Turnip pickles: roughly 10kg of turnips into pickles: matchsticked them, put in a couple sliced beets for colour, filled the container maybe 1/6 full of 7% vinegar, and then added water to cover and salt at 3% of total weight including veg and vinegar (it’s a bit more complicated than that, I boiled the brine and poured it over warm, and some calculations needed to be made on that brine). This was the correct saltiness level but I made the mistake of pasteurizing them once they were in jars, when they went from crispy to soft. The next year I didn’t pasteurize, lost one jar to oxidation, and I think these are just single-year and maybe more like 10-month storage pickles, not multi-year ones.
Carrot/jalapeno/garlic pickles (mostly carrots), about 9kg, with a 6% brine poured over boiling (not total veg + water weight, just 6% brine). I’m using vacsealed bags of water for air exclusion in the gallon jars, then there’s an airlock on one and the waterlock fermentation crock as well. These kept in jars on my shelf after fermentation for 18 months, still crunchy, and they were ridiculously good.
I enjoy ferments and like anything with a cabbage base. My current fave is cabbage, onion, beetroot with harissa (chilli mostly) and amchur (dried green mango). It’s so tasty I end up eating it before the ferment really gets going! I don’t like it too salty but I just do it by taste. I don’t measure anything.
fermentation workshop:
this Monday we made a first culture of Koji on rice with Aspergillus oryzae. It was a great success, first day it smells as expected dirty sock, but at the end of the culture 48 hours is an incredible scent of exotic fruit and vanilla.
with this I launched today:
on the left Shio koji, a lactofermentation (water + salt + koji) to make a marinade-type taste-enhancer. It will be used to marinate meat, fish, vegetables. usable in 48h
in the middle a garum of pork meat, (water + salt + koji + minced pork meat) to make a sauce type Nuoc Nam of meat. usable in 3 months
on the right a miso of pumpkin seed, (roasted pumpkin seed + salt + koji) to make a miso condiment normally made with soya. usable in 4 months
I’m very interested in this topic but have zero experience. I also don’t know anyone locally who has experience. Can anyone recommend a good book, or perhaps a blog or YouTube channel?
here we have learned by reading books, blogs, making workshops with manufacturers and especially by experimenting.
We all come together to make good beer, good bread, miso, koji…etc
Being several is an advantage some are more skillful on precise fermentations, others on others.
and after once you have the virus you need the bible with recipes that go up in range (book of the best restaurant in the world, with such crazy stuff as locust garum lol):
