knowledge, into
what you guys are doing with your garden,
and with some of the food that you’re growing,
alright?
So for those of you guys who don’t know,
this is Sandor Katz.
He is the author of several books (three books).
He wrote two on fermentation, and one of which,
I consider the Bible, of fermentation.
I mean, it's like a little lean encyclopaedia,
and if you wanna know anything about fermentation,
in my opinion, this guy wrote the book, and
it’s in there.
And I would encourage you guys to get that
book, “The art of fermentation”.
Yeah.
And if you guys are like me, you’re so busy
and you don’t have time to read, and you
don’t live here in the North-East, where
you get snow in the winter and you’re inside
for months at a time, reading might be good.
I’m out in the West and I garden year around.
I actually have it onto my iPhone, and I put
headphones on, and I’m out in my garden,
gardening, and listening to this man’s words.
So, excellent way to do it at audible.com.
Cool.
So, Sandor - I went to his class this morning,
and I got out of it, and I was like oh my
God, that was like - he gives an amazing presentation.
He just makes fermentation really easy and
accessible to people, so that you won’t
be scared of it, right?
You shouldn’t be scared of fermentation,
and especially after I interview him today,
after you watch this episode today, you’re
going to be like, ‘I’m going to be doing
fermentation, it's no problem whatsoever.
And I don’t even know if it’s even possible:
I guess you gotta do something really wrong
to really mess up or something like that.
So we’re going to find out more in this
episode.
So Sandor, the first question I want to ask
for you is, how did you end up getting into
fermentation into the first place?
Well, about twenty four years ago, in 1993,
I moved from New York City, which was my hometown,
to rural Tennessee, and I got involved in
keeping a garden.
And, you know really, the first year that
I was gardening - I mean I was such a naive
city kid that it was a surprise for me that
all the cabbage in the garden was ready at
the same time.
But once I saw that there was a bunch of cabbage
ready, I thought to myself, “I’d better
learn to make sauerkraut!”.
Because I know I love to eat Sauerkraut, and
I knew that Sauerkraut was regarded as a strategy
for preserving cabbage.
So I literally looked in The joy of cooking,
and I learned how to make sauerkraut from
The joy of cooking.
And that first batch of sauerkraut was so
delicious, and so satisfying, that I started
exploring fermentation more deeply.
And it turns out that there is nothing we
could possibly eat that could not be fermented
in some way.
For me, sauerkraut was my gateway into fermentation
- I think it’s a perfect gateway into fermentation.
There’s no need for starter cultures, because
it’s all on the vegetables.
There’s no need for special equipment; you
can work with a jar that’s already in your
pantry somewhere.
You know it’s simple; it’s safe to the
degree that you might be projecting your anxiety
about bacteria onto the process of fermentation.
According to the US department agriculture,
there is no case history for food poisoning
or illness.
This food is the strategy for safety, as much
as anything.
It’s easy; you can enjoy your results relatively
quickly, or you can let it ferment for a long
time.
It’s very versatile.
You know I love sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut has been a constant in my life
for the past quarter century, as I have also
experimented with miso, and sake, and salami,
and cheese, and yoghurt, and kefir, and kombucha,
and you know - all the other incredible kinds
of foods and beverages that there are in this
world.
Wow.
Sauerkraut is the “gateway drug”.
I mean ferment, ferment!
[Laughter]
So Sandor, the next question is, what are
some of the benefits, besides the food preservation,
you know, to the Sauerkraut?
Some people say you’re actually making the
food healthier and you’re creating vitamins
and what-not.
Is this true?
Yeah, sure.
I mean I would say that with sauerkraut, and
many other living fermented foods that are
not cooked or heat processed after the fermentation,
you know the most profound benefit really
is the bacteria themselves.
You know, we’re, hearing about the microbiome,
and how important the bacteria in our bodies
are.
You know, not only for digestion, but for
immune function, for mental health, for virtually
every aspect of our physiology and functioning.
So when you eat sauerkraut or other living
fermented foods, you’re literally ingesting
complex communities of bacteria, you know
that essentially can help us to restore biodiversity
in the gut, where it can improve our health
in all kinds of different ways.
You know, fermentation also preserves vitamin
C, generates additional B vitamins and K vitamins,
you know pre-digest nutrients and makes them
more easily available to us.
There are lots of other nutritional benefits
to fermentation, but I would say that the
probiotics - the bacteria themselves - really
are the most profound benefit.
Hmm.
And so, one of the things I like to do is,
you know I don’t can my food, because that
literally is like you’re going to war with
the food and the bacteria, good and bad.
You’re going to kill and wipe out everything,
right?
I prefer to have a symbiosis, or an alliance
- create an alliance - with my food, and the
bacteria, and culture them.
So do you wanna talk about maybe your opinions
on canning vs, you know fermentation for food
preservation?
Sure.
I mean, I’m not going to be against canning.
I mean, I can tomatoes, I mean canning is
part of my repertoire of techniques that I
use for preservation.
But canning really represents the opposite
of fermentation.
So fermentation is all about cultivating bacteria.
And because all the food that we eat is populated
by these, extremely broad and varied communities
of bacteria, you know what we’re doing is
creating a selective environment that encourages
some of the bacteria to flourish, while discouraging
other bacteria.
Whereas in canning, you’re just trying to
sterilize the food and kill all of the bacteria.
So they’re just very different approaches.
I mean, certainly, you know in the United
States, a lot of people ferment sauerkraut,
and then can it.
You know personally I think that that’s
a bad idea, because you're really destroying,
you know the greatest benefit that it has
- which is the probiotics.
But I mean, I’m not against canning.
I mean I think, different kinds of foods lend
themselves to different kinds of preservation
techniques.
Cool.
And so another thing that I actually found
interesting in your talk that I actually haven’t
heard before is that it’s really important
to only ferment soil grown foods.
You wanna talk about this, and why it’s
important to grow - you know - ferment soil
grown foods in general?
Sure.
I mean, I don’t think it’s impossible
to ferment hydroponic vegetables.
But you would always wanna have some soil
based vegetables in there as well.
Because - where do you think the bacteria
come from?
I mean, all plants are believed to be host
to lactic acid bacteria.
So the bacteria that you need to ferment the
vegetables is already on the vegetables.
But where it’s coming from, is the soil.
And it seems like that vegetables that have
been grown in a water-based medium, may very
well lack the bacteria that are essential
for the fermentation that we’re doing.
Wow.
Yeah I mean that’s what I teach: I teach
biologic, organic gardening, so that - you
know I actively encourage, you know adding
in living bacteria, including you know, Lactobacillus
and others, into your soil, to have a living
system, because they are part of nature!
And I mean, bacteria is really what give the
soil nutrients, and what sort of enable the
soil to be self-regenerating--
--And fertile.
--And fertile, exactly.
And so you know compost is really a fermentation
practice.
You know you’re using bacteria to break
down your food waste, and your garden waste,
and maybe some manure.
And that’s how soil regenerates.
And you know, plants are dependent on bacteria
and fungi for their ability to uptake nutrients
from the soil.
So, I mean, fermentation is a lot bigger than
food preservation.
I mean, fermentation really sort of, you know
underlies the soil, and you know the whole
idea of soil fertility and the regenerative
nature of soil.
Right.
I mean one of the parallels is like the regenerative
nature of the soil and the bacteria and fungi,
and how they all work to help digest nutrients
available for the plants.
But then how also the bacteria, yeast, and
all our probiotics in us help us digest our
food.
You wanna maybe say a few words about that?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, you know - on contrary to the indoctrination
that, you know all of us who grew up in the
United States in the 20th century received,
that bacteria are our enemies, and bacteria
are so dangerous, and bacteria need to be
avoided or destroyed by any means necessary
- we’re learning that bacteria are utterly
essential to our well-being.
And, you know it’s through the action of
bacteria that we are able to break down that
we eat and are able to assimilate those nutrients.
But it goes way beyond digestion.
Our immune system is mostly the work of bacteria
in our intestines.
Over the last five years, there’s been all
of this incredible research that has revealed
for the first time, that you know the production
of serotonin, and other chemical compounds
that determine how we think, and how we feel,
are regulated by bacteria in our intestines
in ways we don’t fully understand.
But it turns out that almost every aspect
of our physiology and functionality is related
to these bacteria that are part of us, you
know that I think we assumed - until very
recently - were really just kind of freeloaders,
or potentially dangerous.
You know, we could not possibly live without
them.
And you know, nor could any form of life.
Every animal, every plant, you know all multicellular
life, evolved with bacteria, and from bacteria.
Bacteria really are are our ancestors, and
they’ve been our partners the whole time.
Wow.
So let’s talk about some of this bacteria,
Sandor, like, it's always mentioned like Lactobacillus,
right?
And like, when you’re culturing, I mean
I know you’ve done all the research so I
mean this is the - you’re the person to
ask this question: Everybody always says Lactobacillus,
but what other kinds of bacteria, beneficial
bacteria, are actually on the food?
And I know every different food, you know
caters to a different bacteria, and especially
during an early part of the ferment, middle
or late, there’s also different bacteria.
Cause I know like especially with composting
in a heat environment, at different stages
of the heat - when you’re making compost
there’s like thermophilic bacteria, there’s
this bacteria, and they’ll all work, and
depending on what stage there’s more or
less.
So, I mean, what, what are the different names
of some of the bacteria in some of the different
fermented foods?
Besides Lactobacillus.
Well, I mean you know, okay.
So I mean, lactic acid bacteria are much bigger
than Lactobacillus.
And so, you know, the lactic acid bacteria
that is present on all vegetables that generally
initiates the fermentation of sauerkraut,
is a genus of bacteria called Leuconostoc:
Leuconostoc Mesenteroides.
And that begins the acidification, and eventually
those are succeeded by a Lactobacilli.
There are other ferments that use bacteria
of the genus Bacillus: Bacillus Subtilis is
the primary bacteria in some ferments.
And there are many, many others.
And of course, it’s not only bacteria.
There are also fungi involved in fermentation.
The most famous agent of fermentation is a
fungus.
That would be yeast: Saccharomyces Cerevisiae.
There are other yeasts.
There are even moulds that are used by fermentation.
So, you know, the most familiar one to western
people would be cheese moulds.
Like blue cheese moulds, all of the soft white
cheeses, like Brie and Camembert.
Those are these white powdery moulds that
grow on the surface, and the mycelium is their
penetrating, or what give that nice soft runny
texture.
In Asian cuisines, Aspergillus moulds and
Rhizopus moulds are used.
Aspergillus moulds are what are used to make
koji, which is the starter for making sake,
and soy sauce, and miso, and amazake, and
really many other foods.
So I mean, the range of organisms that are
employed by fermentation is quite broad.
And most traditional fermented foods don’t
involve one singular organism, but rather
these broad communities of organisms.
And, in the natural world, this is how we
find microorganisms; is they’re never singular.
Isolated microorganisms are really, you know
a human technological invention.
Luis Pasteur first isolated yeast.
And so, humans have been making bread for
something like 10,000 years, but yeast as
a separate thing that you would add to the
bread, is brand new.
It’s, you know, from the 20th century.
So all the bread that was made for the first,
you know nine thousand nine hundred and some
years, was made with natural leavening.
It’s the yeast, along with the bacteria,
that’s found on the flour, that’s just
present on all grains.
But you know, all the products of agriculture,
all of the, you know sort of, raw products
of agriculture are populated by these elaborate
communities of organisms, and you know, in
the absence of, you know very recent technological
innovations, you know all traditional fermented
foods involved these broad communities of
organisms, and that’s one of the things
that makes them so powerful.
You know, in terms of probiotics is that,
in contrast to your standard probiotic capsule,
which is, you know a billion copies of one
or two or three bacterial strains, most traditional
fermented foods like sauerkraut, like yoghurt,
like kefir, you know they involve these broad
communities of organisms, so they’re much
more, biodiverse.
Wow.
[Laughs].
That’s crazy.
Thank you for that information, hope you guys
learned a little bit.
The next question actually has to deal with
- we’re going to get into now, ferments,
and things that can be fermented, you know
like, some of the things that you grow in
your garden that you have extra that you can
ferment.
So, the first question to lead it off since
you’re kind of talking about it is, you
know do you believe in some of those starter
cultures that you could just buy, like white
powder, to add to your vegetables to ferment
them?
Because I know a lot of people are scared
of fermentation, and they feel, if I buy this
starter culture it’s gonna be safe for sure.
I certainly think that adding a powdered starter
culture is completely unnecessary.
You know generally the starter cultures that
are being marketed for fermenting vegetables
are Lactobacillus Plantarum, which is what
we’ll inevitably develop in a mature sauerkraut
after a couple of weeks anyway.
A long time ago, in the 1940s, the US sauerkraut
industry explored switching to a Lactobacillus
Plantarum starter.
And the reason why they decided not to, that
their taste panels told them, that it didn’t
taste as good.
And their analysis was, that they lost flavor
complexity.
Because sauerkraut is this successional process.
And, you know as the process proceeds, you
get sort of different populations of bacteria
coming into dominance.
At each of those stages, there are different
metabolic byproducts.
And it’s the accumulation of these metabolic
byproducts that give sauerkraut its flavor
complexity.
And so if you cut out the early stages, and
just start with the late stage bacteria, you
know the flavor can suffer.
There’s no necessity of it for safety reasons,
cause how do you make a food that has no history
of food poisoning, or illness, or danger,
safer?
If it’s 100% safe, are you going to make
it, 110% safe?
I would say that the, you know most useful
application in my mind, of starters like that,
is speed; if you’re trying to speed things
up, if you’re in a rush.
And really, like you know for most of history,
if you’re trying to preserve food, the last
thing you wanna do is speed up the process.
You wanna slow down the process, and that’s
why people have always done it in cellars.
And you know, cool spaces, or relatively cool
spaces.
It’s to slow down the process.
But if you’re in a hurry, adding a starter
culture will, you know speed things up a little
bit.
But there’s no need for those cultures - the
bacteria you need are on all the vegetables.
The process is intrinsically safe, so you
don’t need to add a special powder to make
it safer.
Now on the other hand, I mean certain foods
you can’t make without a starter.
You know, if you wanna make tempeh - which
is you know, a wonderful Indonesian style
of soybeans, or other beans, or beans and
grains, that are bound together into a coherent,
cohesive mat, by the growth of fungus - you
kind of need to obtain, some spores of the
starter.
And they’re, you know easily available on
the internet - tempeh starter.
But I mean, certain things you need, a starter
for.
If you wanna make yoghurt, you need a starter.
I mean the starter could be as simple as a
previous batch of yoghurt that you’re adding
into it.
But you need some source of, you know the
bacteria that you want to be there.
So I’m certainly not, you know opposed to
the use of starters.
But I think in certain kinds of things, when
you’re working with raw plant material,
you know all the organisms that you need are
there anyway./This is wild fermentation, which
is the title of my book, but I didn’t make
it up.
You know it’s found throughout the literature,
and wild fermentation is a phrase that describes
fermentation based on the organisms that are
just present on the food that you’re fermenting,
or to a limited degree, the environment around
us.
Yeah it’s kind of like the Korean farming
technology: ‘IMOs’, right?
They’re just using indigenous organisms
- not to say that foreign may also be beneficial,
because maybe your climate zone doesn’t
have some other ones that may be beneficial
but they’re just not there.
But...whole another topic for another day.
But Sandor, let’s get into, you know some
easy ferments that people could do at home.
You know I mean in your class today that you
gave, you know you showed three different
styles of really easy ferments.
And amazingly we didn’t even have any tools!
Only tool you had actually was, what, you
had a bowl?
And you had a mason jar.
And your hands!
So do you wanna explain this for the people
that weren’t there real quick?
Well I did have a knife and a cutting board
in the room that I prepped in.
I did that before I got up on the stage.
But I like to keep it simple.
I mean, fermentation is not rocket science.
And you know, certainly like, you know if
you’re making - if you’re going to start
a small sauerkraut factory, you’re probably
not gonna chop up your cabbage with a knife
and a fork, you’re probably gonna get a,
continuous feed food processor, which is very
wonderful - but if you’re making a quart
of sauerkraut with two pounds of cabbage,
you don’t need to, you know buy an expensive
food processor.
The knife is going to work perfectly well.
So, I like to keep it simple.
You know, I use simple vessels: I use jars,
I use simple cylindrical crocks, I use barrels,
I use things like that.
You know in the workshop today, we did a corn,
onion, and pear relish.
We did a dilly beans - so raw green beans
in a jar with garlic and dill, and then we
poured a salt water brine over it.
And then we did a beverage - you can also
make these things as beverages, but add higher
proportions of water.
So we made an Indian beverage called Kaanji:
K-A-A-N-J-I, which is carrots, I used a little
bit of beets as well, and mustard seeds, covered
it with water - dechlorinated water, don’t
take water right out of your municipal tap,
full of chlorine.
You need to either run it through a filter,
or evaporate off the chlorine, or use water
from a well or a spring - cover it with water,
and then just a pinch of salt.
But, you know these are just a few techniques.
You know, once you get the general concept,
that to ferment vegetables you need to get
them submerged, and protect them from the
flow of oxygen, then, you know you could do
anything.
I mean, it’s incredibly creative, if you,
you know - if you’re an experimental kind
of person.
And you know, any kind of vegetable, any kind
of seasoning, you know you can ferment it.
You know, I’ve had - I mean it’s been
a particular pleasure for me seeing what people
do.
You know, teaching all these workshops and
seeing what people show up with - it’s just
unusual variations.
How about “vanilla-kraut”?
This young woman showed up at one of my workshops
with a sauerkraut, vanilla beans minced into
it, which was delicious.
How about mashed potato sauerkraut?
Where, you mash a little bit of potatoes,
and mix that in with your salted cabbage.
You know, the possibilities really are pretty
much infinite.
Wow.
Yeah I mean I’ve fermented many things in
my kitchen you know: okra, green beans, I
mean a standard cabbage, carrots, beets, you
know.
What about a - oh and I love the peppers,
right?
The little small, hot peppers - fermented.
But what are some of the things you enjoy,
actually, at home?
Well, I mean - one thing that I did for the
first time this year, just because a friend
of mine showed up with this big bucket of
ramps, is I made ramp sauerkraut.
And I took the greens, and the bulbs, and
I just chopped them up, I lightly salted them,
squeezed them a little bit to start pulling
the juice out of them and get them juicy and
then stuffed them in a jar.
And oh my god, those were - it was so good,
it really like, it had like, hints of the
flavor of, you know if I had sautéed those
ramps.
I mean it was almost like it cooked it, and
it was so, so delicious, and it was a very
sad day of my life when that ran out.
I’ve just made a batch a couple of weeks
ago, of perilla kimchi, where I have perilla
coming up as a weed in my garden all over,
so I just took - I harvested a bunch of the
larger leaves of perilla, I made a batch of
sticky rice, and then I mixed all the kimchi,
spices, garlic, ginger, I 
used onions, and chili pepper, in with that
sticky rice, and then I stuffed them, and
sort of wrapped each of the perilla leaves,
or used the perilla leaves to wrap a little
bit of the stuffing, and then I watered down
some of the stuffing and put it at the bottom,
and then I layered the little rolls, and then
put more of the stuffing in between the layers.
So the whole thing was submerged, and those
have been a big hit and really delicious.
And you know if you can imagine like a spicy
equivalent of stuffed grape leaf.
But you know, that’s probiotic, and you
know, got all those exciting kimchi flavors.
Really wonderful.
So I experiment a lot, and then there’s
certain things I always do.
Like, in November, I’ll go to my friend’s
biodynamic farm and fill up my pickup truck
with daikon radishes, and you know fill up
a 55 gallon vessel that I have with daikon
radishes, and a little bit of cabbage, and
a little bit of chili pepper, and a little
bit of garlic, and I’ll be eating that and
sharing that with friends, and at workshops
all through the winter.
Wow.
And, let’s get back to the - you mentioned,
like, fermentation is a kind of “cold cooking”,
actually, in your presentation.
You wanna explain that to my viewers?
Yeah, sure.
So, I mean, fermentation breaks down nutrients,
in ways that can analogous to the way that
cooking breaks down nutrients, and makes nutrients
more available.
So, you know certain foods, you know the nutrients
are barely accessible to us, you know without
fermentation.
For instance, soybeans.
You know, the reason why soybeans have gotten
so much attention in the western vegetarian
subcultures, is that they’re considered
to be the plant food with the most concentrated
protein.
But our human bodies can’t access that protein
from a soybean.
And so if we just cook soybeans and eat them,
you know they’ll make us gassy, give us
indigestion, but we’re not going to get
the protein out of them.
And so you know the Asian cultures that pioneered
soy agriculture recognized this millenia ago,
and you know through experimentation, happy
accidents, who knows, you know sort of figured
out all of these different methods for fermenting
the soybeans.
So there’s soy sauce, there’s miso, there’s
tempeh, there’s nattō, there’s many other
variations, you know different in their processes,
different in the organisms that ferment them.
But what they all have in common, is that
the fermentation breaks down the proteins
into amino acids - the building blocks of
proteins.
You know, this is pre-digestion.
You know, similarly, the lactose in milk gets
broken down by fermentation.
Even the gluten, in wheat and other grains,
gets broken down, not by yeast, but by bacteria.
And it’s, you know sort of only in the 20th
century that we had like little packets of
yeast that were a separate thing; natural
leavening, what we would today call sourdough,
involves yeast, along with lactic acid bacteria.
So in addition to getting this sort of lift
in the dough, you get this pre-digestion that
breaks down some of the gluten.
Wow.
[Laughs].
Yeah, Amazing.
I don’t need any soy that’s not fermented,
number one.
[Laughs].
So, anyways, let’s move on Sandor, to talk
about salt, cause I know - you know I was
surprised, you know seeing you in your demonstration
today, in your presentation, that salt, you
weren’t like, you know measuring it out;
you were all like “This is enough, and this
and that”.
I know a lot of people get paranoid like,
“I gotta make sure I have enough salt and
it’s gotta be three percent, it’s gotta
be five percent”, like you know, do you
wanna kind of go over, you know, the how much
of salt, and actually what types of salt,
you recommend?
Sure.
I mean my personal preference is to use unrefined
sea salts, but, don't’ get too caught up
that you need to go buy some special salt;
definitely don’t like, put off making sauerkraut
cause you don’t have the right kind of salt.
Whatever kind of salt you have in your kitchen
is really fine.
Most of the literature suggests not using
iodized table salt, but I can tell you cause
people who organize workshops have handed
me iodized table salt many times: it works
fine.
There’s not enough iodine in the salt to
inhibit the fermentation.
So don’t get too caught up on that.
I mean as far as proportion of salt, fermentation
is not rocket science.
Like don’t imagine that there’s some like
magic number; some like minimum amount of
salt that you need in order for the process
to be safe.
In fact, you could make sauerkraut without
any salt; it’s not going to have a very
good texture, it’s not going to have a very
good flavor.
But, you know it won’t be dangerous for
the lack of salt.
It will just be sort of, you know soft and
mushy.
Because the salt does many beneficial things.
You know, number one: salt pulls water out
of vegetables and, you know makes it easier
to get the vegetables submerged under their
own juices.
Number two: what makes vegetables crispy are
pectins, and salt hardens pectins.
Eventually, vegetables that ferment for a
long time - it happens faster with watery
summer vegetables, like cucumber and zucchini,
but it will happen to cabbages and radishes
as well, if you leave them long enough for
in a warm time - is vegetables can get soft,
and mushy.
That’s the work of enzymes; salt slows down
those enzymes.
Salt also slows down the lactic acid bacteria,
and you know like we said earlier, when you’re
trying to preserve vegetables, slowing down
the process buys you more time.
So you know, if you have ancestors who were
making sauerkraut, or if you learned how to
make sauerkraut from your, you know grandparents,
who learned from their grandparents, who learned
from their grandparents, a lot of the traditional
products are very salty, because they represented
survival, if, you know these were the last
cabbages you were going to see for the next
six months, you have a reason to put a lot
of salt in.
But that doesn’t mean that sauerkraut has
to be extremely salty.
If you prefer a milder kraut, then you’re
going to ferment in small batches, and ferment
for, you know let’s say two weeks, to just
give an arbitrary amount of time, and then
eat it, and then make another small batch
- you can use much lower proportions of salt.
You know, most of the contemporary commercial
kraut makers who I’m meeting are working
with a proportion somewhere around one and
a half percent salt, by weight.
But, you know, if we had a batch that was
half a percent, one percent, one and a half,
two percent - people wouldn’t agree on which
one tasted the best.
So, I mean the whole point of making things
for yourself is to make them the way you like
them.
And so what I would recommend is: lightly
salt the vegetables as you’re shredding
them, mix them up, and then taste it.
And then, if you wanna add more salt, add
more salt.
I always like to start light, because it’s
so much easier to add salt than it is to subtract
salt.
But if you find that you have just way over-salted
it, it’s not impossible to subtract salt;
it’s just that you can’t subtract only
salt.
When you take away salt you also take away
other nutrients.
So, the way you do that is just cover it with
water, let the water sit for a few minutes,
stir it, pour off the excess water.
Taste it again.
If necessary, repeat this process, until the
salt level is, you know pleasing to you.
Great, great.
So, another thing I wanna talk about is how,
somebody doesn’t need to buy these fancy
airlocks and all these things, like, in your
presentation today you were literally just
using a mason jar and actually, you have a
technique where you just off-gas it every
morning when you’re making your coffee.
You wanna share that with my viewers, so that
they don’t have to feel scared that they
have to buy this special crockpot and all
this stuff?
Well, I mean yeah, fermentation has always
inspired, you know technical innovation.
And so, I mean I actually love some of the
gadgets that people are coming up with.
But you don’t need a lot of gadgets at all.
Like, a jar, is really, totally adequate.
A wide mouth jar is a little bit easier to
deal with than a narrow neck jar, but a narrow
neck jar is not impossible to deal with.
So, you know, you can work with what you’ve
got.
But you have to remember, you know that you’re
cultivating bacteria, and this is alive, so
you can’t just like, bury it in the closet
and forget about it for six months, because
it’s going to produce carbon dioxide and
it’s going to build up pressure, and that
pressure needs to get out of there some way.
With mason jars, your jars will never explode;
what will happen is that the metal lid will
just bend, until the air can - until the pressure
can get out.
What I like to do is leave it right on my
kitchen counter, at least for the first week
or week and a half, which is when you get
the most carbon dioxide.
I mean, the process can go on for months.
But as the - you know it’s a successional
process as I said earlier.
As the bacterial population shift, there’s
less carbon dioxide production, so your heaviest
production is going to be in the first week
or so, and that’s when it’s most important
to off-gas.
And then you’ll just start noticing, that
there’s less pressure, being produced, each
day, and then you could start doing it less
frequently.
But there are, you know all kinds of, you
know clever, crock designs and gadgets that
sort of enable them to automatically off-gas,
and you know many people find that much easier
than manually off-gassing, which is the way
I like to do it.
One of my favourite lazy man tools for making
kraut is actually those old-fashioned, like,
canning jars, that actually have that rubber
ring.
So I just latch that down, and then basically,
when there’s enough pressure it will kind
of lift it up a little bit and let some of
the gas out.
So when - I don’t have to do it, cause you
know I’m busy in my garden not paying attention
to my ferments.
And actually speaking of that, let’s segway
into the last part of this episode is, talking
about, once your ferment is done how do you
know it’s ready, and, you know if you have
funky stuff on the top like some of mine do,
has it gone bad?
So here’s a situation Sandor: I made some
kraut, I think before like after last winter,
or some time last winter.
And I put it in one of those jars, and it
was like, I used - for the liquid like I used
pear or apple juice, and then basically cabbage,
with some pepper, and some salt.
Hmm...sounds great.
Yeah, yeah, hot pepper.
And I left it in there.
And I left it out.
[Laughs].
And then you know we got the reactions: it
kind of bubbles over so I put a little plate
underneath it so it doesn’t like drip everywhere.
And then I just left it.
And I think like, over time, I just kind of
left it out, forgot about it, and then, at
some point I was looking at it and it had
like some funky black layer on the top.
And then, over time - later that black layer,
some fuzzy layer, actually ended up disappearing.
And now it’s gone and it looks alright.
But is that kraut now safe to eat?
[Laughs].
Well, okay.
Let me talk about the nature of the layer
that can grow on the top.
So, you know our whole objective in fermenting
vegetables is: protect them from the flow
of oxygen.
That’s why we wanna get them submerged.
If you just let a bowl of loosely shredded
cabbage, you know sitting on the counter,
it wouldn’t turn into sauerkraut; it would
just turn into like a cloud of mould.
And that moult could literally reduce your
head of cabbage into a puddle of slime that
bears no resemblance whatsoever to delicious
tangy crunchy sauerkraut.
So, you know we’re getting the vegetables
submerged to protect them from oxygen.
But, you know except in the case of, you know
certain vessels that are very cleverly engineered
to protect the surface from oxygen, the surface
is where it comes into contact with oxygen.
And that’s where the problems happen; that’s
where you get these funky surface growths.
Generally you’ll get either yeast: a yeast
called kahm yeast - which is like a beige
layer that grows on the top, a little bit
wavy, just scrape that off - or otherwise
you’ll get moulds.
Generally, the moulds that you’ll get are
white moulds.
And only if you let them grow for a long time
will they start to turn grey and black.
These white moulds, or moulds in that, this
monochromatic range, are generally regarded
as safe.
I mean there do exist moulds in the world
that can be extremely dangerous - like don’t
eat foods with like, orange moulds growing
on them, red moulds growing on them - just
throw it away.
But that’s not what grows on your fermented
vegetables; you get white moulds, what I - I’ve
watched people just stir it back in and eat
it.
You know, my preference is to skim off the
surface as best as I can.
If any of the vegetables seem like they’re
discolored, or getting soft, I’ll skim those
off.
And once I get to vegetables that are the
right color, then I just eat it, and enjoy
it, and this is what I’ve been advising
people to do - and I have yet to ever hear
of one story of anyone who, you know had any
kind of a reaction to that, and you know the
literature generally confirms that, you know
these moulds are totally harmless and you
know don’t ruin the kraut.
So don’t worry about it too much.
In terms of the other question that you asked:
how long do you ferment, and how do you know
when it’s ready?
This is kind of like the million dollar question
of fermentation.
And, there’s no objective answer to the
question.
You know, fermented vegetables, in you know
most of the traditional applications, people
would make it at the fall, eat it through
the winter into the spring.
So the total fermentation time, might, in
some places be, six months, or even longer.
But that doesn’t mean that people are waiting
for six months before they eat them.
Like they’re probably waiting a couple of
weeks, and then starting to eat them.
A lot of the contemporary books, you know
assume that we require immediate gratification,
and they say, “ferment it for three days
and then move it to the refrigerator”.
You know, generally for me, it’s somewhere
in between the extremes.
So, you know if you’ve never done it before,
what I would say is, you know give it three
or four days and then just taste a little
bit of it.
Pack it back down; make sure it’s submerged
again.
Give it three or four more days.
Taste it again.
Oh, it will taste a little bit stronger; the
acids accumulate over time.
The texture will be different.
The flavors will be more melded.
Give it a few more days.
It’ll keep on getting stronger; more acidic,
more sour.
And then, if one day, you taste it, and you
think like “wow, this is strong.
I don’t want this to get any stronger.
Well you have a fermentation slowing device
in your kitchen.
I would assume, if you have a computer to
be watching this on, you probably have a refrigerator
in your kitchen.
That’s the time to move this to the refrigerator.
Of course, the history of sauerkraut, nobody
had a refrigerator!
In many parts of the world, people still don’t
have refrigerators.
So you don’t need to ever refrigerate it.
If you’re not going to refrigerate it, just
find a cool spot.
If you have a cellar, or a basement that isn’t
heated, that’s a great place.
The refrigerator’s fine.
Maybe like a mud room, or some place that’s
like, you know not fully heated.
You know, there’s a lot of possibilities.
But definitely, when it’s ready is subjective;
its’ ready, when you think it’s ready,
and not when I think it’s ready.
Yeah.
I mean, I say the same thing with when you’re
growing your vegetables, right?
It’s ready whenever you wanna harvest it,
not like, when you buy vegetables at the store,
they dictate it to you when they’re gonna
eat it.
They dictate it to you when it’s ready.
And on tomatoes, that’s when they’re pink
and they still bounce, right?
[Laughs].
So anyway Sandor, back to the question I had.
Okay so yeah, when I have my bad kraut, and
it has like funky stuff on the top, do we
all skim that off, and that goes right in
my compost, because that has good bacteria
- who knows what - it’s adding to my compost,
not that I feel comfortable adding to my compost
but not into me, and also when some of the
vegetables are discolored at the top, “Oh
my god, these are looking funky”, those
come off also and go into my compost.
And then, normally, underneath that, I eat
them, and it usually tastes alright.
So, but in the case of this last batch I did,
underneath when I started eating it, it didn’t
have the crunch anymore.
It was like, really soft.
Is that still alright, or how can you really
tell if it goes bad, or does it really never
go bad as long as you have an acid environment?
And if so, if I test it in with the pH paper,
and I saw it was acid, then like, can I pretty
sure believe that it’s safe and what’s
the pH level?
[Laughs]
Well okay, I’ll answer the pH question first.
You know, most of the, you know commercial
producers that I meet, like their regulatory
authorities are asking them to test pH, and
generally the pH they’re looking for is
4.6, or lower.
And it is, you know generally regarded that
at that level of acidity, like none of the
organisms that we worry about in terms of
food poisoning, can grow.
So that’s sort of the threshold for safety.
But I - you know on a household level, there’s
just no necessity to do that, I would say.
In terms of like, does it eventually go bad?
So I mean, I mentioned earlier, that when
the vegetables get soft, that’s the work
of enzymes.
What gives vegetables their crispness is pectins
- and there are pectinase enzymes that digest
the pectins.
And so, you know that’s aesthetic.
I mean you know for me if it gets to a certain
level of softness, it goes in the compost
cause it’s not appealing to me anymore.
It’s not that - I mean the only reason to
reject food isn’t that it’s going to kill
you or make you sick.
I mean it could just be that like, it’s
not like appealing to you anymore.
So, especially in summer temperatures.
Like if it’s hot, if you leave it for a
long time in a hot space, those pectinase
enzymes really get active, even with, you
know cabbages or radishes or vegetables that
can generally hold their crunch better.
So, you know for longer term fermentation
you want a cool spot, and you know that’s
why a cellar is just great for fermentation.
You can ferment for months and months and
months in the cellar without vegetables getting
soft.
But if you’re at ambient temperatures, then
sometimes it’s cool and you can go for a
long time and sometimes it’s hot and you
have to have a, like a shorter time frame
that you work with, and you know the time
for preservation isn’t like the beginning
or the middle of the summer; it’s the end
of the summer.
It’s when the temperatures are getting cooler,
that’s when it’s suitable to sort of put
food up that’s gonna get you through the
winter.
I do shorter term batches all the time; you
mentioned Okra, I love fermenting Okra.
But that’s not something I sort of, you
know typically will leave for months and months
and months - or if I did, I would eventually
leave it in the refrigerator for months and
months and months, after the shorter fermentation
at, you know the hot temperatures where Okra
will grow.
Same with cucumber pickles.
Right yeah.
I mean I live in the desert, so it’s a bit
off, because I can’t really grow, you know
cabbages, and all this stuff, in like a hundred
plus degree weather.
I grow tropical asian vegetables.
And in the winter time, that’s when I grow
all the cold crops - I mean literally cold
crops - and then I start pickling them, and
fermenting them, right before the summer which
is a little bit odd but, I can do it you know
I just have to moderate more; put it in the
freezer a little bit earlier, if I don’t
want it to get soft.
Well I mean another perspective is that, you
know, for someone living in an environment
like where you live, you know long term fermentation
just is not as critical or as relevant.
Like you don’t have a long winter without
fresh vegetables.
So - but in all the places that have a long
season where you can’t grow anything, you
also have cold weather, which makes preservation,
much easier.
So another question I have for you Sandor,
is that in personal experience, you know I
made some pickles out of, you know, cucumbers.
And on the top if I open it - cause it’s
in the fridge now, it’s been in the fridge
for a while - you know there’s all this
like white, fuzzy stuff on the top.
So, could I just skim that off and then cut
off some of the cucumbers that are sticking
above water, and then I’d be fine?
Exactly.
[Laughs] Alright, that was easy.
And then the other thing I wanted to say is
that, you know, if you get a ferment that’s
not to your desired texture, like, right,
some of the pectin, and some of the firmness,
crunchiness, gets lost, right?
I’ve had places that will actually just
take those vegetables that are fermented - and
then dehydrate them.
So then they’ll bring the crunch back and
then you also get to keep the probiotics that
are in the foods, you know, and you could
use them at a later time.
The other thing I like to do with those things
that have gotten too soft, that I don’t
like the flavor too much, is I’ll just take
a handful, and put it in my blender for a
blended salad, a blended soup, for flavoring,
or for a dressing.
So Sandor, real quick, what’s some of the
ways that you like to use some ferments in
food preparation, besides just eating it straight?
Well, I mean let me just sort of, echo, what
you just said.
I mean, I think dehydrating is a great way
of sort of salvaging vegetables that got soft
and mushy.
Also if you mix them with maybe flax or grains,
you can make wonderful crackers, that have
the flavor of the fermented vegetables.
And the probiotics, if you just do a low temperature,
dehydration of them.
I just met somebody a couple of months ago
who’s doing salts; who’s taking excess
brine and dehydrating that.
And then marketing little jars of these flavoured
fermented salts that were so, so delicious.
I’ve become a big fan of kimchi soup.
And oh my god, I mean I just like, I love
the flavours of kimchi in a hot soup.
You know, with a little bit of tofu, and a
little bit of bacon in it, and beautiful spicy
flavour.
I really love that.
I love to do - I’ve gotten into doing, fermenting
whole heads of cabbage; sometimes I’ll just
bury one head in a crock of shredded sauerkraut.
And then I love to use those leaves - which
are pliable - to make various kinds of stuffed
cabbage, sometimes little raw, stuffed rolls.
Sometimes I’ll cook them, you know with
meat and grains in them, and make like you
know sarma.
But, you know I think it’s really important
to eat some of the fermented vegetables raw.
But that doesn’t mean you can never cook
them.
You know, if you make a lot them, cook some
of it, eat some of it raw, you know the cuisines
that feature fermented vegetables heavily
use them in their cooking, as well as eating
them raw.
Yeah.
Again, any way you guys can, but of course,
I try to eat as many of them as I can just
in their raw natural state, because I really
want to get the probiotics out of them, I’ve
heard so many testimonies from people, by
just literally eating some fermented foods,
you know has helped their digestion.
I mean that’s something that’s helped
my mom personally, and as well as me.
Anyways, we’re running out of time today,
and so one of the last questions I have for
you today, Sandor, is: are there any words
of wisdom that you would like to share with
my viewers today at the end of this video,
right now?
Well I mean, since you’re doing, you know,
primarily a show about gardening - I mean
I guess I just wanna sort of reiterate, that
like you know, for me, my exploration of fermentation
literally grew out of the garden.
And trying to, you know sort of, figure out
what to do, with you know the fleeting excesses
of the gardening season.
And I think this is the nature of agriculture:
agriculture never produces like an even flow
of food throughout the year; you get these
periods where there is more than you know
what to do with, and these periods where there’s
not so much growing.
And, you know, I would just leave you with
the idea that agriculture would not really
be possible without fermentation.
If we didn’t have active strategies to preserve
the harvest, you know, then the cycles of
agricultural food availability, you know couldn’t
really sustain.
So fermentation is really a critical piece
of the garden; not only in compost and soil
fertility, but also in how people can make
effective use of the food resources that they
have.
And like the garden, there’s no one way
to do it, you know there’s lots of different
idea about how to do it, people can have good
results with very different kinds of approaches
to it.
But, you know don’t be afraid to experiment,
and you know, don’t be intimidated.
This definitely is not rocket science.
And thank you so much for you interest John.
Oh yeah, Thank you.
Yeah I mean basically what he said was genius,
like, I don’t know, I just - so amazing,
that you know, your garden can be the spark
for you guys.
I mean, fermentation has been used for literally
thousands of years.
And it’s like an old school tradition that
we’ve lost!
And Sandor’s done so much research looking
into it, and learning about some of the traditional
ways it’s used.
And that’s actually in his book, The Art
of Fermentation, that I mentioned earlier,
so I’ll put links down below to his books
- on Amazon, and I would encourage you guys
to get those, to get more into fermentation,
especially if you guys are into gardening;
to put up your food, to save it in one of
the best ways and traditional ways that has
been used.
So Sandor, if somebody wants to learn more
about you and your work, do you have websites
and links you wanna share with everybody?
Sure.
My website is: wildfermentation.com.
And you can find out about my books, you can
find out about workshops that I’m teaching,
sometimes where I live in Tennessee, and I
do a lot of travelling and teach in other
places.
And I also have links to all kinds of fermentation
related resources that are out there on the
world wide web.
So yeah, check out my website: wildfermentation.com,
and my two books are Wild Fermentation, and
The Art of Fermentation.
Yeah, and I recommend those highly.
It’s not a personal level.
[Laughs].
So, thank you Sandor for taking time out of
your busy schedule, cause now he actually
has to run to the airport, and fly out of
here.
So yeah, thanks for being on my show, I appreciate
so much, and for you guys watching out at
home: if you guys enjoyed this episode with
Sandor and want me to do more videos with
him in the future, please be sure to give
this video a thumbs up.
If I get a lot of thumbs ups, maybe I’ll
even get out to Tennessee and visit him.
And show to you guys more about what he’s
doing; make some more detailed videos about
fermentation and all this kind of stuff.
It is so easy, and I want you guys to start
today.
You know, no excuse for not fermenting, you
know, virtually impossible to mess it up.
If you get some fuzzy stuff on the top, don’t
worry like they say in New York: “Don’t
worry about it”.
Wait, you could say it from New York, I can’t
say it.
Scoop the stuff off, put it in your compost,
and you can step down below - you’re good
to go.
Also be sure to click that subscribe button
right down below so you don’t miss out on
any of my new and upcoming episodes.
You never know what I’ll show, on what you’ll
be learning on my YouTube channel, I’ve
videos coming out every three to four days.
Also be sure to check my past episodes; my
past episodes are a wealth of knowledge.
Over thirteen hundred episodes at this time,
teaching you guys all aspects on growing,
and also, in this case, preserving your food
at home.
And be sure to share this video with somebody
else that you know, that gardens, grows food,
and should, you know, get some very important
information about fermentation.
So with that, my name is John Kohler with
growingyourgreens.com.
We’ll see you next time.
And until then, remember - keep on growing!
