December 11, 2024

Acquanyc

Health's Like Heaven.

Fermenti Foods fights food insecurity with fermentation

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Salt, water and time. The rest is up to the microbes.

That’s the formula behind lactic acid fermentation, in which yeasts and bacteria convert starches or sugars into lactic acid, yielding foods like sauerkraut, kimchi and pickles.

Meg Chamberlain of Fermenti Foods, a local purveyor of fermented everything, thinks there’s room for such practical magic in everyday kitchens.

She recently teamed up with Selina Naturally Celtic Sea Salt to help fight food insecurity in Madison County.

Selina Naturally donated 1,200 pounds of sea salt to the Beacon of Hope Food Bank In Marshall, with all clients getting a pound of salt in their free produce boxes.


Chamberlain added recipes for sauerkraut, which handily teaches the concept of self-brining fermentation. She’s also offering recipes on her website and tutorials on YouTube.

Rather than seeing fermented foods as the purview of the health-seeking hipster, Chamberlain thinks it’s a useful tool for home preservation, and an important tool for anyone who helped fuel the surge of “Victory Gardens” during COVID.

“In addition to the fact that more people are growing, they need to know what to do with what they’re growing in their gardens,” she said.

Canning equipment can be costly, hot and tiresome work, but fermenting requires only a clean jar and perhaps a sharp knife or other similar tool. Salt is also key.

With a bit of patience, you can yourself with a bit of shelf-stable food security with minimal investment. It makes food taste pretty good too, Chamberlain said. “It’s like food, science and art made a baby.”

To illustrate the culinary magic of fermentation, Chamberlain pointed to a scene in the Samin Nosrat documentary “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” where soy sauce maker Yasuo Yamamoto swipes fermented soybean sauce over chicken.

“It doesn’t take a lot,” Chamberlain said. “Just a paintbrush of flavor completes the meal and turns plain rice and chicken to something extraordinary.”

THE LUXURY OF HEALTHY FOOD

Beacon of Hope director Jessi Koontz said Chamberlain has helped her pantry preserve food donations before, including a few cases of fennel nearing the end of their shelf life.

“She ended up creating an absolutely delicious kraut, incorporating both fennel and orange,” Kontz said.

In Madison County, food preservation techniques and other homesteading skills remain a big part of daily life, said Koontz, and many locals stay closely tied to their land and what it can produce.

“I would imagine fermentation has long been a part of that way of life for local residents and for many of the families Beacon serves,” she said.

The donations of salt and recipes among easily fermented vegetables like carrots, beets and cabbages makes it even easier.

She knows there’s a taste for fermented foods among her clients already, because they readily snap up jars of the fermented kraut and carrots Fermenti sometimes donates.

“Whenever we post about receiving another Fermenti donation, which we include in Beacon’s produce boxes, we always have a good turnout,” Koontz said.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program has also helped provide Beacon clients with healthy proteins like nuts, frozen shrimp, milk and even butter, on occasion.

The past year has been stressful, which makes trying to eat nutritious food even more important for holistic health.

“When you are living paycheck to paycheck, the extremely healthy and nutritious items are often luxuries that families simply cannot afford,” Koontz said.

FERMENTS FOR A HAPPY BELLY

Chamberlain is a cheerleader of the health benefits of fermented food, and not just because she has a vested interest in promoting her line of ferments.

As a homesteader on 20 acres of Missouri land a dozen years ago, Chamberlain canned garden produce over a camp stove and watched her husband ferment vegetables in a corner crock.

But she never took much interest in fermented foods until her health began a steep decline.

After a difficult birth, she fell into despair, eating more than she moved.

“I was just floored with the postpartum,” Chamberlain said.

After gaining 200 pounds, she realized she needed to take action. Her dad, who had been obese, died of heart failure, she said.

“I had a moment where I realized that if I’m going to be alive for my daughter, I have to lose this weight,” Chamberlain said.

She started with intermittent fasting, and noticed that the kimchi she bought from Asian markets helped her feel full. The umami punch also made her feel satiated enough to give up other less nutrient-dense food.

“In the end, I figured out that I could eat better quality food and less of it, and that’s when the game changed for me,” she said.

That also launched within her a desire to ferment everything, including daylily bulbs and ramps that grow wild in the mountains.

She calls it “relearning.” Fermented food, she said, is as old as food preservation itself.

It’s also remarkably easy.

Chamberlain, whose in-person fermentation tutorials were put on pause during the pandemic, mostly teaches through video now.

She said she misses the dawning realization on the faces of students who have canned for 20-30 years as their primary preservation technique.

“They’ll just look at me and go, ‘That’s it?’” Chamberlain laughed.

A SCALABLE RECIPE FOR SIMPLE SAUERKRAUT

To measure the amount of cabbage you will need, take your fermenting container (jar, crock, etc.) and use raw cleaned and dried cabbage. Chop up enough to fill the container twice. Chop to desired bite size.

Then place this cabbage in another mixing container, leaving enough room to where you can add and mix in the salt comfortably.

Add to your mixing container 2% of the weight of your cabbage in salt. Massage and pound the kraut and salt, mixing them together thoroughly and releasing the water out of the cabbage.

Then pack into the jar and pound to release the brine as you fill the ferment container. If you have extra brine in your mixing container then pour it into your fermenting container to cover your cabbage if needed.

If not using a weight or airlock, make sure the vegetable matter is below the brine or it will mold. If you don’t use a weight you will need to watch your kraut mixture closely over the fermentation period, generally 3-5 days.

If not using an airlock, you will need to “burp” your jar daily when you check for the brine level. Active overflow is highly probable, especially in warmer temperatures, so place your fermenting container in a bowl or sink to catch the overflow.

Primary fermentation usually takes 3-5 days and then you can ferment longer if desired. Taste after 5-7 days for longer fermentation times.

When you are happy with the level of fermentation then remove weight and airlock (if used) and place a clean lid on your jar and place jar in the refrigerator. If you fermented in a crock or larger vessel, you can then repack your kraut into smaller jars to fit your refrigerator. This kraut is then good indefinitely if kept refrigerated.

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