My journey of cooking, gardening, preserving and more
Let’s talk about homemade tomato sauce. Somehow, in this world of amplified food awareness, it’s become this complicated, convoluted dish and it really doesn’t have to be. I like to make this sauce in the fall when I have an abundance of tomatoes from my garden. Actually, …
Apple overload? If you live just about anywhere in the U.S. right now, you’re well aware that it’s apple season. We’ve been very blessed because, for the 2nd year in a row, a friend has gifted us with a huge bag of great, big, beautiful …
The last of my cucumber plants got pulled up last week and, though I’m sad to see summer end, I have to admit that this year’s cucumber harvest was a bit overwhelming. I added diced cucumber to salsa (delicious) and threw together quick cucumber salad (sliced cukes and onions mixed with seasoned rice vinegar and marinated for a couple of days, stirring twice a day). I made our favorite salad – tomato wedges, sliced red onion and fennel, and cucumber chunks drizzled with unseasoned rice vinegar and sprinkled with salt and pepper – super refreshing in the summer and everything’s picked right from our garden except the red onion. I made my Salmon, Cucumber and Dill Bites more times than I can count (not that I’m complaining because they’re seriously delicious).
While all of these were great ways to use and enjoy my cucumber bounty, they weren’t nearly enough to use them all up. I’ve tried canning pickles but the only ones I truly like canned are bread and butter pickles; dill pickles just shouldn’t be cooked in my opinion. In summers past, I made at least a couple of batches of my fermented half-sour dill pickles but this year I decided to try and perfect an easy recipe for refrigerator dill pickles. I also decided the perfect recipe would be a refrigerator-pickle-by-the-jar recipe, so I could easily make them without waiting to have a certain amount of cucumbers on hand. Also, I may have mentioned how we have dill that shows up every year, so this is also a great way to use some of that while I’m at it. I finally nailed down a quick and easy recipe…give these babies a try. The cucumbers retain a nice crunch and the flavor is fantastic.
Place salt, garlic, peppercorns, dill, and jalapeno (if adding) in the jar. Add about 1/4 cup hot water, seal jar tightly with lid and shake vigorously from side to side for a minute or so. This not only helps the salt dissolve but also wilts and bruises the garlic, dill, and pepper, releasing some of their flavors into the brine. Remove the lid, add 1/4 cup of vinegar and then pile in your sliced cucumbers, packing them in as tightly as possible. I find it easiest to hold the jar sideways and stack them in that way. Once you think you’ve packed as many in as you can, set the jar on the counter and push in a few more.
Now just top off the remaining airspace with 50% vinegar and 50% water, filling the jar as closely to the rim as possible. Wipe rim clean and seal tightly with lid. Give the jar a few shakes and then refrigerate for at least 1 week.
Yum!
Another beautiful aspect of this recipe is that you don’t have to cook a brine like a lot of refrigerator pickle recipes call for – the hot tap water is just enough to dissolve the salt and warm the herbs and spices.
If you like your pickles a little sweet, just add a little sugar when you add the salt. Also, play with the heat by adding more or different kinds of hot peppers, or add none at all. Remember, don’t be afraid to play with your food!
Green bean overload happens every year in my garden, so it’s a good thing they freeze well. Another great way to preserve them is to pickle them in a spicy brine. Bloody Mary. Red Beer. Hot Tomato. Michelada. Bloody Caesar…if you like your vodka or beer with a bit …
Regular and pomegranate kombucha ready for their second fizz-making ferment. What’s better than having living food in your house? Nothing. Cheers!
I admit that I’ve put off posting this fermentation recipe for quite some time. Not because it’s difficult or time-consuming because it’s neither, but because I’m absolutely terrible at photographing the process from beginning to end. (though I didn’t do too badly in showing you how I make my fermented pickles a couple of years ago.) Making your own sauerkraut is one of the easiest things in the world to do and I finally decided that I’d rather just share the recipe than wait until I had enough photos of the process. You’re a smart cookie, right? I’m pretty confident you won’t have any problems here at all but if you do, feel free to leave a comment.
You might think that making fermented cabbage is really difficult but trust me, it’s not. The only ingredients you really need to make sauerkraut is cabbage and salt. That’s it. You don’t need to buy any fancy cultures or equipment. You just need a clean glass or ceramic vessel – a bowl, a canning jar, a crock; any of these will work just fine. You also need something to weight down the cabbage, so that it remains submerged in its juice. This can be just about anything that’s clean and non-reactive, such as a plate with something heavy sitting on top of it. And, if you pack enough into a canning jar with a shoulder on it, the shoulder helps keep the cabbage submerged and you probably won’t even need a weight. Lastly, you’ll want something to cover your ferment – I prefer cheesecloth, as it lets my ferment breath but keeps any dust and/or bugs out. Because I ferment on a pretty regular basis now, I’ve invested in some nice Ohio Stoneware crocks and weights but I fermented long before I had these, so trust me when I say you don’t need to get too fancy.
You can add other vegetables to your kraut, so please experiment with what you like; garlic, onions, and carrot are the most common ones. And if you want caraway seeds in your sauerkraut, feel free to add a pinch or two of those too. You can also experiment with your favorite cabbage: red, Napa…use what you have or can find at your local store or market.
This makes about 3 1/2 quart jars, depending on how much taste-testing you do while it’s fermenting.
As you shred the cabbage, place it in a very large bowl. Sprinkle each layer with some of the salt as you go. When finished shredding, it’s time to get a little messy.
With clean hands, get in and smoosh the cabbage up, squeezing it and crushing it with your hands. After just a couple of minutes, you should see some liquid starting to form at the bottom of your bowl. Continue to squeeze and crush until you feel like you’ve crushed all of the cabbage and there’a good amount of cabbage juice in your bowl.
Place your cabbage, with the liquid, into a clean crock or other container and, using a potato masher or other clean implement, mash down the cabbage until it’s all submerged under the juice. Using whatever clean means you want, weight down your cabbage, to assure it’s all submerged. You can use a plate with a filled jar or can on top of it, a baggie filled with water, etc.
Cover with cheesecloth or towel, secure with string or twine and let sit.
Check your sauerkraut every day or two, to make sure there’s still plenty of liquid and that the cabbage has remained submerged in its juice. If it’s very hot weather, you may find your brine evaporates quicker than you’d like. If this happens, just add a bit of water (I use distilled) to bring the juice level back above the cabbage.
If you notice a bit of scum accumulating around the edges, gently remove it with a spoon, taking care not to mix it into your cabbage. I’ve never had this happen with sauerkraut, though it does occur sometimes when I ferment pickles.
We have found we like our sauerkraut to ferment around 3 weeks, where it’s still got a crunch to it but is sufficiently fermented. You’ll want to start tasting yours every week or so though, to see where it is you want to stop the fermentation process. You may find you like yours crunchy at 2 weeks or softer at 4 weeks.
You’ll also have to vary your ferment time due to the temperature – fermentation happens much more quickly when the weather is hot than when it’s cold.
Once your sauerkraut has reached its desired flavor, place it, along with all of its juices, in jars or covered glass bowls and refrigerate. Mine keeps for many months in the fridge, just be aware that though refrigeration slows down the fermentation process, it doesn’t completely stop it. If you store yours too long, it may end up being softer than you’d like.
A couple of quick, additional tips:
That last point brings me to this: If you have digestive issues of any kind, fermented foods have been shown to help. I can only speak from personal experience when I tell you that it’s definitely helped me. Just go easy at first, introducing them to your diet slowly. As your body becomes accustomed to digesting fermented foods, you’ll find it becomes easier to consume more of them without side effects.
Hopefully, I’ve not missed anything, but I know all of you will be sure and let me know if I have. Happy fermenting!
If you’re just finding me now at my old WordPress site, I hope you’ll join me in my latest posts at lolarugula.com
It was not a stellar year for my tomato plants this season. Though I harvested quite a few, it was certainly not a typical year. Cool nights, flooding rains and cooler-than-average daytime temps do not make for happy, bountiful tomato plants. The exception to all …