The Complete Beginner's Guide to Fermenting Foods at Home

[Music] things are starting to shift in the food world actually shove back in time because people are really starting to get the taste for fermentation they are craving the funkiness and like I've said many times before things like refrigerator technology to preserve food to extend the life of your food that is brand-new in the grand scheme of human beings we have been preserving food using different preservation techniques for food for millennium and that is the way we survive so what happened was human beings actually adapted to preserve food so now the research is out that things like fermented food is actually good for your gut good for digestion because that's the way we've been eating forever but over time we slowly started pushing a lot of that stuff out of our diets at least in certain cultures like us culture but it's coming back and it seems like you guys are really enjoying it a lot of these fermentation videos have done really well and that is an amazing sign that you are out there cooking up a storm and fermenting stuff not just cook it you can call it cooking but it's like a it's like a magic cooking it's a different type of cooking and once you get a feel for it everything changes and you start to really understand and take advantage of fermentation I'm going to give you the complete guide to lactic acid anaerobic fermentation we're gonna be covering sauerkraut some kimchi a little bit of sriracha just plain old vegetable ferments but first we got to go to the market because when it comes to fermenting stuff I always get the freshest thing because this is a big this is a big investment you're putting a lot of time to this stuff so you want fresh ingredients so let's to the market every Wednesday there's a farmers market right by my house which is my favorite one because there's only a few farmers so you can really get to know the farmers and today I cooked up some fresh sourdough bread so I'm gonna give it to one of the farmers and we'll see what he has in stock for fermentation so I just want to cover a little bit of the science first so you get a general understanding of what's happening with fermentation at least in these specific products so we've got lactic acid that's being produced and that's what really gives it the sourness so when you're used to eating you know sauerkraut there it's called sauerkraut it's super sour that is because of the lactic acid specifically lactobacillus so lactic acid bacteria is present on all vegetables but when you're preserving it you want it beating out the other bacteria because there's a lot of bad bacteria that cause spoilage in food so we need to create the perfect environment for the lactic acid to flourish and all of the other bacteria to not grow because once those start growing that's when you got mold that's when you got spoilage and you don't want that stuff now it turns out that lactic acid bacteria likes an anaerobic environment so you have aerobic environment with air you have anaerobic without air so lactic acid bacteria flourishes in the environment without air so all of these fermentations that we're doing today we're gonna do them submerged under water and what that does is create an anaerobic environment so no air gets in because once the food touches the air that's when you get the spoilage that's when you get those weird moldy gross happening when you pull something out of your fridge and it's spoiling and it's growing mold we don't want that and the other thing is we're going to be adding salt to all of these which also helps the preservation which helps push out all of the other bacteria so between those two things between the salt and the anaerobic environment that's what's going to create the perfect environment for these ferments two more things before we get started one when it comes to cleanliness when you're fermenting these things you don't need a completely sterile environment you don't have to freak out this isn't canning it's a little bit less intense all you need is hot soapy water and you'll be fine - when it comes to lactic acid fermentation you'll definitely get some buildup on the top of your food from time to time you might get some like yeast buildup that's alright that's not the end of the world if you get any like colorful mold that is definitely more of a danger I would probably throw away your stuff some people they don't care they just scoop it off but there's a difference between just a little bit of yeast buildup that you can just scoop off and continue compared to a mold forming something went wrong if the molds forming and I would definitely start over Oh number three there is one more when you're dealing with these types of lactic acid ferments the temperature range should be around 60 to 75 degrees that's when you're going to get the best results any colder it's gonna really slow down the fermentation and any hotter you start running into a lot of issues because it's so sped up and you get a lot of weird growth so that is a good range to have try to create that environment or just do it seasonally when your house is that temperature we're gonna start off with sauerkraut which is the most basic lactic acid fermentation most people know what sauerkraut is but a lot of people haven't had good homemade sauerkraut which is a game changer I always have sauerkraut fermenting because I can toss it on anything and that's the thing about fermentation it can be used as a condiment you don't have to be using it as like the main course just sprinkle it in dishes and it's gonna be delicious so an average cabbage is about 5 pounds so every five pound cabbage you're actually going to use 3 tablespoons of salt and if you don't have asked in your house you can actually just weigh it right at the market just like I did right here throw it on the scale oh cool that's a four pound that's a five pound and just adjust the ratios from there I like taking a mandolin and slicing it up really thin it's a lot easier to do it goes quicker but you can totally use a knife when it comes to sauerkraut cabbage is the main ingredient but of course you can add some other flavorings you can add some spices but just make sure that you don't add too much because the fermentation is really going to intensify the flavors so if you add three cloves of garlic you might end up with a crazy product so for this one of my favorite things to do is just a little bit of peeled carrot so just peel the carrots and then a little bit of jalapeno just a few slices which is really gonna go a far away to add some spiciness now take some type of clean bucket or bowl whatever you have at all of your ingredients your cabbage in there I've got my carrot my jalapeno and then we're gonna add in our salt and remember three tablespoons per five pounds of cabbage that is the ratio you can go a little more you can go a little less not gonna be a big deal now you're gonna smash everything up really smash everything up you're gonna start to release all of the juices and what's happening is you're creating a natural brine so this is creating our anaerobic environment so you're creating this perfect liquid solution that is going to ferment the actual cabbage in that and remember when you're crushing all of this up that's going to be the final texture of your actual sauerkraut so make sure you get it to the point where it is nice and broken down now you can ferment it right in this bucket but I am going to add it to a clean jar right here I like seeing the action the bubbles form over time and now here's a really nice trick for fermenting you can actually add a few of the bigger cabbage leaves on top to push everything down I didn't do that here but the goal is to submerge all of the cabbage under water as much as you can get so if you take a plastic bag fill it up half with water and you put that as a weight this is going to be your best solution because what's gonna happen is it's gonna submerge everything under the water keep it in that anaerobic environment and this is perfect cuz it keeps everything submerged but you still have room for the gas bubbles to escape they're just gonna push right on out of your jar when it comes to actual fermenting time you can go as little as I would say five days up to five weeks and the longer you go the more lactic acid production you get the more sourness so some people like it really intense and that goes for all of these fermentations it's your preference the more you let it go the more health benefits you usually get I like to go around two weeks that's my sweet spot of a nice sauerkraut that isn't too intense just make sure you check the sauerkraut every few days just to make sure there's no build-up you might get this little white East on top which is alright you can just scoop that out and just let it go and then just taste it after you know a week whenever taste the sauerkraut and see where you're at and then after two weeks for me perfect sauerkraut you can see there's little bubbles pushing through those the gas bubbles that is some tasty stuff all right let's switch gears a little bit to the old sriracha sriracha is one of the most popular hot sauces these days and I don't think a lot of people know this but one of the reasons it's so special is because the peppers are actually fermented so it gives it an extra layer of flavor a little bit of funkiness that people aren't used with just like regular Tabasco sauce but it is so easy to make at home when it comes to the actual chili for sriracha completely up to you you can ferment any chili I got a bunch of Fresno chilies because they are sort of medium hotness they're very similar to jalapeno but they're red and they are nice and sweet so you get a good balance so I can get a lot of hot sauce without it being super super intense and that's what I'm looking for I like sriracha as a condiment that I can really use almost like a ketchup instead of just using a few drops of like super hot spicy stuff I'm gonna deseed most of the peppers because again I don't want it too spicy so I deseeded about 90% of them and just kept a few of them whole to get the actual spice ratio right I added that to a food processor with a little bit of ginger a little bit of garlic some salt and some sugar and I just let that puree for like three or four minutes until it is all crushed up [Music] now you've got this mixture and this is actually an anaerobic environment even though we're not submerging it underwater it still has no oxygen getting inside of there so those are going to ferment they're going to increase the lactic acid and they are going to preserve now every day because we are not submerging it you're just going to fold this over you're just gonna kind of spoon it around and make sure it's all mixed up so nothing harmful grows on top and you can see as you mix it around after a few days you're gonna start to get these little gas bubbles popping just like that and that is a good sign that the fermentation is happening I let mine go about five days you can go longer I'm actually doing another batch I'm gonna try maybe like fifteen days and see the difference see the difference in funkiness and how that affects the flavor and then all you have to do is throw that in a blender add vinegar which is an optional step because to be honest I was just eating this stuff which was incredible more of like a rough taste that was so good spooned on food but I did want to try the actual sriracha style hot sauce so I pureed it with vinegar and that was it I added it to a bottle and you've got delicious hot sauce and let me tell you there's nothing like homemade hot sauce this stuff has been incredible I think it's better than sriracha much fresher gotta try this this is probably I would say this is one of the easiest ones to do oh look how good this stuff is oh my goodness tastes just like sriracha it is incredible alright finally you guys are getting it you have been bugging me it's it's my fault because I've been telling you about my kimchi if you follow my Instagram life by Mike G I post a lot of pictures of all my fermentation projects but everyone's been bugging me about my kimchi and I have promised for a while that I was gonna teach you and finally the time has come let's get into this kimchi recipe this is the perfect time for kimchi right around fall that's traditionally when they make kimchi in Korea they actually bury it underground to ferment that's when the Napa cabbages are in season luckily my trusty farmer he had about four of them and I snatched a bunch so I'm gonna do a traditional kimchi but you can use other vegetables I think in the summer they tend to use daikon a pure daikon kimchi because it ferments better with the hotter temperatures dick this cabbage in the summer it I've done it in the summer and it goes bad very quickly so just be aware of that so I'm gonna chop up the cabbage which isn't traditional usually in Korean recipes they keep them whole it's a little more difficult it takes a little more time so I'm giving you the simple form and then you're going to heavily salt it it doesn't really matter how much you salt just make sure you get a bunch on there because you're gonna wash it all away later the salt is going to pull a lot of the moisture out of the cabbage and it's gonna give you a crispier final product as you know all that water soaked in the cabbage just make sure you get that in a bowl with some weight and let that sit for at least four hours you can do that overnight and a lot of that moisture is going to pull out [Music] and then we're just gonna wash off all the salt make sure you get it all washed off and then just squeeze it dry make sure it's dry I am gonna add a few other veggies I'm using a little bit of scallions some radish and just a little bit of apple I liked a little bit of sweetness and it does help with the fermentation to add the extra sugar for the scallions I like cutting them long ways into nice chunks because when you get a whole piece of fermented scallion it's just a real treat and then for the radish and the after I'm just gonna cut them into little cubes now we're moving on to the marinade which really makes kimchi so special because all of the other ones are super basic but we're creating this delicious flavorful marinade so what we're gonna do is we're gonna puree ginger and garlic in a food processor until it's nice and chunky now we're gonna make a goopy liquid with sweet rice flour which is glutinous rice just ground up into a flour I used about three tablespoons to one quart of water and I just boiled that until it was super thick just like this so add your ginger and garlic to that stuff and then I'm gonna add some fish sauce which really gives it some nice funkiness and also increases the salt levels which you're gonna need because we washed off all that salt traditionally with a lot of Korean kimchi recipes they also add those little fermented shrimps I've gotten those before they're not my favorite and they're much harder to find you need to go to a Korean restaurant so you can skip the fish sauce and the little shrimps completely if you want to do this vegan I've done that many times it's totally fine I'm also going to add just a little bit of salt again since we have the fish sauce in there that's going to be a good amount of salt but I do like adding a little extra salt to increase the flavor and then you're going in with your Korean chili flakes this is the most important ingredient and you can load those in depending on if your korean flakes are mild or spicy mine were more on the mild side so I went in with ton and that's what gives it the spice and of course that awesome red coloring I tasted this marinade and I thought it needed just a little bit more spice and a little bit more fish sauce so I added those adjust as you need now all you got to do is add your cabbage add your vegetables add your marinade and just mix that up and you have your delicious marinated kimchi ready to ferment [Music] put that into your jar and this is gonna be a much quicker ferment than the actual sauerkraut so we're not actually going to weigh it down but every day maybe twice a day to make sure you push all of the vegetables down under the liquid because things will still build and you'll see the napa cabbage is still gonna release a lot of liquids so you're gonna have a ton of liquid to submerge the vegetables in when it comes to fermenting the actual kimchi I actually keep the lid on so what's gonna happen is if you keep the lid on you're gonna trap in the carbon dioxide that's being released so it's trying to be released you saw in the sauerkraut those little bubbles they get to shoot up right into the environment but if you jar it up and you capture it you're gonna get a fizzy or product because you're gonna have that extra gas in the ferment some people really like the effervescence the fizziness of that type of product totally up to you it's popular with kimchi of course when it comes to beer when it comes to kombucha you've seen that that's how you get the carbonation in there I'm gonna do that for the kimchi I would say this type of kimchi you can ferment for three to seven days that should be fine and just taste it and when it's super sour and super funky or it's not whatever level you like just cut it off throw it in the fridge the fridge is gonna totally slow down the fermentation it still will age in the fridge it will ferment just very slowly and then that's good for months in your refrigerator but again it will get funky over time if you can save it if not that's a good sign that means you're eating a lot of kimchi which is super tasty and super good for you so for the last thing I wanted to show you just how to lacto-fermented any type of vegetables with a salt brine so all the other ones had a different process this is simply going to be taking vegetables and adding that salt brine and letting it lacto-fermented the other ones fermented so we are going to use beets beets are very much in season right now a delicious root vegetable a lot of people don't like them but a lot of people haven't tried them in unique ways and this typically would be called kvass in Russian cuisine they eat a lot of this stuff because it is so good for you they drink the liquid so let's get into it so I peeled all of the beets which was definitely annoying but I got it done I added them to a nice clean jar [Music] I poured water into the jar just to get the right amount of brining liquid I needed and then I took that water and poured it in to a pot I made sure to get the weight of that water as well because we're gonna be doing a 2% brine so you can obviously just eyeball it you know just 2% and a few a few sprinkles of salt but that is just a good ratio for brining any vegetables something around 2% I brought that liquid to a boil because if it was boiling and I poured that over the actual beets just like pickles you cook the the beets a little bit which gives them a nicer texture because beets are very hard if they're not cooked and this is gonna ferment much quicker about two days you should be good you'll start to see a little bit of foam on the top and if there's any yeast that builds up of course you can just scoop that off and you're good you can eat those beets they are lacto-fermented and you can also drink that liquid as for all the liquids sauerkraut kimchi that's good stuff or you can use it in dressings whenever you need a sour liquid just you know as a vinegar it's gonna be awesome that is it that's the complete guide to lacto-fermentation right there I'm really excited to be bringing you this video because I know a lot of you are starting to get into the fermentation game I started like two years ago I've been documenting my journeys life by Mike G make sure you check that out because fermentation is always happening in this house I've got so many different products between bread and kombucha and sauerkraut I make a lot of fermented foods and it's really changed change my health I you almost get addicted to it it's like when you haven't had it you don't know but when you start eating more fermented foods your body adjusts and it starts to actually crave more that stuff the best way I can explain fermented foods is it's kind of like you know a stomach before it gets to your stomach so it starts to digest a lot of these ingredients and break them down release a lot of the nutrients so by the time it gets into your stomach you're gonna have a much easier time with it so that's it make sure you follow life by Mike G and get in the kitchen and for men some vegetables [Music]

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 2,417,639

Rating: 4.9363899 out of 5

Keywords: enzyme tire spunk, sauerkraut recipe, brothers green, fermenting food, fermentation at home, sriracha, simple kimchi, homemade kimchi, fermented foods, how to make sauerkraut, just starting fermentation, kvass recipe, fermenation for begginers, fermented hot sauce, mike greenfield, how to ferment food, fermentation, fermenting, firmenting, firmentation, how to make siriacha, sriracha recipe, siracha, how to make kimchi

Id: iiNl0Jv6xTw

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/omnilynx]

I've been fermenting foods at home all my life, but some day I'd like to do one intentionally.

[u/aManPerson]

ooo, gonna watch this. thank you.

[u/spiderpig08]

You sound like Sean Evans fucked Coyote Peterson and Oliver Babish delivered the baby.

[u/buddy-ol-pal]

Great example of how speaking skill and presentation is able to captivate an audience.

The most I’ve ever cooked is a grilled cheese, but I watched the entire 20 minute video and I’m considering picking up fermenting. It’s also an interesting process in general.

[u/Garod]

When doing the salt Brine, I take it 2% means i.e. 100ml would be 2 gr of Salt, sorry the vid was a bit unclear on that? Also is the Salt Brine is the one you use for pickles right?

Wanted to maybe give this a try, doesn't sound too difficult and fussy.