The recipes in this book are designed to be very simple. The only exception is the gouda cheese recipe, which is probably the most complex one I have included (yet it is still quite achievable). Most recipes in this book use yogurt, kefir, water kefir, kombucha, cider, pickles, or sauerkraut as base ingredients. For example, the Blackberry Smoothie recipe calls for yogurt or kefir, while the Chai Spiced Soda recipe uses a base of kombucha, cider, or water kefir. For the solid-foods recipes, you can chop up some natural pickles to make the Egg Salad probiotic, while the Burmese Green Tea Salad recipe incorporates sauerkraut, and you can make a delicious Kimchi Noodles dish using kimchi.
On the surface, using these fermented foods as base ingredients would seem to lengthen the time needed to make any of the other recipes. Instead, I am hoping that using yogurt and sauerkraut in your recipes will save you time. Here’s why: As you develop a culture of fermentation in your own household (sorry for the pun), I am hoping that you will have ready access to the basics, such as yogurt, kombucha, natural pickles, and/or sauerkraut. Once you make a batch of sauerkraut, you can keep eating it for months, so I am not asking you to make more every time you want to prepare another recipe.
Yogurt and kefir do not last as long as sauerkraut, but they literally take just minutes to make, and therefore it is pretty easy to have all the yogurt or kefir you need by whipping up a quick batch every week. Once you have yogurt or kefir, making smoothies is just a matter of doing some blending.
A number of the recipes call for direct fermentation. For example, the Garlic Mustard, Hummus, and Chocolate Coconut Pudding recipes call for the finished product to be cultured first and then fermented for an additional period. This final step is always optional, since the foods already contain a probiotic starter culture (such as yogurt water, called whey). But the additional fermentation stage radically increases the probiotic content of your foods and adds an additional layer of sour flavor to the taste.
Several recipes in this book contain a double- or triple-whammy of probiotics. The Dolmas recipe, for example, requires first fermenting some grape leaves, then stuffing them with an herbed rice filling accented by yogurt, and finally letting the wrapped dish ferment for an additional period. Did I mention you will be getting your probiotics? Oh yes!
When it comes to fermenting vegetables and fruits, I will give you a choice of cultures. The easiest thing to do is to culture your fermentation with a spoonful or two of yogurt whey, water kefir, kombucha, or other fermented food or drink. In addition, it is quite possible to ferment fruits and vegetables using naturally present yeasts and lactobacteria. Yes, they really are in the air, on your produce, and on your kitchen utensils, and most of them are very good for you.
With this sort of “wild fermentation,” which was popularized by Sandor Katz in his terrific book by that name, there is always a small potential of risk. The majority of the time, wild fermentation works very well, and you end up with a nicely fermented product with a healthy blend of organisms. With the fermented fruit and veggie dishes, you generally are using a salt brine, so this encourages beneficial lactobacteria while making it pretty difficult for others (like mold or anaerobic bacteria) to colonize your food. Wild fermentation certainly is a solid option, which many people use for foods like sauerkraut and kimchi. Just omit the culture ingredient in any of the fermented vegetable and fruit recipes in this book, and you should be fine.
However, some folks are not comfortable with trusting some unknown organisms to culture their food. If you are in the camp that would rather control your culture, then do not fear, since these recipes are designed for you. That is why yogurt whey, kombucha, water kefir, or another fermented culture are ingredients in each of these recipes. These cultures will dominate and prevent any molds or other organisms from forming, so adding them to your foods provides a very safe way to culture a fermented dish.
Still, there are some potential issues with using yogurt whey, water kefir, or kombucha to culture vegetables and fruits. First, kombucha and the tibicos cultures used to make water kefir both contain yeasts (and usually aceto acid bacteria as well). There is nothing wrong with these, which appear to be very healthy and probiotic. However, moving them to a base of vegetables and asking them to culture the vegetables can throw their balance out of whack. Particularly with a longer ferment (which is needed with kombucha culture, especially), one part of the culture can become dominant. If the yeast predominates, as it often does when you leave something a little too long using kombucha or kefir grain cultures, then your food will start tasting kind of yeasty. It is still quite edible, but less tasty, unless you really have a thing for ale and sourdough bread.
The second issue is as follows: the (definitely beneficial) probiotic organisms that culture foods and drinks such as yogurt and kombucha are not the same ones that naturally occur on vegetables and fruits. Yogurt bacteria, for example, have been chosen for their ability to culture and metabolize lactose. Put them on some cabbage or apples and there’s no lactose there. Yes, there are other sugars in plants, and yes, the lactobacteria will be able to metabolize them. They will do a fine job of culturing veggies and fruits.
But limiting the cultures you eat to L. acidophilus and its buddies means that you are not getting significant amounts of the organisms naturally present on fruits and vegetables. These are primarily soil-based organisms with a wider cast of characters, including a number of different Bifidobacteria. Research has shown that strains do matter, and that a diversity of different organisms seems to promote better digestive and immune system health. Our bodies are developed to eat more raw vegetables and fruits than most of us eat today. At one time, our ancestors probably ingested a good deal more of these soil-based organisms that are naturally found on produce. Is it important for our bodies’ health to eat more of these also?
If so, then here is a good way for you to obtain some natural vegetable culture that you can keep on using. Before you make your first batch of fermented foods, buy a batch of high-quality sauerkraut at a health food store and save some of the juice as your first culture. Then you can keep using a little juice from your last ferment every time you need to make another one. Alternatively, you can buy a vegetable culture online and start with this. Either way, if you make fermentation an ongoing habit, then you may never need to buy another culture again. It’s a one-time gift to yourself that will keep on giving.
Raw Diets
A raw diet refers to the presence of active enzymes and live food compounds in the fermented foods you create. Probiotic foods must be raw since cooking kills the beneficial microorganisms that make them probiotic. Every recipe in this book helps you make foods and drinks that are rich with raw probiotics by the time you eat or drink them.
In addition, most recipes in this book use raw base ingredients. However, I allow cooking for grains and beans because many people are accustomed to eating them this way. Bean and grain recipes in this book use cooked beans and grains. They will still be cultured with probiotics before you eat them, so will have plenty of enzymes. But if you are adept at soaking and sprouting your own grains and beans, and your body is able to digest these in serious quantities, then feel free to go 100 percent raw and use these instead in your probiotic recipes. I enjoy eating sprouted grains and beans (I even wrote a book on sprouting), but I only eat these as snacks or salad sprinklings; my body cannot handle them in large portions. Hats off to the hard-core raw foodies, but I’m with the 99 percent who cook some of their food.
Milk Issues and CRASH Substitutions
Many people do not have access to raw milk, while others are sensitive to lactose and therefore do not consume dairy products. For the yogurt, kefir, cheese, smoothie, and other dairy-related items in this book, you are welcome to use either pasteurized or raw milk. Frankly, I would suggest pasteurized, just because raw milk comes with an uncertain blend of bacteria. Some of them are very good for you and you may want to culture them, but there also may be a few undesirables in there. By beginning with pasteurized milk, you have a clean slate to culture milk with beneficial probiotic cultures, far more than raw milk contains.
Please do not use ultra-pasteurized milk (or “U.P.”) milk to make probiotic foods. U.P. milk has been heated to an unnaturally hot temperature. This changes the chemical structure of milk to make it shelf stable. Because the composition of the food has changed, lactobacteria cannot culture it very well. Regular pasteurized milk is fine.
If you are lactose intolerant (“allergic to dairy”), then you are welcome to substitute with nondairy “milks.” In the recipes in this book (mostly the smoothie ones), I label these other milks as “CRASH alternatives.” CRASH is an acronym for coconut, rice, almond, soy, and hemp milks. CRASH has no overt or hidden meaning. I simply started using it as shorthand in the recipes and it caught on. However, flaxseed milk is being sold in stores also, and I’m sure there are other alternative dairy beverages, so I may need to come up with a new term soon!
If you are making yogurt or kefir, then culturing high protein milks like soy can take a little longer, but it works. I suggest adding a small quantity of sugar or maple syrup at first to get the good bacteria off to a faster start.
However, most people who are lactose intolerant are able to eat good quality yogurt, kefir, and cheese. There are two reasons for this. First, the lactobacteria (and yeasts in kefir) digest most of the lactose. In fact, a few brands of yogurt, kefir, and cheese are marketed as being 100 percent lactose-free. Second, the beneficial organisms in these fermented milks also produce lactase, which is the enzyme that digests lactose.
If you are lactose intolerant, then most likely your body is not “allergic” to milk. It simply cannot produce the lactase enzyme to digest it. So even if the yogurt or kefir you like is not 100 percent lactose-free, the lactase in it will enable most people to digest any lactose that remains. If you have any specific medical condition, then check with a physician, but experiment if you are able to do so and you may well find that cultured fermentation solves the problem.
Sweet/Sour Variations
There is one other variable in many of this book’s recipes. When you make your own yogurt or kombucha, you may like it really sour, while someone else prefers it milder. You may stop your yogurt fermentation after 6–8 hours because you like it creamy and mild, while your neighbor lets it go for 10 hours for a fully sour flavor. You may stop your kombucha culture and refrigerate it a day or two earlier than someone else does.
Many recipes in this book build upon these basic fermented foods and drinks. A smoothie or salad dressing recipe may incorporate yogurt. A homemade soda recipe may use kombucha. And since your kombucha and someone else’s may be different, that creates the possibility of some serious variation in the recipes as well.
The main potential variation is with sourness. And if something is really sour, it may be inherently less sweet. So feel free to adjust sourness and sweetness as you wish in each recipe. Add more sour flavor with additional yogurt, kefir, water kefir, kombucha, or lemon juice. Add more sweetness with sugar, maple syrup, honey, or another natural sweetener substitute.
Finally, the fermented vegetable recipes can come out pretty salty. Using a certain level of saltiness helps ensure a clean fermentation using lactobacteria. But if a recipe is too salty for you, feel free to cut back on the salt, or add a little more of the bulky ingredients to compensate.
Using Water, Sugar, and Salt Properly
Water: If there is one prohibited ingredient in this book, it is chlorinated water. The chlorine is designed to kill off microorganisms, including the good ones (oops) you need to culture your food. So please do not add chlorinated water to your recipes if you want to keep them probiotic; it is the same as adding bleach to your food and drinks. If your tap water is chlorinated, then either filter it or use bottled water to make these cultured foods and drinks. By the way, you shouldn’t drink your water without filtering it, either, since your body’s digestive system will take a hit of chlorine each time you do.
Sugar: As with salt, most probiotic recipes are best when you use a whole, balanced sugar. Evaporated cane sugar is great, brown sugar is fine, and maple syrup does a good job also. Each of these contains minerals and whole food components in addition to the sweet part. White sugar just has the sweet part with the rest of the goodness removed. Unless a recipe mentions otherwise, please use a whole sugar. Kombucha is the only exception I can think of in which white sugar is better, and this is because it balances particularly well with the tea (already a whole food) to feed the organisms in the culture. In most recipes that call for sugar as a sweetener, you can substitute with honey, xylitol, agave, apple juice, or another natural substance. But when you are specifically feeding a probiotic fermentation, such as with water kefir grains, a whole sugar is best.
Sea Salt: You will notice that the recipes generally call for sea salt rather than just plain old table salt. Iodized salt actually is a very imbalanced combination of minerals. Yes, our bodies need iodine, but they also need all the other trace elements that are missing from table salt. Sea salt contains these trace minerals in appropriate proportions for both the human body and for the microorganisms that we need to culture our probiotic foods. Please use sea salt or any other whole salt, such as Celtic salt, grey salt, Real Salt™, Himalayan pink salt, and the like. All of these are basically sea salt with some regional differences in the mineral deposits.
Warning: Contents Under Pressure
Be very careful when using glass and breakable vessels when fermenting foods and drinks. Fermentation increases the pressure and expands the space within these containers. With any active fermentation there is always a small possibility that a container will crack or pop. This has never happened to me, but I always recommend checking your cultures daily or even more frequently if possible. As the author of this book, I do not wish to promote any activity that leads to potential injuries.
Though some fermenters put tight lids on their fermenting foods, I always cover containers loosely to allow the CO2 to escape. I often use a napkin or paper towel as a cover and place the lid on top of it, so that this material screens out most dust or mold spores floating in the air. The only exception to my loose covering is with ciders and the secondary fermentation of sodas. Plastic soda bottles are easier to check (just squeeze to determine the pressure level). If you use glass soda bottles, please keep a very close eye on tightly capped ones. Also, contents can spurt out if shaken, as you probably know if you are a consumer of store-bought kombucha, so please avoid shaking.
