Back in December of 2009 I got a home brew beer kit for Christmas. That was my first venture into fermentation (and it turned into a multi award winning small craft brewery business as well). Recently I have seen videos about fermenting veggies at home for different uses, like making your own hot sauces. This seemed intriguing to me, so I thought I would give it a shot. One of the main reasons this appealed to me so much is that while I love pickled veggies, which is basically what you do when you ferment veggies, however I do not like the salt. Let me be more specific, I love the salt... the salt don't love me back! Since I have to watch my sodium intake, doing this myself at home, I can control the amount of sodium in each jar.
Instead of just trying 1 vegetable and seeing how it turns out, I jumped in with both feet and just went for it. This first set of pictures shows the progression from day # 1 to day # 6 of the first set of veggies I did (by day 5 you can see that I already had to taste test a few lol). They are, left to right: red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers and carrots with garlic and dill. As the days go on, you can see that the brine gets cloudy like it is supposed to the coloring of the veggies dull as well, like its supposed to. It wasn't uncommon for me to be looking at them and see an air bubble escape through the airlock, which means there is fermentation happening. When you look closely at the jars, you can see lots of little bubbles which means it is doing its thing. So exciting!
In this next couple of pictures I decided to go all in a try a few other things. I started these 2 days after the ones above. These are, left to right: 1) rings of sweet peppers (yellow, orange & red), rings from one Anaheim pepper, some diced onion and a couple cloves of garlic, 2) same as the first jar, but with sliced peppers and the inclusion of 1 sliced Korean chili pepper for some heat, 3) cucumber spears (using pickling cukes and regular cukes) , with dill, garlic and onion and 4) sliced cucumbers (using pickling cukes and regular cukes), dill, garlic and onion.
Tip: All of the jars above I had to use salt in to make the brine (though I use less than what most people do, about 1 tbsp per jar of the Low Sodium Pink Himalayan Sea Salt, and thus I will let mine ferment a few days longer as well). In fermentation, salt is used for a dual purpose: 1) to protect the good bacteria from the bad while fermentation takes off and 2) to add flavor. I have seen people using Whey that is left over from making yogurt instead of the salt. I will give that a try after making my next batch of yogurt. Tip: Here is a great video by "Pro Home Cooks" on YouTube to watch about fermenting vegetables. I suggest watching this and then get to fermenting your own!
Serving Suggestion: I like to add some of the fermented red bell peppers and jalapenos to my avocado toast in the morning. Which is also made from homemade sourdough bread.
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