How to Make Fermented Cranberry Sauce - Learn the Essentials for How to Ferment Fruit Correctly

today i want to share with you how to make fermented cranberry sauce now fermenting fruit is a little different than fermenting vegetables but don't worry i've got a lot of tips and tricks so that you can be successful at fermenting cranberries or any other fruit [Music] hi sweet friends i'm mary and welcome to mary's nest where i teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods like bone broth ferments sourdough and more so if you enjoy learning about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every time i upload a new video well if you're new to fermenting fruit i want to go over some basics to help you so that you'll be successful but if you're an old pro at fermenting fruit i'll be sure to put the time stamps in the description below so you can jump ahead to where i actually start making the fermented cranberry sauce now as i said earlier fermenting fruit is a little different than fermenting vegetables and the reason is fruit ferments very quickly there are three stages that fruit goes through when it's fermenting it first starts in the lactic acid stage then it goes into the alcohol stage and then it goes into the vinegar stage but if you want to serve fermented fruit that's not alcohol you need to catch it basically when it's in that lactic acid stage so when your fermented cranberry sauce or any fermented fruit for that matter reaches the lactic acid stage that's the point that you want to get it into your refrigerator now even when ferments whether they're fruit vegetables or any type of ferment is refrigerated it still does continue to ferment just at a much slower rate than if it were at room temperature but since it is continuing to ferment and specifically in the case of fruit which tends to ferment relatively quickly even if it is refrigerated you want to make small amounts of fruit ferments because what will happen is after a few weeks of being refrigerated your fruit ferment will start to go into the alcohol phase so start with small amounts and plan to eat them within a few weeks otherwise in the case of cranberry sauce you're going to wind up with a boozy cranberry sauce now you have some options to help slow down that fermentation process when you're fermenting fruit and one of those options is to introduce some vegetables into your ferment now today we're just going to make a basic cranberry sauce and i'll talk about later how we go about sweetening it but if you want you can also start with making fruit ferments in the form of a chutney so you could basically take your cranberries and maybe add in some grated onion or chopped celery or different things like that and those vegetables or in the case onions things that are in the onion family will start to slow down the fruit fermentation process so sometimes for beginners who are new to making fruit ferments it can be a little easier to make a savory chutney however don't worry if you want to just make a basic cranberry sauce that's on the sweet side as opposed to a chutney that would be on the more savory side we are going to do that today and i'm going to help you to be successful at it now the key is you don't want to introduce any additional sweetness into making your cranberry sauce so all you want to use is basic filtered water filtered water works best because tap water with the chlorine can sometimes interfere with the fermentation process so if you can have filtered water or bottled water spring water things like that if you have well water that works very well but if all you have is tap water it's not the end of the world i've sometimes used tap water in making ferments and they've turned out okay i think it really depends on the level of chlorine or other chemicals that are in your local water so you may be wondering if we're just going to use water and we're not going to introduce any sweetness like maybe making the cranberry sauce with orange juice how do we eventually get this flavored especially since we're definitely not going to add sugar or honey at this fermentation stage well what we're going to do is we're going to let our cranberries ferment and once they reach that lactic acid stage which i'll explain in a minute how to recognize that we then are going to dump our cranberries into a bowl and at that point we're going to add whatever sweetness we want to add whether it's sukinat you know which is your whole dried cane juice or maple syrup works very well you can add honey at that point whatever you want you can even use white sugar if you want if you're still at the beginning of your journey from a processed foods kitchen to a traditional foods kitchen and then you're going to mix it up really well you're going to taste it to see if it's to your liking the sweetness is to your liking and then you're going to put everything back into a jar and then you're going to refrigerate it immediately and then you're going to make sure that you eat it within a few weeks alrighty well now that we've got that beginner lesson under our belt we can get ready to make our cranberry sauce our fermented cranberry sauce so let's go over the ingredients that we're going to need and the equipment that we're going to need but don't worry about writing any of this down if you open up the description under this video there'll be a link it'll say recipe and there'll be a link next to that if you click on that that'll take you over to my website where you'll have the printable recipe you can print it out you can read it online it'll have all the ingredients and the complete instructions on how to make this fermented cranberry sauce now in terms of ingredients the first thing that you're going to need is about three cups of raw cranberries and just look them over and make sure that you don't have any that might be rotten or soft those you want to get rid of next you're going to need a quarter cup of whey and how you get whey is by straining some yogurt you just want to strain plain yogurt a greek yogurt often has a lot of the whey already strained out of it so you may not get much way from that and an interesting point that i want to make that actually a viewer had shared with me she had purchased yogurt that also contained pectin and she had a hard time straining that to get way out so make sure that when you buy yogurt you just buy first of all plain yogurt with no flavor and make sure that it's a very natural yogurt that basically has milk and active cultures in it and no additional additives or added ingredients then basically what you're going to do is line a colander you can line it with a coffee filter or some cheese cloth or a flower sack towel you know those are favorites of mine whatever you have and then you're going to pour your yogurt into the lined strainer and you're going to let the whey drip out it may take a couple of hours it may take a little bit longer and then basically you're just going to have a very watery somewhat whitish or yellowish colored liquid that is whey it's very rich in probiotics and it's wonderful which is good bacteria which is wonderful for helping with jump starting ferments now as i've shared with you in the past i'm not a fan of using whey when i make vegetable ferments however when it comes to fruit ferments whey works very well and the taste in parts is fine now unlike vegetable ferments with a fruit ferment we're going to cut way back on the salt but we are going to use some salt and the reason is salt in ferments helps tamp down the bad bacteria while allowing the good bacteria to get a foothold in your ferment now i really like to use coarse ground sea salt it's that wet gray sea salt that you may see sold at the store or online and i like this because i find this always works very well with my ferments and you can usually find this at places like the celtic sea salt company i think they also go the company goes by the name selena naturally now and they sell a wonderful gray wet gray salt and it's very it's very coarse but the nice thing about this coarse gray salt is that it's very rich in minerals and it helps the ferment now in the case of the three cups of cranberries we're only going to use about a half a tablespoon of the coarse ground sea salt now if you don't have this coarse ground sea salt but you have another type of sea salt and one that's a fine ground sea salt then you're really going to cut back to maybe a quarter of a tablespoon because i've got a half a tablespoon of the coarse ground sea salt and so you'll want to go with just a quarter of a tablespoon of the fine ground sea salt now when it comes to making fruit ferments you have two options you can make a cooked fruit ferment or you can make a raw fruit ferment if you want to make a cooked fruit ferment what you would do is take your three cups of cranberries and one cup of water and cook your cranberries until they popped and were soft and then you would let them cool completely and then you would put them in your jar and proceed with your steps with the whey and the salt that start the fermentation process but i prefer to do a completely raw fruit ferment now there are a couple of different ways you can prepare your raw cranberries to go into your jar you can whirl them in a food processor i don't recommend a blender but you can whirl them in a fruit food processor until they get a little chopped up but you want to be careful because the more chopped up your cranberries are the quicker the fermentation process will move along and the quicker they may move to that alcohol stage so you can take a few at a time and just start to give them a little rough chop nothing fancy or you can just go ahead and put them into the jar which i'll show you what i do and just start to macerate them uh with as i've shared with you before what i call a crowd pounder what you use when you're making sauerkraut what i like to do is just put some cranberries in here get my crap pounder and just it takes a little elbow grease but really you're not looking to cut them or totally uh mash them because they're very hard but you're just splitting them ever so slightly that's going to allow the brine that we're going to make get into them and start to ferment them and you can also at this point start sprinkling in your sauce sauce your salt that helps break them up as well and gets it nicely distributed throughout the jar now i find doing it this way in the jar is very easy and it helps keep everything contained but if you want you can also just start using your crop pounder or if you don't have a craft pounder like a wooden spoon or a spatula a spatula and you can just start macerating your cranberries in your bowl and then transfer them to your jar and you see when i put a little weight on it with this kraut pounder it just it's the cranberry start to split now for three cups of cranberries i'm using a quart sized jar and you want to make sure that it's nice and clean yes you can sterilize it or as long as it's been washed with warm hot soapy water and allowed to air dry it should be fine but for a quart size jar about three cups of cranberries is perfect and a quart sized jar is a good amount to make unless you think you're going to be eating a lot of fermented fruit as i said you know it only lasts a few weeks in your fridge until it does start becoming moving into that alcohol phase so making a small amount to start is wise next we're going to take our quarter cup away and go ahead and pour that right down over our cranberries in the jar next i'm going to start pouring some of my filtered water over these cranberries we want to make sure everything's submerged but i do want to leave a little room because we need to put a weight in here because to allow for the fermentation process we need to keep these cranberries completely submerged under the brine now if you have the glass fermentation weights they work great but if you don't have those don't worry what i find works really well is a little jar and i like these little canning jars they're just known as jelly jars they're four ounce jars and i'll just go ahead and put one in and then i'll just push it down to see if i need to add more water or whatever the case may be but what i like about these jelly jars is as your ferment ferments it can sometimes bubble over and liquid can come out but when you use these jelly jars the liquid often just goes right into the jelly jar so that works very well now i think that this is going to be perfect i'm just going to add a touch more liquid but i think this jelly jar will keep everyone nicely submerged under the brine oh yeah that looks great then what you'll want to do is take your cap if you have the canning lid and the canning ring that may have come with your jar because what i'm using here is a quart size canning jar you can definitely use that or if you've got just one of the basic storage lids you can use this as well i'm just going to put that on and by screwing this down it puts pressure on that little jar to hold everything under the brine just like i mentioned if you have the glass fermentation weights you may also have the pickle pipes and the pickle pipes are something that if you have the canning ring you can put the pickle pipe on top of your jar instead of the canning lid and then you can just use the canning ring to hold that pickle pipe down and then and there's a reason why people use the pickle pipe but you can also use any other type of fermentation uh device that is out there there's a lot of different lids made for fermentation and if you have them great you can definitely use any of those and be very successful but i know that a lot of folks may not have those different accessories so i want to show you very basic ways of doing this with equipment you may already have in your kitchen the only difference is if you use this system where you are just using a little weight like you know even if you're using one of those glass weights or a little drawer like this and you're just using a canning lid or a storage lid you will need to burp your jar whereas with those different apparatus that are made for fermentation you don't need to worry about that but if you are using this system once a day and maybe even a little more maybe twice a day you're going to want to check and you're going to want to see as bubbles start to develop that's co2 and you need to be very careful because that is building up pressure and so you want to make sure that you loosen your jar you loosen your jar lid let out that pressure that gas that's building up and then re-tighten your jar as quickly as possible to let in as little oxygen as possible because oxygen is the enemy of ferments so just keep your eye on this as the bubbles start just release let that co2 out and then give it a twist to close it back up again now when it comes to ferments the fall is a great time to do this because ferments like to be somewhere and this is an average for most ferments like to be somewhere between 68 degrees fahrenheit and 70 to 72 degrees fahrenheit and that's kind of typical for fruit and vegetable ferments so find a place in your kitchen that you think will be somewhere in that temperature range and then put it hopefully in an undisturbed area and you also want to make sure that you keep it out of direct sunlight because ferments don't like extremes they don't like big temperature swings and if it's in sunlight and it starts to get very warm kind of above that 72 degree fahrenheit and then may drop down in the evening to below 68 degrees fahrenheit it doesn't like that now as that co2 gas begins to build up during the fermentation process which is a byproduct of the good bacteria it's giving off that co2 and that's a good sign but what you might want to do is take your ferment and put it in a bowl like this because even if you've made your lid very tight this is not completely airtight and as that fermentation starts to bubble and starts to take hold in your cranberries some liquid may dribble out a little bit or another problem that may happen is when you go to burp your jar the pressure that has built up in there with the co2 may drizzle down and having this in a jar just keeps everything a lot cleaner and a question that i get a lot is can you go ahead and just put this in your pantry do you need to leave it on your kitchen counter and no you don't need to leave it on your kitchen counter i tend to just find a little quiet place for it where it's out of direct sunlight and is in about that 68 to 72 degree temperature range and i don't put it into my pandu because i'm always worried that i'll forget about my ferments and i'll forget to burp them if i'm using this more old-fashioned system so but yes if you have a good memory or you post things on your pantry door to remind you you can definitely put this in your pantry and let me just clarify when i say put it in your pantry i mean put it in your pantry for the fermentation process eventually it's going to go into your refrigerator okay so what are you looking for so that you can catch this during the lactic acid stage and then go ahead if you choose as we'll talk about sweetening it and then getting it into your refrigerator what do you look for as the bubbles start building up and you're getting a lot of activity and you're starting to see some foam building up here along the top especially if you've done this in a cooked version where it's a little bit more of a mush so to speak and there's a lot less liquid it's ready to be sweetened and put in your refrigerator so the minute you start to see that we're going to move on to the next step and literally at this time of year when it is still a little little warm in our kitchens i'm in october uh making this in october and i'm in central texas so here it's still quite warm but no matter where you live if you've got the heat on now and you're and you're or you're baking and you've got your oven going and you're so that your kitchen is somewhere in that 68 to 70 to 2 72 degree fahrenheit range it's going to ferment very quickly so keep an eye on it because this could be ready in as quick as two to three days so if you start to see a lot of bubbling and a lot of activity you're ready to move on to the next step now i just want to mention one thing about adding additional flavorings to this as i said i don't want you adding any orange juice nothing like that that's a very sweet fruit or a sweet juice that's really going to speed up the fermentation process and make it more difficult for you to catch it during that lactic acid phase but if you want at this point when you're adding in your cranberries and your salt and you're macerating your cranberries you can go ahead and add in a little citrus zest if you like adding some orange zest you can add some grated ginger you can put a cinnamon stick maybe right down the middle so there are other ways to flavor this with various herbs and spices without adding additional sweetness that will speed up the fermentation process a little too quickly so i'm going to put this in a cozy place out of the way in my kitchen and once i start seeing that activity i'll bring you back we'll sweeten it and i'll show you what you need to do to get it into the fridge well between 36 and 48 hours i started to notice a little bit of bubbling and i'll overlay a picture so that you can see what i'm talking about and so i released the lid to let out some of the co2 the carbon dioxide and i had just a little bit of liquid in the bowl when i got closer to 72 hours the third day there was a lot of activity and i had quite a bit of liquid in my bowl so when i released the lid to let out the co2 i also took a sniff to see how it smelled because you want to catch your fruit ferment before it starts to smell yeasty or almost like beer because then it's starting to move into the alcohol phase but it still had just trying to describe it as sort of like a tangy if you've ever smelt like a sauerkraut or fermented pickles just sort of has that tangy not quite vinegary because that would be that would mean it had gone way too long it's it's more of just like a tangy aroma but i don't want you to worry if you're making this for the first time and you're not quite sure does it smell right does it not smell right generally within three to four days when you start to see that really active bubbling it's time to move on to the next step and get ready to refrigerate your fermented cranberry sauce if you get to the point where it's very a very strong yeasty smell or a very strong beer-like smell then it has moved into that alcohol phase and that can happen as quickly as around seven to eight days but i've generally found where i live here in central texas whereas i said october november it's still a little mild here and so i know somewhere in that three to four day range is going to be an appropriate time so but if you're making this for the first time and you're not sure don't worry as i said that's my ice maker as i said uh when you really start to see a lot of bubbling activity it's ready now i'm going to go in with clean hands and i'm going to take out the little jelly jar and as you'll see it's already itself filled with some liquid even though i had some overflow into my bowl i've also had overflow into my little jelly jar and i'm just going to go ahead and add that right back in now a little tip i want to share with you is if you notice i'm using a dark burgundy colored towel and i'm wearing dark colors is because the cranberry brine can stain so i just it will come out in the wash but i just want to give you a heads up on that now what you're going to notice once it becomes a very effervescent at in that three to four day maybe five day range depending on uh the temperature in your kitchen the fruit will float to the top and you'll notice there's just you know slowly you'll see a little bit of liquid on the bottom you'll see a lot and the reason the fruit's floating to the top is all that co2 gas is lifting it up now what you want to do at this point is drain the brine now don't discard it we're going to be using it and if we don't use all of it we still want to save it but what you're going to notice at this point is that the brine has really become a very rich in color that red deep cranberry color and the fruit has softened considerably now you're going to notice that your cranberries have become very soft you can easily squeeze them between your thumb and forefinger everything will be very soft and will have been beautifully macerated by the fermentation process but in case you feel that it's not quite broken up not enough that it's not macerated enough you can take what you've strained out of your brine just dump it into another bowl and then just go and get your crowd pounder or a wooden spoon or a spatula whatever you have and then you can just get in here and start breaking up any berries that you feel are not soft enough and i'm going to give you a little trick if you have a pastry cutter or even if you wanted to do this with two forks but the pastry cutter works really well if you have one of these on hand and you can get into your bowl and just go over your cranberries with your pastry cutter it'll break everything up and at the same time almost cutting the cranberries now once you have the cranberries chopped up to your liking the fun part begins we get to sweeten these and really you have a lot of options i like to use a raw unfiltered honey but you could use maple syrup you could also use one of the powdered sweeteners like sukinat or which is sugarcane natural it's simply sugar sugarcane juice that's been dried you could use a date sugar you could use maple sugar you could use coconut sugar you have a lot of options the only thing i recommend that if you use one of the dry sweeteners pulverize it first to the point where it's a powdered sugar it'll blend much better with the cranberries yes the granules will dissolve after a few days but sometimes it can take a little time and if this is something you want to eat pretty quickly i would recommend using the powdered form and you can just do it in a blender or a little coffee bean grinder whatever you have and then it'll blend in beautifully now amounts for the three cups of cranberries i like to use between a quarter of a cup and a third of a cup of honey and the same goes for maple syrup with your powdered sweeteners you'll want to experiment i would recommend starting you know with maybe a third of a cup to a half a cup and see what type of sweetness level you like but i find with honey a quarter to a third of a cup works well and i tend to like it a little on the tangy side so sometimes i even just go with a third of a cup but since this will be for everyone in the family to enjoy i'm going to go ahead and add in a third a one-third cup of honey next you just want to take a spatula and mix in whatever sweetener you've used until it's completely distributed evenly amongst your cranberries now after you incorporate your sweetener you can just check and see if you like the consistency of your cranberry sauce if you feel you want a little more liquid you can go ahead and add in more of your brine or you can just leave it like this now i'll show you how to decant this before we get ready to put it in the refrigerator but i want to mention something about this brine do not throw this out this is very rich in probiotics and there's a couple of different things you can do with this you can save someone save some of it to use the next time you make a fruit ferment and this will help jump start it in addition to the whey and the salt that you're using the other thing that you can do with this is put this in a glass with a little bit of sweetener a little bit of ice maybe a little seltzer or some type of carbonated water and you can make a lovely as they say mocktail a lovely beverage to enjoy especially during the thanksgiving and christmas season it's so colorful it's rich in probiotics it's got that great cranberry flavor it'll also have a cinnamon or ginger or a citrus peel flavor if you've added any of those to your original ferment and then you you know as i said you add a little sweetener a little seltzer put a straw on it it's lovely now if you want you can go ahead and just decant this right back into the jar in which you fermented it just clean off the rim put your cap on and put it in the refrigerator and then for thanksgiving you can put it into a bowl and put it on your table and you're all set but what i like to do is decant mine into smaller jars this is just an eight ounce jelly jar but you can use whatever you want and the reason that i like to do this is then i can just put these around the table on thanksgiving it looks very homemade and anybody who wants to enjoy fermented cranberry sauce can go ahead and use this little jar now i can put multiple jars on the table depending how many people i have around the table and it's also a good way to differentiate it from the traditional cranberry sauce that's cooked and made with white sugar and so on and so forth that people may enjoy eating instead of fermented cranberry sauce so it's nice to have that option and then you can just go ahead put the cap on put this in your refrigerator and then come thanksgiving you can just put it on your table like this uh so that everybody knows okay this is the fermented one and it's also handy when you go to eat leftovers and you just want to pull out a little bit and not the whole big jar so i hope that you'll enjoy this and now if you'd like to learn how to make more fermented foods including sauerkraut specifically fermented vegetables and pickles and how to ferment tomatoes and also how to make gardeniero which is a wonderful italian vegetable mix but how to ferment it be sure to click on this video over here and i'll see you over there in my texas hill country kitchen love and god bless

Channel: Mary's Nest

Views: 14,031

Rating: 4.9571047 out of 5

Keywords: How to Make Fermented Cranberry Sauce, How to Ferment Fruit, fermented cranberry sauce, Fermented Cranberry sauce recipe, how to ferment cranberries, how to ferment cranberry sauce, fermented fruit, fermenting fruit, Important information about how to ferment fruit, fermented foods, cranberries, fermentation, fermented, cranberry sauce, cranberry, fermented cranberries, marysnest, marys nest, Learn the Essentials for How to Ferment Fruit Correctly, fermenting, lacto fermentation

Id: gjkVSPBDfkI

Length: 31min 57sec (1917 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020