Fermentation: Not Just Good for Your Gut, Good for Your Budget!

The coolest thing about fermenting is the idea of using fermentation as food storage. Obviously fermenting produce has numerous health benefits and that's why most people are interested in it (aka part 1 in this series), but I find the idea of long term storage to be even better!

I try to cook all of my meals from fresh ingredients, but sometimes I don't always have time to cook it (or I get ambitious and realize not only do I not have the time to make it, but I don't have a small army hanging around) and quite a bit goes bad. It's definitely not good when my food goes bad before I even get around to making something with it.

When you ferment food, you stick produce, generally vegetables, in brine and the salt makes sure that the "good" bacteria can do its thing while suppressing the "bad" bacteria. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few months to be fully fermented. Once it's fermented to your liking, you don't have to consume it right away, you just pop it in the fridge.

So guess who's not affected by the lime shortage? ;-)

To slow fermentation, the jars go in the refrigerator (or a cool room like a basement or cellar - generally just below 60F). This is important because the cooler environment does not kill off the bacteria. The bacteria is still alive, it's still doing its thing, and it's still able to keep your food from spoiling.

So for example, I've always wanted to make my own condiments, but how can you justify creating a large batch of ketchup that's just going to go bad in a week? Unless you're prepping for a giant family picnic, you're going to have to toss it or hope that your fridge is cold enough to prevent mold from growing. But when you ferment ketchup, suddenly you have more than a week before it goes bad. Suddenly you have months to enjoy it.

This goes beyond just condiments.

Last year I would buy bags and bags of produce from the farmer's market for  much less than you can buy in the supermarket. I bought bags full of jalapeno peppers and garlic and onions for only a few dollars. There's no way I can eat that in a week or two before it spoiled, and I certainly couldn't pass up such a great deal.

But when you get home, rinse the vegetables a bit in hot water, slice them up, and put them in brine, suddenly they're good for months. Yes, it is March and I am still munching on onions that I picked up from the farmer's market last summer. Yes, they taste delicious. Yes, they're even still crunchy.

It's not witchcraft, it's fermentation!

So you're interested in this food storage idea I hope. But what do you DO with a jar full of onions?

I'll tell you.

1. You snack on them. This makes a little more sense if you have fermented salsa in the fridge, but you can definitely snack on your fermented vegetables. I know this sounds weird because who would snack on onions? Well, when you start fermenting foods, you will start be the weird one snacking on them.

Obviously, you'll need to take a bite of it before you put it in the fridge to make sure everything's okay. You'll think to yourself, "Wow, that's actually pretty good." So you have another one. Then you realize that your stomach really likes it. Not in the way that it likes pizza, but more like in the way that you can tell it's happy you just gave it a fermented onion. Then you stick it in the fridge and kind of forget about it until one day you're hungry and you open up the fridge and you go, "Oh, there are some onions in here." (Don't worry, fermented onions taste MUCH better than raw onions.)

2. You use them medicinally. Now I'm not trying to imply that fermented foods are better than medicine, especially because I'm not a doctor and have no medical training. However, I have seen plenty of articles that mention that your gut bacteria needs more bacteria to feel good. I also know that when I have an upset stomach, I eat a few pieces of fermented vegetables and I feel much better. I've also seen this work on other people. Are you one of those people? Only one way to find out! (I know it sounds really wrong to give a nauseous person a fermented jalapeno, but I've seen it work wonders!)

Cranberries still perfect 6 months later

3. You use them as a condiment. Let's say you ferment a container of carrots. You throw in a few spices. It's delicious. You're not really into snacking. Unless you threw in a bay leaf or something similar to keep the vegetables crisp, they're limp and somewhat unappetizing...

A perfect remedy for this situation is using your fermented veggies as a side dish or a condiment. Sauerkraut and/or mustard on a sandwich are perfect. I love putting my fermented cranberries on a sandwich with cheese. You'll slowly start to find uses for your new foods that you never would have thought of before! And if not, you can always...

4. You use it in cooking. This is certainly an unpopular answer among some in the fermenting crowd because you just spent days (or months) of your life waiting for the bacteria to reproduce and do their thing so you can eat them and be healthy and do your thing so why, WHY would you cook with fermented food and kill all the probiotics? Simple. I'm lazy. If I don't want to run out to the market when I just came back from the market (and who would?), I grab a few slices of jalapenos and toss them in the pan. After all, I get plenty of probiotics in other meals so I don't think killing them once will cause any problems.

Additionally, if you have a ferment that you can't really stomach, like your milk kefir is too sour, it's perfect to bake with. Or make pancakes. Any milk substitute, really. My favorite my soured milk kefir has to be making cream cheese and adding herbs. There all sorts of uses!

I will mention that bacteria tend to die over 105F so a great option can be to toss in the fermented veggies after everything has finished cooking and you're about to serve it. After all, you don't need to saute or cook anything as the vegetables are generally going to be soft and palatable. I have pretty much stopped cooking with garlic because I stir in a spoonful of garlic paste at the end of every meal. The end result being my food is flavored with garlic, I don't have to worry about burning the garlic when I add it to the hot oil, and I get the good bacteria in my gut.

What do you think? Are you excited about food storage? Any hesitations before you being fermenting? Next week I'm talking about making sure the good bacteria you're consuming is actually, you know, good.

You can also check out part 3 in this series: How to Know When Your Ferment has Gone Bad.

An Introduction to Fermented Foods: Getting to Know Your Bacteria

Fermented Jalapenos

A lot of people flinch when I tell them I eat bacteria. However those same people know that eating yogurt is good for them, especially if they're sick and have just taken a round of antibiotics. Whether you want to call it bacteria, probiotics, or pretend they don't exist while you're munching on some kimchi, there's an invisible world of creatures out there waiting to help or harm us.

For the longest time, we thought bacteria was bad and needed to be eliminated. For example, there was an attempt to eliminate helicobacter pylori since the 1980s because it can cause peptic ulcers and stomach cancers, and combined with science and an abundance of doctors, it has mostly been wiped out in this country.

 However, it also calms the immune system (so less allergies and asthma) and it regulates acid in the body so a person without h. pylori often suffers from acid reflux which can eventually lead to esophageal cancer. Perhaps most alarming of all, h. pylori also regulates an appetite hormone that tells you when you're full and when you should eat. It is speculated that we have so many problems eating today because of the lack of this bacteria.

I'm not suggesting we need to re-introduce h. pylori back into everyone's diets, as it can cause many devastating problems; however it's time to recognize that our gut bacteria has a huge affect on us, positive and negative, and being exposed to more bacteria at a younger age is the better option. Because we eat so many processed foods, we're essentially starving our gut. Many of our ailments, from autism and schizophrenia to cardiovascular disease and cancer are now being linked to inadequate a problem in our gut. Scientists are still studying it so most doctors aren't treating you with probiotics (though some are), but I can't see the downside.

Playing devil's advocate - let's say the link and early studies showing how bacteria work with us and against turn out to be wrong. How does eating and preserving foods harm us in anyway? I still love my yogurt, pickles, cheese, fish sauce - I love all my bacteria-laden foods, regardless of science.

While studying bacteria and our microbiome is a relatively new science, there is more than enough evidence out there to know that we need to begin making some radical changes in our diet and lifestyle. For some people that means letting their kids play in the dirt outside, and for others, those of us who are grown, with no children, and many prescriptions of antibiotics over our lifetime, that means turning our kitchens into a lab experiment.

Fermented Mustard

I started eating fermented foods for the bacteria. Bacteria live in and on us and outnumber us 10 to 1. We are not really human when you think about it or study it. If we ever develop the technology (or have advanced aliens drop in on us), we might be able to see completely new versions of ourselves, versions that might not necessarily even take us into account.

I decided I needed to start feeding the bacteria that I support, especially to help lower stress, anxiety, depression, and my general aches aches and pains - all things that are normal when you're approaching 30 and living in NYC.

When I read about what our bodies are capable of (with and without bacteria) and how dependent we are on bacteria (seeing as how we aren't even "human") and then in thinking how my body was struggling in the aforementioned ways, I felt that I needed more and better bacteria right away.

I briefly considered taking a probiotic in pill form, but that's generally a waste of money, as homemade is almost always better*. Anyway, I like being more hands on in my life so I started experimenting.

I have to say, while I don't always feel perfect, I think that has more to do with my environment and stress level than my diet. (Although when I feel absolutely terrible, I tend to reach towards take-out food, which only perpetuates the cycle.) A few weeks after I started adding fermented foods into my diet, I stopped craving take-out food and I only wanted to make my own version of everything. I found that snacking on fermented onions and peppers improved a stomach ache. Drinking a glass of kombucha made my stomach feel fuller. I started drinking milk kefir every day and instantly my mood got noticeably better. Milk kefir also works wonders as a moisturizer... but that's another post.

Fermented Hot Sauce

I don't want to turn this into ways fermented foods might have saved my life as there are plenty of those stories out there. Instead I want to present some facts on why bacteria is important and should be in your life. Because I'm not a doctor and have zero medical training, you should check out linked articles if you're interested. You should read Wild Fermentation and the The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz, which also has a lot of great articles. Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation has an excellent section on fermented foods - the whole book is about food and is a treasure.

Find out more. Our body is fascinating, especially because it isn't even ours.

This is just a very brief intro to bacteria and our bodies and will hopefully get everyone interested! Next week, I'm going to write about how easy it is to cultivate and grow bacteria - and how to know when it's unsafe to eat. Stay tuned!

*A recent study looked at 14 probiotic products on the market and found that only 1 of them contained what was stated on the label.

Read more:
Fermentation: Not Just Good for Your Gut, Good for Your Budget!
How To Know When Your Ferment Has Gone Bad (AKA Fermenting is Really Easy!)