Fermenting in Appalachia

fermenting is all the rage right now a quick google will turn up all kinds of recipes from firming and everything from carrots to the more traditional cabbage you'll find all kinds of different ways of doing things and most recipes today they don't call for a croc like in days gone by but it's on a smaller scale so maybe those recipes will explain how to ferment a small amount that you just store in your refrigerator like using a glass mason jar in days gone by fermenting was a real method that people use to preserve food to put up for the winter just like they would dry things or canned things and of course they did this all over in lots of areas all over the world in fact but i can only speak to appalachia because that's the culture that i'm from but in days gone by people in appalachia they fermented large quantities of things they used a crock i have a small one here so this is one i i love this one because it is small and i can pick it up easily but they would use really big crocs i have we have a few in the basement we're lucky enough to have one of the my husbands the deer hunter one of his grandmothers which is really precious the things with those big crocs is they're hard to deal with because once they're full of food they're heavy and then they easily get cracks in them and then your stuff seeps out but in days gone by they needed that meaning that much food like for my family of four of course we're not fermenting enough food to make it all through the winter because we're blessed to live in the times that we do but in those days they needed to firm in as many uh crocs as they could to help them get through the winter typical things that they they would ferment was mostly cabbage so they'd make sauerkraut also pickled beans and corn or a mixture of pickled beans and corn so you've got the corn and the green beans and cabbage and peppers so sometimes people mix things up together my father-in-law papa tony he come from a large family there was eight children in his family and he told me that his mother would do several crocks of fermented things kraut pickled beans and corn throughout the summer and she would can them once the fermenting process is over you can actually put them in jars and and in the old days they did the open kettle method which is where they just had everything hot but today you would use the uh boiling water canner and then you would can them for the appropriate amount of time and then put them on your shelf well he said that she would do that all through the summer but those last few crocks full of food she would actually just leave in the crock whatever it was if it was sauerkraut or if it was pickled beans and corn and then the family would eat that first they would eat straight out acro out of the croc so when that was all gone then they would turn to the jars that they had already sitting on the shelves in the can house where they kept their things but he told me a really funny story one time of course when he was a little boy running around he knew about those crocs in the summer where he knew where they were kept and he knew where they were at and his mother when she made sauerkraut she also pickled or fermented the core of the cabbage so she would just cut out the core and put it down in with the other chopped up cabbage so he knew those cores were in there and he liked them so he said he would be out running around playing having a big time and he'd get hungry he didn't want to go in the house he would sneak in there and reach his dirty little hand down in among all that cabbage till he found a core and then he pull it out and eat it and he said he could remember that he'd look at his arm and then it would be clean where he'd stuck it down in the fermented brine you know it washed his hand while he was getting him a snack of course he said if his mother had known that he did that he'd get the beating of his life but anyway he really chuckled when he told me about that you could tell it was a good memory that he had from childhood so the other thing about fermenting in appalachia is that people go by the signs so i'm by no means an expert on the zodiac signs but the zodiac signs each month has a sign everyone knows that about their horoscope and all those different things but each sign is also related to a body part so you'll hear people often in appalachia say you can't um pickle they sometimes they call fermenting pickling it's kind of interchangeable but actually fermenting it only takes the vegetable and the salt and then nature ferments it pickling it actually usually typically uses vinegar and usually some type of sugar or something but at least vinegar so that's true pickling but in appalachia often you'll hear like i said the pickled beans and corn you even heard me say it but it's truly fermenting that is it's not pickling it's fermenting but anyway so all you'll need is your item and your salt so if it's sauerkraut you need the cabbage and the salt if it's pickled beans and corn you need the corn the green beans if you're going to add cabbage and the salt and that's how you make it how you mix it all up but there's other things like i was talking about the signs you need to make sure it's in the right side so in my family granny and pap when they believed this is what had been handed down through their family is when you were gonna ferment you need to make sure the sign was in the head so that's if you don't have it in the head then your ferment may not work and your stuff may rot in the crock or in the jar or whatever you're using well when i got married it just turned out that my husband's family although they're from a different county about three counties away haywood county they also believed in firming it in the head so that was easy for me and matt we both agreed that's when you ferment is when the signs in the head other people i've heard say they prefer other signs i think one of matt's uncles or matt's ants excuse me she would prefer to pickle or to ferment when the sign is in the heart that's like when she wants to make hers but the head seems to work for us and that's is a pretty common one i've heard other people say that as well so that's one thing you always need to make sure if you're following appalachian ways that you make sure where the sign is before you ferment another one that i grew up hearing and also matt grew up here and is fairly common is that when you are fermenting things if there's a lady in the house or a girl helping they're not supposed to help you when it's that time of the month because it can cause your ferment not to work now i don't know for sure if that's true or not but if you've just decided that you're gonna make uh 50 pounds of sauerkraut i'm not gonna i've never thought well i'll take a chance and just find out and see if it's true or not because you'd hate to think about all that food going to waste but that's another common thing that you'll hear that if a lady or a girl is on her monthlies then she does not need to help when it comes to fermenting food items for for winter use in a little bit i'm going to show you one of my favorite fermented recipes actually come from a reader from the blind pig in the acorn cheryl she sent it to me several years ago and it's actually a fermented chow chow recipe and it's handed down through her family in west virginia and she makes it every year and since she's give it to me i make it every year it's really good in the wintertime with cornbread and beans soup beans and cornbread it's also good as a side with other dishes even on a salad i've even eaten it like that before but the best thing about it that i really like and she liked to for the same reason she said is because it's like an end of season recipe so end of the garden kind of thing so you just kind of make it out of what you got on hand maybe you've got a cabbage maybe you've got some peppers you've got some green tomatoes and you just kind of make a combination of that and then you ferment it so i'm going to show you how to do that now the name of this fermented recipe is grandma itis chow chow as i said i got the recipe from a reader of the blind pig and the acorn it's an unusual recipe for chow chow because it's fermented most chows are pickled with vinegar to make the chow chow you need five pounds of equal amounts of garden vegetables cabbage peppers cucumbers and green tomatoes is what i use i usually have more cucumbers than other items and the recipe still works out you'll need three tablespoons of non-iodized salt you'll need a weight of some sort to keep the mixture submerged i've used a small pint jar filled with water and sealed set on a bread plate or on several overlaid saucers and i've also used a plastic bag filled with water some people use a rock they have a rock that they keep really clean they scrubbed it really well and that's the rock they use to submerge items that they're fermenting you'll need a hand chopper a knife or a food processor this go around i just used a knife and chopped everything up as i went often if i'm in a hurry i'll throw it all in the food processor if you do use a processor you have to really keep an eye on the mixture because cucumbers and peppers can quickly become mush you'll need grape leaves for covering the mixture grape leaves have tannins in them that help keep the vegetables crisp as they ferment you can use leaves from the cabbage if you don't have any grape leaves i have several grapevines so getting grape leaves are easy for me but using cabbage leaves from the cabbage you chop up will work just fine if you know someone who has grape vines i bet they'll let you have a few leaves you'll need a crock of some type i'm lucky to have several crocs but i know they can be downright expensive to buy i've heard you can use plastic food grade containers to ferment in but i've never used one myself folks say you can get food grade containers for free at some restaurants if you ask for them i found an excellent deal on glass canisters earlier this year and picked up several i've used them for my fermenting this summer and they've worked out great cheryl who shared this recipe with me had a super ideal for crocs she keeps an eye out at thrift stores and yard sales for crock pot inserts if you think about it they are very similar to a real croc as i mentioned before it's also best if you make fermented foods in the right sign we always make fermented things when the signs are in the head a quick google will probably tell you what sign it is especially helpful is a zodiac based planning calendar in my area funeral homes and banks often give them out for free at the beginning of a new year the zodiac calendars are also handy if you plant your garden by the signs start layering the vegetables into your container as you get them chopped up sprinkle a little of the three tablespoons of salt on each layer and massage with your hand as you push down once you have chopped all the vegetables continue to work the chow until enough liquid comes out to cover the mixture when it's pushed down this doesn't take long since peppers and cucumbers have so much liquid in them when there's enough liquid to cover the chow place your grape leaves or cabbage leaves on top and tuck the edges down between the wall of the container and the chow set your weight on top and then cover the container and set it in a place out of the way i've never not had enough liquid but if you don't have enough to cover your vegetables you can make a brine of one teaspoon of non-iodized salt per cup of water keep an eye on the chow but it should be ready in 14 to 21 days and it's totally normal for there to be a little scum or mold on top of the mixture just scoop it off and throw it away if the mixture truly goes bad you'll know it by the smell fermented things have a nice clean almost a yeasty smell with no decaying undertones once the chow is fermented you can put it in your fridge and eat it until it's all gone it will continue to ferment slowly in the fridge and last several weeks like that or if you'd like to put it in jars you drain the liquid and bring it to a hard boil then you pack chow the chow in sterilized jars and then fill it with the hot liquid you seal and process in a water bath for 10 minutes fermented items are full of good probiotics but the water bath process will likely kill most of them off another alternative is to put part of the chow in the fridge and can the rest that way you get the benefit of eating fresh fermentation for your body but you also get to put up food for the winter that's shelf stable i hope you enjoyed this little piece on fermenting and if you have a favorite fermented recipe that's been handed down through your family or you've discovered along the way i hope you'll leave it in the comments and tell us about it i also hope that you'll share this video with your friends and neighbors and that you'll subscribe to my channel if you haven't already but mostly i just hope that you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 23,017

Rating: 4.9560437 out of 5

Keywords: Chow chow recipe, chow chow food, fermented chow chow, fermented chow chow recipe, fermented foods, fermented pickles, fermented cabbage, fermented vegetables, how to ferment, Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian foodways, Appalachian food ways, fermenting in glass, fermenting in jars, fermenting in a crock, folklore, food folklore, west virginia, best sign to pickling, best sign to ferment, menstruating woman can't help, can't ferment on period, zodiac sign for fermenting

Id: KwcvgvqUnRc

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020