Summary Simple guide to fermentation (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Speaker 0 Lacto fermentation, fermenting vegetables or fruit with a little salt is probably the easiest and most useful type of fermentation to get started with. It gives you an incredibly effective but simple way to preserve and transform ingredients and make very delicious food. I'm gonna show you the simple 2% rule that you can use to do this sort of fermentation easily and consistently. I'll go through this basic method and then we'll go a bit more in-depth with more examples and creative variations so you get a deeper understanding of the process and can see how it might fit in with how you like to cook. I should firstly touch on why it's called lacto fermentation.
Speaker 0 That is nothing to do with dairy. It's because the bacteria that will transform our food through this fermentation are lactic acid producing bacteria. They're friendly bacteria that exist all around us and are in many of our favorite most delicious foods already, Often giving them an appealing acidity, saltiness, and umami. We'll come back to more detail on what's going on in this process in a moment. But first, let's go through that simple 2% rule, which is all you really need to know to get started with this type of fermentation.
Speaker 0 So the 2% rule is simply that you want to ferment your ingredients with 2% of their weight in salt. That's a level that's safe but not over salty to the point that it's unpalatable. So you need 2% salt to your ingredients and then you also need to prepare a 2% salt brine if you're going to be adding liquid and I'll talk about that in a second. So the simple example is I have a vegetable I want to fermentation I weigh it, work out what 2% of that weight is and add that much salt. Then assuming I'm fermenting this in a brine, I'll submerge it in a 2% salt brine.
Speaker 0 So that's made with 2 grams of salt for every 100 mil of water. I'll either fully submerge it in a jar or vacuum pack it in a vacuum bag, and I'll explain more about those options in a second. And then I would leave that vegetable to ferment for probably between 5 days 2 weeks depending on the flavor that I want. That's the basic principle and the 2% salt rule that you need to work by. Now let's go a little deeper into some of the process.
Speaker 0 So for this lacto fermentation method, the 3 key factors that we're controlling are salt, oxygen, and time. The first factor that we've already discussed a bit is the salt. The lactic acid bacteria that we want to cultivate can thrive and multiply in 2% salt, while other harmful or dangerous bacteria like botulism can't. So our 2% salt rule gives us an environment and safety control where our desired bacteria can live and as they consume carbohydrate, they turn that into lactic acid. You want to be using a nice natural salt.
Speaker 0 I've actually gone to the process of making my own salt from seawater before, but just any good natural salt will do. The next key factor for this fermentation is lack of oxygen. Lactic acid bacteria can also multiply with out oxygen which some other harmful bacterias can't. So preventing oxygen from reaching our ingredients either by submerging them in a 2% salt brine or by vacuum packing them with their 2% salt, gives us another safety control and a microenvironment that's promoting our bacteria that we desire and not other harmful bacteria. And the food's protected while it ferments in this microenvironment we've created for our desired bacteria.
Speaker 0 If you're fermenting in a jar, the easiest way to keep the ingredients away from oxygen is to submerge them in that 2% brine and then keep them under the level of the water using a little weight. And that could be a specially designed glass fermentation weight or you can improvise with something like an upturned lid. When you're fermentation jars, you need to allow for some of the gas produced during fermentation to escape. So I like these little silicone lids for that, but you can also just screw on the lids not too tight so that gas can gently escape during the fermentation. When you're fermenting in vacuum bags, you'd place your ingredient and the 2% salt in the bag and vacuum pack it on I'll.
Speaker 0 And you may or may not want to add some 2% salt brine in there with it depending on what you're fermenting and how you're gonna use it. I try to use compostable vacuum bags as much as possible so that I'm not generating plastic waste. As your product ferments, these bags can balloon up in a way that can start to look pretty sketchy. But small amounts of gas can pass out through these bags and so far, I've never had 1 explode on me, although I know people that have. So if you want to, you can always vent a little bit of the gas out of the bags and then reseal them.
Speaker 0 Finally, the time that we let the fermentation run for will determine how far those ingredients ferment and how acidic they become. We leave the ingredients to ferment at room temperature, but bear in mind that your environment is gonna affect that fermentation. So on warm summer days, fermentation is gonna occur more rapidly than it is in the colder winter months. Generally, I'm fermenting for between 5 days to 2 weeks before moving these ingredients to the fridge for storage. But you should taste along during the process and use your judgement.
Speaker 0 If you want a fancy word for this, you can call it organoleptic assessment, which really just means tasting and smelling things. You'll probably find with things that you start making regularly that you'll be able to judge ferment pretty well quite quickly and sometimes even just by looking at them know when they're ready. So when it comes to flavors and ingredients you might wanna work with, there's almost endless options. So as a rule, I use organic fruits and vegetables as much as possible. And here I actually used some beet root from my own raised beds and then fermented that along with the salt that I'll made myself from seawater.
Speaker 0 And that was just a cool experiment to do really where I was able to make something where I haven't bought anything. All of this has been made with things that I've produced and I've been engaged with the process at every step along the way. And obviously you don't have to do that, but buying good quality fruits and vegetables, ideally organic, I think is a good rule of thumb for fermentation. And you can add herbs, spices, flowers and other flavors to your ferment. So you can get really quite experimental here.
Speaker 0 Find the things that you like, but also don't be afraid to try something new. And then once you have your finished ferments, you might wanna use them quite simply as things like pickles to add salt and acidity and crunch to dishes or just have as snacks. Or you might wanna use them as part of your cooking, maybe to add acidity to sauces or complexity to dishes. I really like lacto fermented charred tomatoes, for example, as a base for a sauce with a complex and smoky flavor. And of course, things like fermented chillis are amazing for making hot sauces.
Speaker 0 And you can be quite creative, you can be pureeing things or drying them, using them in marinades and dressings. 1 thing I really enjoyed that I had on the menu a little while ago was lactofermented potatoes which I then made into a tureen that was cooked and deep fried. Like all deep fried potato products it was absolutely delicious as you'd expect. And really interesting because the salt had penetrated all the way through the potato so it's seasoned all the way through and then just have this slight kick of acidity. So I hope this video in general has been useful and either a good introduction to lactofirmentation or maybe given you some ideas for other things to try if it was already something you're familiar with.
Speaker 0 And do have an explore through some of my other videos. And maybe if you're interested in fermentation in particular, you might wanna look at, how I've made my own misos and koji. Thanks very much for watching, and I'll see you soon.