This Week in Fermented Foods

It has been all too easy for me to skip out on the very small but seemingly extra chore of working with ferments every week. It never takes as much time as you think, and the bang for buck you get out of the practice of food fermentation – both in nutrition and savings – is enormous.

Which is why a little accountability and incentive are always helpful, both here and at the CFH blog. Wanna’ know what I’ve been fermenting this week?

So, this week I talked about one of the Most Common Milk Kefir Mistakes. This can effect both the flavor of your kefir (making it too yeasty) as well as the health of the grains themselves. I’ve made this mistake before, and the easy fix made a world of difference.

Then Erin shared her Favorite Fermentation Tools. From the high-tech to the already-in-your-kitchen, I appreciated Erin’s take on what’s necessary and what’s not.

Right around the same time as the Lard-Fried Tortilla Chips post went up, I shared a recent fermented salsa recipe in a new series called The Simple Art of Lacto-Fermented Vegetables. In this series I hope to convey just how simple, easy, useful, and flexible the art of lacto-fermentation can be.

Also happening this week is a fresh batch of cortido from that homegrown cabbage we picked. I’m doing a side-by-side experiment to see what differences in fermentation results I find between a batch fermented with an airlock and a batch fermented with a simple canning lid.

Finally, I’d like to invite you to join the Weekly Cultured Gathering…

Maybe you eat cultured food because of the health benefits. Maybe you make it for the art and science involved. Maybe you believe that this age-old practice of souring dough, culturing dairy, brewing beverages, and fermenting vegetables is wonderfully sustainable. Maybe you feed them to your family because of all of the above.

Whatever draws you to the art of fermentation, The Weekly Cultured Gathering is a place where you can find others working towards the same goals as you are. It is a community.

You can join us every Saturday with links to your own cultured food blog posts or, if you don’t have a blog, let us know in the comments what you’re culturing this week.