Fabulous Fermented Foods
The process of fermenting foods, both to preserve them and make them more nutritious, is as old as humanity itself.
In every culture, fermented foods are valued for their health giving properties and complex tastes.
Beer and wine are created by the process of fermentation, yogurt is fermented milk, and sauerkraut is fermented cabbage. Cheese is also made through the actions of bacteria on a milk culture. These are just a tiny example of fermented foods we are familiar with here in North America.
Naturally fermented, living foods enhance and support our physical systems and our overall health. And our own bodies could not function or digest food without the action of the microbes, yeasts and bacteria that live within us.
Unfortunately, here in the so-called civilized western world nearly all of the prepared food available in our stores is pasteurized, cooked, micro-waved, irradiated and filled with chemical additives.
This is done in the name of so-called “food safety”….as if eating dead, chemical laden, irradiated food is somehow better for us than the natural living foods our ancestors have eaten for thousands of years!
The rates of disease, obesity, diabetes, digestive issues and other serious health problems continues to skyrocket in North America. Many of our ills can be reversed or even cured by changing our diets to real food, but instead we are prescribed more chemicals in the form of drugs.
Fortunately, we can improve our own health dramatically by incorporating live foods into our diets, both by eating more raw foods (salads, uncooked vegetables, etc) and adding real, live fermented foods to our meals.
Finding these foods today in our local supermarkets is tough! For instance, the sauerkraut that is available in most stores has been pasteurized… it is no longer a living food. It has been turned into cooked, pickled cabbage. It tastes good on a hot dog, if you still consume mystery meat, that is, but it doesn’t contain much in the way of nutrition.
Yet, not so very long ago nearly everyone had a barrel of sauerkraut fermenting in their root cellar or basement to eat over the winter months.
So, how can we get more live fermented foods into our diets? In the golden future I envision for our communities, local food artisans will sell or barter these foods….village co-ops will have barrels of sauerkraut, pickles and raw cheese and yogurt available. And more!
But, in the meantime, since fermentation happens to food whether we want it to or not, we can easily let nature take its course and make this stuff at home.
A couple of years ago I happened to pick up a bottle of kombucha at a health food store. This beverage is made from fermented, sweetened tea and has been around for thousands of years
It is believed to have originated in China, and it became a health fad in the USA about 20 years ago.
The fermentation process creates a mildly carbonated tea with a slightly vinegary taste, and as a living food it contains beneficial bacteria and yeasts that support digestive health as it is full of pro-biotics. You could call it a healthy soda pop.
So, I bought a bottle to try, and I loved it. I found it refreshing, effervescent and tasty. Although the taste of the stuff does appear to fall into the “love it or hate it” category….my sister thought it was disgusting! (For the record, this is not the only thing we disagree on….)
Store bought konbucha commands a pretty hefty price, all things considered, at around $4 for a 16 oz bottle. Luckily, however, this stuff turns out to be pretty easy for the amateur to brew at home…or so they say.
But to get started, you need a SCOBY, which is an acronym for a Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast that will act as the mother culture, like sourdough starter, or the mother you see floating around in in organic apple cider vinegar, to ferment your batch of kombucha.
But where to get yours mitts on your own personal SCOBY? The folks at Aura Natural Foods in Fredericton occasionally have some that their patrons donate, because once you start brewing kombucha every batch creates a new SCOBY.
It sounds kind of like that classic Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”, which were these cute little fuzzy critters that everyone wanted until it turned out that they multiplied even more rapidly than the proverbial rabbits so that they soon overran the Enterprise, but I digress.
Or, you can actually order one online…even from Amazon!
This seemed like an awful lot of work and hassle just to get possession of a slippery wad of yeast colony, but further research revealed that many people successfully culture a SCOBY from a store bought bottle of kombucha. Which I am in the process of doing right now.
Here’s the formula I used:
2 bags organic black tea
1 Tbsp cane sugar (make sure it’s cane, not that stuff made from GMO sugar beets)
2 cups boiling water
Mix this together in a clean glass bowl and let it steep for 10 minutes, then remove the tea bags and allow the mix to cool enough so that it won’t kill the culture you will be adding.
After it’s cooled, pour in a whole bottle of store bought, organic kombucha. Pick a bottle that has as much little bits of “mother” in it you can find.
Cover with a clean towel fastened with a big rubber band, set it someplace dry and warm (I used the top of my fridge) and leave it alone for two weeks. My SCOBY that you see pictured is just 3 days shy of 2 weeks old, and it looks ready to rock & roll.
After your SCOBY is formed, store it in the refrigerator in the extra liquid in a glass jar with a plastic lid (no metal) until you are ready to use it.
I will brew my first batch of kombucha next week and report back to you, so stay tuned!
Stephanie Kelley
