Hey friends, hope this finds you happy & well!
This week, life has blessed me (and by life, I mean our local, organic farmers), with an abundance of carrots. And the thought that came to my mind, was this:
Carrots = great
Fermented carrots = probiotic gut goodness
All the most popular ferments, such as cheese, bread, yogurt and (real) pickles, happen through lacto-fermentation, a natural process where beneficial bacteria convert sugars in food into lactic acid, creating that tangy flavour and preserving our food.
And if you haven’t got a shiny fermentation station like the one above 👆, any old (yet clean!) jar will do. Zero-budget options available in this video.
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screen-shot from “The Guide to Lacto-Fermentation: How To Ferment Nearly Anything” by Joshua Weissman
To keep it short:
- Start with the freshest carrots possible. Peel and slice, or use whole.
- Place carrots in a jar [optional: add spices, like garlic, cumin, etc]
- Add salty water (brine) to your jar, at 2% salt ratio. This simply means 20g of salt per 1000g (1L) of water.
- Pressure down so that everything fits below the salty water. This will inhibit the creation of surface mold. *there are plenty of ways to do this, in Joshua’s video
- Leave your jar at room temperature for 24-48 hours. Once it gets cloudy & bubbly (that means it’s alive!), transfer to the door of your fridge.
- Taste along the way to monitor the flavour and regularly open your jar to release gas.
Hey friends, thanks for reading through and hope this has given you a little *tingle* to start (or continue!) on your fermentation journey.
To leave you, here’s a video from fermentation legend Sandor Katz and environmental activist Robin Greenfield on busting fermentation myths.
Much (fermented) love, Nico 🌻
