Lacto Fermented Beets - the EASIEST Way to Preserve Beets!

hey guys lady lee here from ladieshome.com and in this video i want to show you how simple it is to ferment beets what is fermentation really fermentation is when we use microorganisms such as yeast or bacteria to convert carbohydrates to either alcohol or organic acid under anaerobic conditions alcoholic fermentation is the process of using yeast to make wine or beer or bread we know that process lactofermentation is the process of using bacteria to convert sugars into lactic acid now that bacteria is actually a good bacteria that is naturally present in our digestive system so adding fermented foods to your diet can basically help you introduce more of this bacteria to your digestive system and therefore support it and help it digest food in a better way now lactic acid helps us preserve the food that we ferment because bad bacteria cannot grow in the presence of lactic acid so really it's a win-win however you look at it it's a great healthy food for us that helps us support our digestive system and it's an easy super easy really way to preserve food so first thing that i did is i removed the tops of the beets and i hope that you know that you can use the tops they're delicious you can use them in casseroles or any other way that you use greens i love making veggie patties with them and i'll link that recipe below it's delicious and really my favorite vegetarian recipe next wash your beets well because usually they still have a lot of soil on them and what we're going to do now is really prepare them to be packed into the jar so just remove the top and the bottom and it's very important to note that you can use any kind of beet that you have so if you're growing in your garden orange beets or yellow beets or long beads or whatever beets you're growing or whatever beets you can find at the farmers market you can use any of them with this recipe all right so we're going to peel the beets and then we're going to slice them and how thick or what shape you slice your beets is really up to you it doesn't matter just take into consideration that the thinner your pieces are the faster they will soften in the brine so if you like your beets to stay firm for longer if that's how you like eating them then don't go too thin on the slices [Music] do [Music] now that we have all of our beets peeled and sliced you simply add them to the jar pack them the best you can and of course make sure to wash your jar well before you before you use it i like to do that in a quart sized jar you can use a pint size too doesn't matter really i think i can fit all of it we want to leave about an inch of headspace actually a little bit more because we're going to use a fermentation weight and we need room for it so i think that you can stick another little piece here but that's just about enough [Music] the next thing that we're going to do is add seasonings i'm going to keep it really simple and just use about a tablespoon of mustard seeds you can definitely add garlic rosemary thyme peppercorns pickling spice you know the sky is the limit really you spice it however you like now all that we have left to do is to make the brine and this is super easy to do all we got to do is add kosher kinning or sea salt okay just use kosher canning or sea salt don't use the regular table salt i like my ferments pretty salty so i'm adding a tablespoon to each cup of water so i have three cups of water in here and i'll add three tablespoons of salt you can go down to about a teaspoon if you feel like this is too salty for you we want to kind of stir it until the salt dissolves [Music] that's it and then we take our jar of beets and we're gonna add the brine to just about cover the beets now we're going to take our fermentation weight and you can find a lot of different ideas online for fermentation weights but let me tell you don't use any silly trick i've learned this the hard way just invest 20 bucks in six i think it was 20 bucks and six fermentation weight like that and it will save you a lot of food and a lot of um mess okay so we're just putting the fermentation weight there will be some liquid coming out and that is a fine what i want to do is make sure that all of my beads are covered with the brine i'm going to push it down just a little bit i have just a little bit too much brine here so i'm gonna take a tablespoon and just remove a little bit of it so i don't have too much mist the most important part here is that all of the beads are covered by the brine that the weight is pushing them down and there is no part of the beads that is exposed to air all right now all we have left to do is to take a lead and i'm using a freezer lead because then they don't rust from the salt and the water and all that and we just close it not too tight finger tight i am going to take a ball like this and place my jar inside the ball because as the beads ferment some of the liquid might spill out so that just to catch the excess liquid now all that we have left to do is leave it on the counter on the kitchen counter at room temperature a quart jar takes about a week to two weeks to ferment and this is what we need to do as it starts to ferment after a couple of days you'll start seeing some bubble action and pretty much just bubbles rising to the top here these are the gases that are forming inside of the jar and we have to make sure that once a day we let them out and that is called barb the jar and all that we have to do is just turn the lead don't lift it up just turn it a little bit to open it leave it for a couple of seconds and then close it back and you got to do that once a day there are a lot of different brands of fermentation leads that let the gas out without you needing to do that i don't own any of those um i might link to them below if you want to check them out but it's really easy you just once a day turn it and then turn it back and that is called barbing the jar now um you'll start noticing that the brine is becoming foggy and that's okay it's normal it's actually part of the process after about seven ten days a quarter maybe even a couple weeks you'll notice that the fogginess starts to disappear and the brine starts to become clear again now it will never be as clear as it is right now and especially with beets they kind of leak all their color and paint everything purple so it might be a little hard to to see it but um you'll you'll figure it out you'll see it's not very hard you'll see that it's changing from foggy to being much clearer and that means that your beets are ready to eat are ready to serve they're fermented the fermenting process have been complete and you can enjoy them so a few things you want to make sure that you store your jar of beets in a cool area um i find that with beets because they're so firm they can't stay at room temperature for a few weeks but they will soften quicker if you then if you put them in the fridge or if you have a root cellar that's great somewhere around 40 fahrenheit is is great i keep mine in the refrigerator after the fermentation process is done and they can stay there for a very long time months really the only thing that you need to remember is that all through all this time we still want to make sure that the beets stay under the liquid under the brine at some point you can remove the fermentation jar the fermentation weight and the beets should still stay down make sure that every time that you take beets out of the jar you use a clean fork and that's it just keep them refrigerated or somewhere in a root cellar or cold temperatures and that's all there is to it guys it's really super simple only took us a few minutes and they are delicious we usually just use them as a snack so instead of picking up something like a cookie or whatever you can grab a couple of pieces of beets and it's very satisfying and tasty and much healthier for us or we can we use them we serve them a lot as a side for sandwiches or like a easy lunch or something like that you can add them to any salad add them to even egg salad or tuna salad or chicken salad or any other salad really they're great they're really really delicious they're salty and super healthy for us and that's it i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you learned something new give this a try um i think you like lacto fermentation it's really easy and the result is really tasty if you are not subscribed to my channel yet please subscribe and like this video and share it and i will see you again in the next one bye guys

Channel: Lady Lee's Home

Views: 302,239

Keywords: lacto fermented beets, lacto fermented beets recipe, lacto fermented beetroot, lacto fermentation, lacto fermentation pickles, lacto fermentation vegetables, lacto fermentation benefits, lacto fermentation explained, lacto fermentation recipes, preserving beets, preserving beetroot, preserving beets from the garden, preserving beets without canning, preserving beetroot without sugar, preserving beetroot without vinegar, preserving beetroot recipes, fermented beets

Id: IOU2L8hvKhs

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021