In search of the perfect macaroni and cheese: Adventures in Fermentation

What with one thing and another, I am once again late on blog posts. Now, not all of this is my fault. For example, I started my fermentation projects a little under a month ago, but I had to wait over three weeks to post the results (had to take time to ferment). I'm not quite sure what sparked my interest again. Perhaps it was Sandor Ellix Katz coming out with a new book The Art of Fermentation. Or maybe it was me borrowing said book from the library. The catalyst was finding a kombucha "mother" at a friend's place (more on that later), but I was thinking about it before then. Anyways, for whatever reason, I've started fermenting two products: kombucha tea and sauerkraut.

Kombucha tea (from http://www.kombuchakamp.com)

Note: 1 gallon recipe (scale up or down as necessary). In order to make kombucha, one needs a kombucha mother or SCOBY (short for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast). This looks like a white blob that contains the necessary bacteria/yeast to ferment the tea into kombucha. You can look online for kombucha mother sources. You can make your kombucha in a glass mason jar or glass beverage dispenser or other containers. Kombuchakamp.com is a great source for kombucha questions.

Ingredients:

1 cup organic sugar
4-6 bags of tea (either black or green [not decaffeinated])
starter culture (a.k.a. Kombucha mother or SCOBY)
1 cup starter liquid
purified water

Procedure:

1) Boil 4 cups of water in a sauce pan. Turn off the heat and add the tea bags to the pan.
2) Steep 5-10 minutes and then remove the bags. Add sugar and stir to dissolve.
3) Fill your brewing vessel 3/4 full with cold water. Make sure the temperature is below body temperature.
4) Add SCOBY and then the starting liquid. The starting liquid is either kombucha tea or vinegar.
5) Cover with a cotton cloth secured with a rubber band. Set in a warm, airy location out of direct sunlight and away from aromatic or greasy food preparation. Do not disturb for seven days.
6) After seven days, use a straw and taste your kombucha. Let it brew for a bit longer if it is too sweet. If it is too acidic, let it brew for a shorter period of time.
7) The next step depends upon what you brewed it in. If you brewed it in a glass beverage container, you simply siphon off some kombucha into a pitcher and start the process over again. If you brewed it in mason jars, you have to remove the mother into another jar (with about a cup of the kombucha tea) and add fresh tea/sugar mixture again (like you are starting from the top).
8) Either way about it, you should now have a container with fresh kombucha tea. You can either drink it as is, or ferment it again with other flavors. See kombuchakamp.com for ideas. I like putting a little bit of strawberry and lemon juice. You let it sit out for 24 hours or so to secondarily ferment and then put it in the fridge.
9) Enjoy! Kombucha is supposed to be very healthy for you. Certainly cheaper than buying it from the store!!

A picture of the kombucha "mother"

My kombucha set up

Secondary fermentation with strawberries

Time capsule of the kombucha mother forming. Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8. I let this one brew a bit longer as I was sick/working
and didn't have the energy/time to deal with it

That's it. Kombucha is pretty easy to make. So far, I've enjoyed it with the strawberry lemonade secondary ferment. I'm still working on getting it a little more effervescent, but it at least has a good taste to it.

Sauerkraut (based upon Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation).

Here's Sandor Katz's You Tube video of making sauerkraut:

Ingredients:

1 head of green cabbage, cored and sliced thinly
1 (smaller) head of red cabbage, cored and sliced thinly
1 carrot, shredded
2 apples, cored and sliced thinly
caraway seeds
sea salt

Procedure:

1) Prepare all the vegetables and put them in a bowl. Sprinkle salt and caraway seeds on the vegetables as you go.
2) Mix vegetables together and squeeze them. You are trying to break the cell walls of the vegetables so they will release moisture.
3) Pack into a fermenting vessel. I used a large glass mason jar. Pound (press down) on the vegetables as you pack them in the jar. You need the vegetables to be submerged under liquid.
4) Put another (smaller) jar on top filled with a brine mixture. Put a lid on top.
5) Watch it for the first twenty-four hours, pressing down on the top whenever you think of it. If the vegetables aren't under liquid after twenty-four hours, add a mixture of 1 tbsp. salt with one cup of water until the veggies are submerged. I put my jar in another small container, as it was leaking brine.
6) Wait. Some internet recipes say to wait three days, others three weeks or more. I waited twenty-five days.

Voila! Fresh sauerkraut! Sandor Katz does say in the book Wild Fermentation to check it for mold growing on the top. If you do see mold, remove the mold (and the moldy bits) but your kraut underneath will be just fine. I saved a few of the outer leaves from the cabbage and folded them and put them on top of the rest of my kraut. That way, if it developed mold, only the top leaves would be affected. Fortunately, everything came out fine. For some reason, my brine level kept dropping so I kept having to add a little more salty water into it. I'm not sure if my jar was leaking or what was going on. That is why I recommend putting another small container underneath it, just in case.
My sauerkraut came out delicious! I think twenty-five days was a bit too long to my taste, as the sauerkraut is definitely sour! It is so cool to see the kraut bubbling up in the first few days as the bacteria make CO2. This came out much much better than my first experiment in sauerkraut where I let it ferment for way too long and it all came out moldy (and made our living room stink on floor level for months). Don't let it ferment for too long (especially in warm weather!). Still, as long as the veggies are submerged (thus the jar on top acting like a weight), and you don't wait until months later, you should make delicious homemade sauerkraut! Eat it raw to get the full health benefits. We enjoyed ours with some bratwurst and potato pancakes!