Sauerkraut adventures: turnips

I'm now committed to my sauerkrauts so much such that I have tooled up. Eating the ferments and making them is now an addiction and a routine.

I purchased a Borner V-Slicer Multibox V3 'grater' (pictured left) at a seriously cheap price and can now grate with  abandone -- including my fingers if I am not careful.

I also picked up second hand in the local Op shop  two more EasyYo yogurt making flasks. I don't use them to make my  yogurt but they are excellent crocks for fermenting vegetables.

You can ferment in anything, really -- even a bucket will do -- but I like the EasyYo size and sturdy build.

So today I experimented and grated up a batch of Turnips inspired by this recipe.

I added one beetroot for colour. 

The routine is simple:

1. Get some live Greek yogurt and pour about a cup of it into a colander lined with two paper towels. Leave for an hour resting on a bowl and  gravity will separate the Whey. Its' the Whey you want. It contains the bugs that will do your fermenting-- like lactobacilli -- and harvesting them this way will give your ferment a kick start.
2. Scrape the (deliciously) thick yogurt mix in the colander into a jar for later consumption and set the whey aside. You should get one third to half a cup of clear fluid in the bowl below.
3. Grate your cabbage or turnips or whatever.  The size of your fermenting container will determine the quantity you need to grate. I grate into a square plastic storage box with high sides. That way there is no mess and there is plenty of room. Much better than using a bowl to grate in or onto a kitchen bench or chopping board. 
4. Sprinkle the grated vegetables with salt. I use one tablespoon for my quantities. Mix in the salt and start squeezing the beejeebers out of the grated vegetables. Pound them with your fist. Throttle them. Then leave them to sweat.
5. Drain  off most  the liquid  after half an hour of sweating; squeeze the vegetables some more and pour in the Whey. Mix. 
6. Shovel the grated vegetables into your fermenting container and push down them firmly so that liquid rises up above  and drowns them. The grated veges need to be submerged in fluid otherwise the microbial growth won't  be the ferment you seek. The process has to be anaerobic. 
7. You need to weigh down the grated vegetables with a china plate or plastic disc that covers the gauge of the vessel you are using. On top of that put a weight. I prefer to use an old anchovy jar that has a glass lid. I have removed all the metal  from the jar and to add weight, I fill it with water. The jar is easy to keep clean and it works. If I had a rock the right size and it was a smooth easy-to-wash river stone I'd use that. 
8. Cover the container so that flying bugs can't get in and leave the ferment to go about its microbiology for at  least a week. Depending on the weather and where you live or the time of year or how hot or cold is your kitchen --  the fermenting time is up to you. 
9. Bon appetit.

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Yogurt + Carrot = simple soup

After yesterday's post on oligosaccharides and prebiotics I am eating my way through a bunch of carrots.

I had to be re-supplied,  but now I'm carrot sufficed.

Carrot moments are readily had and I'm souping them up: garlic, onion, ginger, cumin, and (I prefer) Allspice -- salt and pepper. Boiled and  blended.

Green herbs are kosher esp fresh coriander if you have some. Add in chopped after blending. Chilli is good too...

Into bowl when hot and upon the red surface dollop on heaps of Greek Yogurt. 

It's gotta be Moorish...in flavour. 

Spoon into mouth. 

Now if you are of the sweet tooth persuasion you can hold back on much of the salt and pepper, not use yogurt,  and flavour your blend with honey so you  deploy it as a dip or dressing for bread.

But here's preparation rule of thub:

Food chemists at Newcastle University have found that boiling the vegetables whole rather than slicing them up increases the supply of healthy ingredients by a quarter....
 "By cooking carrots whole and chopping them up afterwards, you are locking in both taste and nutrients so the carrot is better for you all round." [Research report].

If you want to know more about carrots, the World Carrot Museum's web pages.

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Lacto fermentation rocks!

Further adventures in lactobacilli... 

 Another batch of DIY sauerkraut bottled, patted down and refrigerated for many happy ever-afterings. Without getting into additions (and recipes can become quite exotic) I rely on the core basics using salt and whey -- and it's fascinating how the taste nuances change and develop. 

 I'm bottling up early in the ferment -- 10 days this time -- but hope to explore longer times  before refrigeration slow downs the activity. Being a humid Summer in the sub tropics I don't have the ambient temperature advantages offered to sauerkraut production in temperate zones so I'm trying to see what I can do under conditions of a faster ferment.

Besides I like crunch.

Slow ferments enrich the sauerkraut flavours but here I'm risking evaporation and you need the cabbage to be always submerged in liquid.

Once my chokoes fruit again I'll try another batch of choko sauerkraut .

Since I have planted more cucumbers  I may ferment those : Lacto Fermented Cucumbers.

Out there waiting for me is an even bigger world dedicated to  lacto fermentation.

But why bother when you could buy some of these preserved foods at the local supermarket? [Asks he with a mouth full of  morsels  from my two latest sauerkraut ferments. De-lish-us.]

You bother because aside from the taste you can engineer yourself when you make your own, bought product is likely to have been pasteurised before sale thus killing the lactobacilli. 

It's  bug murder! Imagine if they pasteurized yogurt after it was made? But if you wanted to ship, warehouse and shelf life sauerkraut in a can or jar the liklihood is that it would be heated to at least 67-72°C for at least 15 seconds to ensure that all the bacteria were dead. Good or bad it wouldn't matter at that temperature.

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Yogurt and I are 'in a relationship'. It's not complicated at all. We are in love.

Ayran

Yogurt and I are 'in a relationship'.  It's not complicated at all. We are in love.

Deliciously  in love.

For ever so long all those lactobacilli and I have been getting along famously.

There's not a day goes by when we don't get it on together.

I can find an excuse to have it off with yogurt, breakfast,  lunch  and dinner.

I have a yogurt sauce on my breakfast plate. A yogurt smoothie at midday. Any number of yogurt excuses at dusk.

Such is my habituation that I have to make my own yogurt which I do as a matter of routine. So the budgetary complication of being addicted to the stuff is transcended. For me, yogurt costs as much -- and as little  -- as milk.

So now that I'm swimming in yogurt -- and I could if I wanted to -- I can explore all the possibilities it  may offer.

Recently I have been delving into the big wide world of yogurt sauces -- from variations of Tzatziki to salad dressings, and cute  blends such as yogurt with Tahina. 

This world is huge. So big that rather than wing it I thought I'd explore yogurt with greater consideration.

I have been cooking Middle Eastern food for 40 years and I know my way around the Mediterranean. But when you come to tackle yogurt culture -- not just the lactobacilli but yogurt cuisine and enjoyment -- you have to go Turkish.

After all, yogurt  is a Turkish word -- “yoğurt” -- and for Turks, yogurt is a passion. 

At the everyday centrepiece of Turkish yogurt consumption is Ayran which is consumed like a soft drink. Ayran is a Lassi but without any sweet ingredients. Just yogurt, water, salt and mint or garlic blended together.

Like a Capuchino, Ayran  is frothy.  

But Ayran tells us a lot about how yogurt is used in Turkish cuisine -- and that's what I've been trying to get a handle on.  If you explore Turkish food -- the savory stuff anyway --  with the taste of yogurt in your mind, there's a delightful sour logic to  it all.

I mean all these wonderful dishes almost seem  just so many delicious excuses to eat yogurt.  

For a yogurt junkie like myself this is one helluva revelation. 

Mind you we aren't talking about yogurt according to what's in your supermarket. None of those low fat, fruit flavoured, sugar enhanced concoctions that are passed off as 'healthy'.  We're talking plain, often thick, (what's called here) Greek style yogurt with or without the whey.

This is the stuff that is extraordinarily good for you.  

My problem is that I can't get too much of it. 

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Yogurt going cheap. Domestic product. Big pot=more yogurt.

I have been making my own yogurt with abandon.

It's easy.

I hadn't made yogurt so industriously since my 'Greek period' in the early seventies.

Then we used wooly jumpers and towels to keep the ferment going. 

But today I use my 'Hot Bag' which I imported from South Africa. 

My hot baggery is a domestic essential and I find many uses for the insulator -- including making my own yogurt. 

If you haven't got yourself a Hot Bag yet, and you are in yogurt mode -- use a sleeping bag. 

Aside from a quantity of milk and a stirring implement all you need is a cooking thermometer -- preferably one with large numbers as they can be hard to read when the lettering is minute. 

But it's easy so long as you are prepared to set aside the time to stir the pot on the stovetop. A big pot makes sense. 

Big pot=more yogurt.

And don't burn the milk. Keep within the temperature parameters.

Being a man I have trouble doing two things at once so pot stirring tends to be a full time project. Depending on your skills and the pot volume : 10 -20 minutes at the lactose coal face. 

Then next morning after you've tucked the lactobacillus away in its cosy chamber you get yogurt. 

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Making kraut sour my whey.

I haven't been at all happy with my DIY sauerkraut this far but my latest batch driven  primarily by whey -- drained from my  own yogurt making -- passes muster.

This batch was made from purple cabbage...considering the colour in the photo.

You can drain whey from any thick Greek style yogurt, and while I don't drain my yogurt because the lactobacillus  keeps on converting the milk carbohydrates and the yogurt will keep on thickening the longer you keep it -- if I want whey, it's like milking a cow.  

Whey's a clearish liquid so you just pour that into your cabbage mash, add some sea salt; pack down and let it naturally juice up. 

The salt drives the sweating process and the moisture leeches out of the grated cabbage drowning it in juice.

If you want to partake of a gastro entestinal 'hit' -- drink  some of this juice as plenty is generated. Kapow! 

Voila: sauerkraut!  With the whey on board and our sub tropical conditions I'm currently letting the ferment develop for a week before jaring the cabbage up and refrigerating. 

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A Whey with squashed cabbage a sauerkraut makes

My attempts at making my own sauerkraut have not been productive.

I suspect that I have been hampered by high ambient air temperatures than what the kraut  Lactobacillus appreciate.

The best quality sauerkraut is produced at 65-72° F (18-22° C) temperatures. Temperatures 45.5° F (7.5° C) to 65 F (18 C) favor the growth and metabolism of L.mesenteroides. Temperatures higher than 72° F (22° C) favor the growth of Lactobacillus species. Generally, lower temperatures produce higher quality sauerkraut, although at 45.5° F (7.5° C) bacteria are growing so slow that the cabbage might need 6 months to complete fermentation. Higher temperatures produce sauerkraut in 7-10 days but of the lesser quality. This creates such a fast fermentation that some types of lactic acid bacteria don’t grow at all and less reaction take place inside what results in a less complex flavor. Below 45.5° F (7.5° C) fermentation time is up to 6 months. At 65° F (18° C) fermentation time is 20 days. At 90-96° F (32-36° C) fermentation time is 10 days. (Source)

But there is a short cut: the way the Greeks do it.

And this is what I'm doing with my latest effort. 

The Greeks use the whey taken from the making of yogurt and add it to the cabbage mash as a starter. The whey is often drained from the yogurt to make  it thicker. It already contains plenty of hard working Lactobacillus  so when married to the cabbage and salt things supposedly happen faster.

Indeed, I'm hoping to bottle my sauerkraut after 3 days of fermentation.

If, after 3 days, I have dinky dye kraut I can then begin to experiment with extended lengths with later batches.

I can get plenty of whey as I make my own yogurt almost twice per week and whey is easily made by draining dobs of this yogurt through a cloth. 

Making sauerkraut should be easy but so far I haven't been blessed with an edible result.  Its' rustrating. But then, failure only encourages me to do more homework.

Now I suspect I'm on the right track with the CABBAGE + WHEY + SALT approach (more whey/less salt). 

The only procedures you need to know is how to bruise the shredded cabbage so that it sweats...and how to pack it in a crock so that it is stamped down and  reamins drowned in its watery juices. 

Time does the rest -- and all those  hard working  Lactobacillae. 

Afterward:

After 3 days of fermentation the sauerkraut  was delicious -- even compared to the Polish import I so often buy. Still a tad crunchy but with a mix of exciting flavours and not as salty as some I've tasted.  I prefer my sauerkraut simple and don't take so much to all the additions of spices, other vegetables or white wine that are favoured by the Germans. I know that if my sauerkraut ferments as my yogurt does then even jarred up in the refrigerator I'm still gonna get more activity and deeper flavours with longer resting time. And if I use my own whey I'll get a partnering of Lacto species and tastes -- yogurt and sauerkraut. So now, while I've given up brewing beer or baking with sour dough, I can still wallow in the joys of  ferment.

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Yogurt -- you can do a lot with fermented milk if you make it yourself

Yogurt.

A dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk.

I've been eating so much of the stuff that I've gone back to making my own.

It's so easy to do .  Outlay is cheap: the cost of the milk.

So if yogurt is your staple: Make it yourself.

All you need is a cooking thermometer. There are sight and feel methods but they aren't reliable unless you are well practiced.

For me now, yogurt making is routine. Every few days given my consumption.

• Simmer the milk to 82 C (180 F) while stirring.
• Let milk cool to 43 C (110 F).
• Add two tablespoons of already made yogurt.
• Cover the container. Keep warm and insulated overnight.  I use my cooking bags but any insulated container or sleeping bag/dooner like cover would do.
• Refrigerate.

For some reason this is called "Greek"yogurt if you strain off the whey . But you really needn't bother.

I have yogurt smoothies for lunch. My preferred blend are either with pawpaw or berries. You can suit yourself.

For Lassi stir to a smooth blend one part chilled water to two parts yogurt. I sometimes use chilled green tea instead of water.

For making curries -- and I prefer yogurt based North Indian curries to their southern cousins made on coconut milk -- follow these tips to prevent curdling if it becomes a problem.

I also use plain yogut as a condiment with köfte meats, roasts and tomato dishes like Sicilian Caponata. There is also a large range of Middle Eastern sauces which are yogurt based. 

So for drizzling or dipping, or salad tossing you can do a lot with fermented milk.

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