More on Food Preservation
Well I have been experimenting this last month trying out some of the techniques I mentioned to you last time.
I found out that you can’t go wrong with cabbage. No matter how you do it, you still get a strong hearty lactic bacteria culture. Back in the heyday I used to make what we called rejuvelac. Actually rejuvelac was historically made with wheat berries, so I should specify Cabbage rejuvelac. I think it is called that because it does a lot to rejuvenate the system when you drink it.
All that was done is you shred the cabbage with a knife or cleaver, put it in a jar, pour water in to fully cover it. A paper towel, cheese cloth, or Muslin was placed over the top of the jar and in 3 days you could drink the water which had not much taste, but a very pleasant fizz. Loaded with lacto-bacteria, it does wonders for the health. But we are talking about food preservation here.
All the food preservation directions say to brine the cabbage before you put it under the water. Brining is simply the application of salt to a food either in a brine solution (water and salt mixture of at least 2% salt) or just straight into the surface and rubbed in. The purpose of this is to extract fluid out of the food that will ferment. Actually that’s only one of the purposes. It depends on what you are trying to do, create a culture of lactobacteria or just preserve the food.
In food preservation the aim is to pull out the water so it can be replaced by the preserving solution.
Well, it only takes a day and a half to get the fizz if you do this with the cabbage, but the liquid which I tasted was a salty fizz which was also pleasant, but maybe you don’t want to drink salt. But it enhances flavor in the final stage of cabbage preservation, which is known as Sauerkraut.
So, then I tried to slice up some beets and put them in water for 3 days. That did not work out too well. I guess because beets are harder and the bacteria could not access the sugar in the beets. So then I cut up a different beet and dry brined it first.
Wow, that amazed me. Enough water came out of the beet slices that it almost completely submerged them in liquid. So I put the beets and the liquid in a jar and added a small amount of water to completely submerge the beets.
In three days I got a slightly fizzy liquid, but the taste was not to my liking. It was salty, it had some kind of beet taste, but also a dirt like taste even though I washed the beet well before slicing. Well the info I researched on fermenting said that the flavor would change over time, so I put it back to let it go another 3 days or so.
I also had the beet with no salt brewing as well. When I checked them again the one with the salt had a slight fizz and tasted a little better, but the beet was a little chewy and didn’t taste so good. The one without the salt still didn’t have any fizz and tasted more like dirt than the last time. I left it alone for 3 more days.
At the end of 3 days there was a white film on the top of the liquid in both jars. The fermentation references I read said to just wipe it away. It explained that cultures of other bacteria will form but will eventually die off as fermentation continues.
It said that white cultures were completely harmless. Lactobacteria is white for example. As the colors get darker then cultures are less and less benign. So yellow is not too worrisome. Green and blue can be good, like penicillium that the antibiotic penicillin is gotten from, which is green. But too much could cause harm if you ingested a lot of it. But if it gets darker than that you might want to add some reinforcement in the form of lactobactera from the cabbage jar or if you have had enough of fermenting just add vinegar if you just want to turn it into a quick pickling.
If you see black mold just throw out everything and start over. Nothing Is worth the risk of black mold. I don’t know if black symbolizing death gets its meaning from things like black mold or if it’s the other way around, but something about that makes me draw the line. Ha Ha.
In fact, I think this subject of fermenting now that I am doing it requires a little too much courage than I would expect from the average person without a tried and true procedure. I, with just the white culture, lost my desire to continue the fermentation and I turned it into a quick pickling with my favorite wine vinegar. In 3 days it tasted great and I put an oil layer on it and stuck it in my fridge where it will last for about 6 months or more. I did notice that the salted beet had the vinegar taste go much further into the beet than the non salted one and it was crunchier. Nothing like getting actual experience.
Well, in my current favorite gardening book called Rebel Gardening, by Alessandro Vitale, he has a chapter on preserving vegetables. After I went all around the town researching the wide world of fermentation he makes it refreshingly simple and he is Italian, so he actually included his recipe for Giardiniera! I will share that with you later.
He categorizes things a little differently. After going all through it, I now appreciate the simplicity.
He lists main methods of preservation as Pickling, Fermenting and Dehydration.
Under Pickling he lists:
1) Quick Pickling which depends on using an already made vinegar mixed 50/50 with water. And it’s quickest because you don’t have to do anything special to treat the veggies before you submerge them in the pickling mixture. This preserves for a few months. So if you are going to eat it relatively quickly you can use this method. Plus, if you like the taste of the veggie and you don’t want it altered much this is the method to use.
2) Salt Brining, including the dry salt method or the salt solution method, but he doesn’t leave it to ferment. His reasoning is that taking the water out of the vegetables will make it take up the vinegar more readily. After brining he rinses the vegetables off, puts them in a jar and covers them with the 50/50 pickling solution and any spices or additions for flavoring.
He said this method preserves the food for much longer than quick pickling because there is no water in the vegetables having been removed by the brining that any microbe could use to grow. Ah, that makes more sense now. That's why the salted beet was crunchier and had more vinegar in it
3) Then he also adds a method of pickling with repeated soakings of vinegar to take out the water which makes the vegetable crunchy. He calls this Vinegar Brining. Gherkin pickles are made with this method. This method is time consuming because you drain and dry the vegetables between each vinegar soak, but it is worth it if you like that crunchiness.
Fermentation:
He breaks this down into 2 methods.
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Dry Salting where you massage the salt directly into the surface of the veggie. He says to use this method with shredded or grated vegetables. And you squeeze out the moisture to make a natural brine. Then you put the squeezed out veggie in a jar and that’s when you add any aromatics. I have noticed this with Italian cooking, it matters what order you mix things when you are creating a flavor. Here is where you establish the basic flavor adding things like garlic, herbs and spices or chili peppers. Then after you do this according to your taste, you add the natural brine back in.
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Brine Fermenting where the vegetables are put into a jar along with the aromatics and salt to start with and then water is added. This is used when the veggies are left in bigger pieces like chunks or left whole. Then you shake the jar to fully dissolve the salt.
In both methods it is important to keep the veggies completely under the liquid so it doesn’t get contaminated by oxygen using bacteria. Some people use a flat stone or any kind of weight on top of the mixture, but I have never found that necessary. I just push it down until it stays. Then you put the jar in a dark place and let it ferment. In 64-71°F it should take about 3 weeks. The warmer, the faster.
If you are interested in how the flavor develops you can check it and sample it as much as you want and as often as you want. This will give you an idea of how long you should leave subsequent batches to ferment according to the taste you want.
After you determine it is the way you want it, you remove the weight if you used one, tighten the lid and put it in the fridge to stop it from fermenting further.
As I have mentioned, for flavor and extra preservation protection you can put a layer of olive oil on the top surface. About a quarter of an inch would be good. It is not a precise requirement to say the least! When my Aunt made her pickled eggplant I think she would make the olive oil closer to half the jar! I couldn’t wait for her yearly batch at the end of the summer. It was SO GOOD!
Now, here is basically Alessandro Vitale’s recipe for Giardiniera:
Bring a quart of white wine vinegar to a rolling boil in a large pan and add 2-3 whole cloves, 2-3 bay leaves, ¼ teaspoon of mustard seeds, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of whole black peppercorns.
Then add the vegetables. It could be anything from your garden, but typically it would be one cauliflower, 8-10 pearl onions or regular onions chopped into large chunks, 3-4 carrots sliced into coins, and two celery stalks, or fennel is a great alternative. Simmer for 15 min until it is cooked, but still firm.
Use a slotted spoon to transfer the vegetables into a sterilized jar which could be heated up in the oven to sterilize them (212°F for 5 min), but I have gotten away with just running the jar under really hot water from the sink, but not on your hands. Use a paper towel to handle the side you heat up first while you heat up the other side. And then before it cools off you fill it up.
First add the veggies and then you pour the hot vinegar over them to cover it. Seal the jar tight.
Put the jar in a cool dark place for between a few days to a week. As the jar cooled it should have created a vacuum seal.
After opening the seal it is generally eaten in a week, but could last longer, especially with a topping of olive oil.
Dehydrating
Last but certainly not least and definitely simpler is dehydrating. Take the water out of the food and no microbe can grow in it. This can preserve the food for years. In fact, there have been grains found in ancient Egyptian tombs 5000 years old that were germinated and grown into wheat.
Just rehydrate by soaking it in water, stock, alcohol or whatever you want or just eat it dry. Nobody objects to raisins or figs or even plums. Well maybe plums after they find out that a dried plum is a prune, but that has nothing to do with the taste.
In Italy the Mediterranean sun is used to dehydrate tomatoes and all kinds of things. Remember those sundried tomatoes at the supermarket?
And if you live in a dry area you don’t even need a dehydrator. Just make thin slices and lay them out on paper towels and there goes the water. Or you can hang things up like an upside down bouquet. But not in direct sun or the color might go as well as the water.
A dehydrator is nice to have however, unless you have limited space. The most important feature of a dehydrator is its temperature control. The fan is the second. Ones without a temperature control knob tend to dry too hot. I mean, it is convenient to have it dry fast, but to preserve the nutrition and the enzymes in the food you have to keep it under 104°F. And if you have a dehydrator you can dry food no matter the weather.
A dehydrator can also be used to make jerky and other snacks all year around. And delicious things like vegetarian pizza with a flaxseed crust are just unbelievably delicious. Maybe in another blog I could impart that recipe.
But if you don’t live in a dry area and you can’t have a dehydrator, all is not lost - you can put your oven on warm with a tray or two and it dries just nicely especially if your oven has any fan action.
Oh, I should add that there is another method called Freeze Drying. Thinking about the oven fan made me remember this. I didn’t include this because it requires special equipment that I am not sure is available to a household. But I can tell you what it is. Instead of having a fan blow hot air like in an oven, a freeze dryer blows a chilling air over the drying vegetables so they dry and freeze at the same time. This is a very effective preservation technique used in industry. It even preserves the nutrition well. When you reconstitute something that has been freeze dried it resembles a fresh picked food more than with straight dehydration, which will not have the same firmness.
Well, now that you know about preserving food, go wild on growing it. May you have bumper crops all around.