Fermented Foods

I recently purchased the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. A number of years ago I had borrowed the book from the library, upon my friend Brenda's recommendation. I found the information interesting, but did not in any major way follow up on what I learned. The basic premise of the book is that many of the food traditions of the past bestowed health benefits that are missing now, chiefly because very few of the foods we eat are naturally fermented and few of the grains are sprouted.

Most Americans are familiar with sauerkraut, which is a naturally fermented food. The process of making it is simple. Basically, cabbage is shredded and salt is added to draw out the liquid in the cabbage. It's packed into crocks or jars and the mixture is left at room temperature to develop the characteristic sauerkraut flavor. When that has happened, it means that lactic acid is present. It forms when lacto bacillus bacteria have done their good work. Lactic acid acts as a preservative. It will continue to multiply as long as the cabbage is not moved to a cooler place or its growth is halted by heating. People who do this at home often can the sauerkraut as soon as enough lactic acid is present to create the desired flavor.

Dill pickles used to be done with the same basic method as the method for making sauerkraut described above, except they were left whole and covered with a salt brine. Flavorings such as garlic and dill and perhaps hot peppers were added. The pickles were eaten only after the pickles had fermented properly. Nowadays, cucumbers are almost always pickled with vinegar, which generally does not contain live lacto bacillus bacteria, as I understand it. These pickles taste more sour than naturally fermented ones, and make the body's internal environment more acid--therefore less healthful, according to Fallon.

One of the things that can go wrong in the process of making sauerkraut or pickles is that bacteria other than the desired lacto bacillus bacteria invade and cause rotting and decay instead of healthful and tasty fermenting. For this reason, common-sense cleanliness is necessary. However, as I've learned recently, salting the vegetables serves the important function of preventing spoilage until the lacto bacillus can crank up its multiplication rate sufficiently to act as a preservative. So, forget about low-salt versions of naturally fermented vegetables--unless you use a small amount of whey as an inoculant. Whey revs up the rate of lactic acid production sufficiently to prevent putrefication without salt--to preserve the food initially.

Hiromi has for years made various kinds of traditional Japanese pickles using processes similar to the one described for making sauerkraut and/or dill pickles. He uses mustard leaves for a very spicy pickle--unless it has been left too long and the mustard oils have evaporated. Then it's still well-preserved, but not as lively as before. He starts with whole leaves and a brine made with 1 cup of salt to one gallon of water, using enough to cover whatever quantity of leaves he's accumulated. The leaves go into a plastic five-gallon bucket. Years ago Hiromi cut a 2-inch thick piece of wood into a circular shape that fits inside the five gallon bucket. The round block goes on top of the mustard leaves and a full three-gallon water jug goes on top of the wood to weight it down sufficiently to keep the leaves submerged under the brine.

Chinese cabbage is done in a similar way to make kim-chee, a Korean pickle which is popular also in Japan. Garlic, ginger root, and hot peppers are added for kim-chee.

Turnip pickles have only hot peppers added for flavoring (besides the salt used for preservation).

Hiromi also pickles cucumbers and daikon (Japanese winter radishes) with lacto-fermentation. The daikon is first dried by tying the tops together on the clothesline. After they're limp they go into the pickle bucket. We eat them after they're cultured, with no further seasonings--only sliced into rounds. The cucumbers are treated differently. After a few days of fermenting, they are sliced and pressed in a small Japanese pickle maker to extract as much liquid as possible. This pickle maker uses a screw-down press built into the lid of a plastic container to press out the water. After the water is extracted and drained, the cucumbers are mixed with soy sauce and minced fresh ginger root. Our whole family loves these pickles.

Reading about all the benefits of eating fermented foods makes me feel better than ever about including them regularly in our diet. Besides the pickles we eat with rice, we also often consume naturally fermented soy sauce and miso, which is a fermented soybean paste. Another fermented food we enjoy is natto, which is cultured cooked soybeans. We have never successfully cultured them ourselves, and eat them only in small quantities on top of rice. Many who encounter it for the first time are completely put off by the smell and the texture, which is so slimy a dishcloth underwater slides around on a bowl that has held natto. I didn't especially care for it the first time I tasted it, but that food is now a family favorite too. It reportedly has amazing health benefits, and we want to try making it again, this time with access to more information on how it is done.

Cultured milk products are more common in our diets than fermented fruits, vegetables, or grain. Everyone knows about buttermilk, cottage cheese, yogurt, sour cream, and harder cheeses. Many of these, when commercially produced, however, have been pasteurized after fermentation, and no longer contain any live lacto bacillus bacteria. Therefore they contribute very little to the internal flora that helps us readily extract nutrients from our food and keeps our digestive system itself in good shape.

Sally Fallon's book is actually a recipe book with an abundance of related information in the introduction, in a small section that introduces each category of food, and in many sidebar quotations from other sources.

I'm primed now to try a raft of home-cultured foods. We have several kitchen tools on order to make this easier. One of them is a gallon glass jar with a special fluid-filled glass tubing apparatus attached to the vented lid to serve as an air lock. This allows the escape of gas bubbles formed during fermentation, but prevents gnats or other bugs or bacteria access to the fermenting food. Another utensil on order is a larger pickle press than our small plastic one--this one utilizing a weight instead of a screw-down press built into the lid.

I know Brenda has been quietly going about using soaked grains for bread baking, etc. for a number of years. I may have to ask her some questions--or better yet, let her share her wisdom and experience by way of comments on this blog.

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I've often heard the words "cucumber" and "pickle" used interchangeably. Perhaps this overview of what we call "pickles" at our house will explain why I find this terminology very peculiar. A cucumber is just a garden vegetable, as is cabbage or turnip or radish. Mustard leaves are just greens. Unless, of course, these garden vegetables have been elevated to the status of condiments by the tradition of fermenting them into a pickle. Then, even bestowing the "pickle" title on these vegetables hardly does justice to their fine qualities--both for their health benefits and delectable flavors.