An instructional video of me making sauerkraut (expertly filmed and edited by how2heroes!)
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ISBN: 978-0760372456
ISBN: 978-1592337385
Alex Lewin
cultivating health through food and action • lowering the barriers to fermentation
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Alex Lewin
Cambridge and San Francisco
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Kombucha Blog Hiatus11 years ago
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Milk in the Raw – Okay or No Whey?12 years ago
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Books I've Read Recently
- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price: Rather that theorizing abstractly about human nutrition, the author sought out isolated groups of healthy people around the world (this was in the 1930s, when there were still isolated groups of people), and documented their foodways. Price's book is jaw-dropping (literally). He describes group after group of people who are healthy in isolation, and become sick, miserable, and toothless when they adopt a "modern" diet. Aren't you curious what they were eating when they were healthy? Full write-up coming soon.
Other Books I've Read
- The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, by David E. Gumpert: Is the government engaged in a covert and illegal campaign to discourage people from making their own food choices? Read the facts and decide for yourself. Full review here.
- Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji and Yoshiki Tsuji: A masterwork on the subject of Japanese cuisine, and by extension, Japanese culture.
- Winning Bicycle Racing, by Jack Simes: A short, fascinating book on the subject of bicycling, published in 1976, when the majority of men still wore moustaches. And as with any bicycling publication, there are some great facial expressions.
- The Secret History of the World: As Laid Down by the Secret Societies, by Mark Booth: A truly fascinating, meticulously documented look at the evolution of human consciousness and religion. What are some of the connections among different religions' creation myths and pantheons? Why are there astrological and other "pagan" symbols in Christian rites? Did you know that "elohim", the Hebrew word in Genesis typically translated as "God", is actually a plural noun? And so on. N.B.: the book describes an almost exclusively male experience. I think Booth could have done more in the front material to explain this, or at least to notify the reader of the orientation.
- The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy, by Sasha Issenberg: The history of sushi and the sushi supply chain, detailing the journey that your fish takes from the cold ocean to your neighborhood sushi bar, often by way of Tokyo. Sasha Issenberg focuses on the lives of the people involved in the sushi trade. Fascinating and well-written.
- The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice, by Trevor Corson: The story of some students at a sushi academy—and more generally, the story of sushi itself. A wonderful book, entertaining, thorougly and carefully researched, and instructive. It makes me want to eat sushi. Or write about it. Similar, but only a bit, to The Making of a Chef, by Michael Ruhlman.
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan
- The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, by James Howard Kunstler
- The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America, by Patricia Klindienst
Food Preserving Reading List
- Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz
- Ball Blue Book of Preserving
- Putting Food By, by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg, and Beatrice Vaughan: A classic work on the subject of food preserving, with an emphasis on canning.
- Preserved, by Nick Sandler
- Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation, by The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante, with forewords by Deborah Madison and Eliot Coleman
- ServSafe CourseBook with Online Exam Voucher (5th Edition): You, too, can be ServSafe Certified!
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The Fine Print
Please Note:
Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or supplements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
I have marketing connections to some of the brands, topics or products herein. Through the use of affiliate links contained herein, I may collect fees from purchases made.
Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or supplements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
I have marketing connections to some of the brands, topics or products herein. Through the use of affiliate links contained herein, I may collect fees from purchases made.
Blog Archive
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2009
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September
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- Pho of Known Origin
- Reflections On My First Pickling and Preserving Class
- Making Kimchi (video)
- Pickled Rutabagas (video)
- I'm Doing Free Sauerkraut Demos, Oct 3, 12:30PM-1:...
- New Book From Frances Moore Lappé: Liberation Ecol...
- How To Make Sauerkraut (video)
- SIGG Bottles Contained BPA Until Aug 2008
- Sauerkraut Is A Powerful Natural Aphrodisiac
- Cans Across America Canvolution Cantacular Hits So...
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September
(10)
17 comments:
Hi. I am the health columnist at NOW Magazine in Toronto. Would you please spare five minutes this morning to talk about fermentation and health benefits. Sorry for the short notice. Thank you so much
Elizabeth Bromstein
missbromstein@yahoo.com
(sent my number to your harvard email)
I had no idea making sauerkraut was that easy. Thanks for a great video.
Saved this for our Thanksgiving video mix. We loved it! We love your style. And we're going to love our very own sauerkraut.
We want to collect all your videos. Please make a whole series!
Alexander,
Glad you loved my video.
Ask and ye shall receive! Click below for more videos.
http://feedmelikeyoumeanit.blogspot.com/search/label/video
When you make sauerkraut, let me know how it turns out.
Joanne, I'm glad you liked it! Let us know if you make some sauerkraut!
Thanks for the great post! I'm trying my hand at this for the first time today.
Question - I didn't get enough liquid to cover the cabbage in the jar. What should I do?
An aside - do you find that it gives up more liquid if the cabbage is at room temperature before you begin rather than chilled?
Thank you!
MD,
Yes, I suppose the cabbage might give up more liquid if it's at room temp.
If you just made the cabbage and there's not enough liquid, try packing it in the jar. If there's still not enough, wait a day or two (and pack it down each day). If there's STILL not enough liquid, make a brine solution with 1 cup of water and 1 Tablespoon of salt, and pour the brine into the jar until your kraut is covered.
Hope this helps!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for answering my question about whey and salt amounts (I can't remember where on your blog I posted it). My problem isn't that it's too warm, but I fear it's too cold in my kitchen for fermentation, is this possible? Is there an ideal temperature range for fermenting veggies?
After watching your video, I've made a bunch of krauts. My favorites have been red cabbage/apple, green cabbage/onion/carrot/radish/garlic/ginger, and green cabbage/Macomber turnip/fresh fennel. My next will be green cabbage/carrot/ginger since the carrot ginger one I made came out too dry.
Any thoughts about a pickle video? I make these often but would love to see you version. Thanks for publishing such a nourishing (on many levels) blog!
Joelle
Joelle,
I'm glad you are enjoying the blog!
As far as temperature goes: It's true that fermentation slows down a lot as the temperature drops. In Korea, they bury kimchi in the ground to ferment. The temperature underground (if you go down a few feet) is a pretty constant 50-55 degrees F. So from that I conclude that 50-55 degrees F can support fermentation. When you get down to 40 degrees (a fridge), it's too cold. So unless your kitchen is below 50 degrees or so, you should be okay.
An ideal temperature range? Maybe 60-75 degrees F. Any colder and things can get a little slow; any warmer and there's a slightly increased chance of having to deal with molds and yeasts.
Congrats on your kraut-making! If things are too dry, you can always add a little brine (1 tablespoon of salt disolved in 1 cup of non-chlorinated water). Adding cabbage, as you are planning to do, is also a great way to help things along.
A pickle video...that's a great idea. I'll put that on the docket for next time I'm making videos.
Hi Alex,
I thought I had posted a question, but when I came back to look for your answer my post wasn't here. So forgive me if I post this twice. The short question is that I made up 2 new batches of sauerkraut at the same time. One fermented perfectly (5 days), and the liquid of the other has a gelatinous texture to it. It's green and savoy cabbage, onion, radish and ginger.
Any thoughts? Did it go bad? I transferred it immediately to fridge, but won't eat it til I understand the issue better.
Thanks,
Joelle
Hi Joelle,
This is the first I've heard of this question. No worries in any case!
I'm not sure why your kraut liquid in one jar would have gotten gelatinous. I've not seen this nor heard of it. There are some vegetables, like green pepper for instance, that can turn to mush. How does it smell? Same as the other jar, or different?
Could the one jar have been contaminated, or not clean, when you started the sauerkraut?
Better safe than sorry. I'm not going to advise you to eat it if you think it's not the way it should be. Better to sacrifice a dollar or two worth of veg than to get sick.
(But if you do decide to taste it, take a small taste first, then wait a couple of days.)
It was actually the whole batch of 5 pints that did this--the other batch I made with different ingredients and fermented in the same place for the same amount of time, was fine. Weird. In any case, I think I'm gonna compost it all, since even if it doesn't make me sick, the consistency looks pretty nasty. Guess I was hoping you'd tell me this was some sort of exotic yet extra healthy variety of lactobacilli!
Thanks, as always, for being such a generous resource to us real foodies.
Joelle
Hmm...I could see how that would happen with not enough salt. Are the pieces of onion still intact, or have they vanished? If they have vanished, then they're the culprit. If you are patient and not squeamish, you might empty a jar out onto the counter and poke around in it before you compost it.
Ok, finally a moment last night to take apart one of the jars. Eeeewwwwww! Because I grate my veggies in the food processor, I couldn't make out the difference between the onions and the green cabbage, but the most remarkable thing we all noticed was the smell--it just smelled rotten and like nothing I'd like to ever eat or serve. My best guess at this point is that I let it ferment too long. I checked it on day 3 and all was well, in fact, it was bubbling like crazy. It just usually takes a bunch of days to ferment around here, so when I forgot to check on day 4 I didn't think much of it. And by day 5 is was bad. So I think the extra bubbling was a big sign that things were fermenting quite well, and probably needed to be put in the fridge that day. I did have it in my basement since I was dehydrating in my usual fermentation corner and it was too warm there, so I must not have gauged the different conditions well.
Now I know!
Joelle
Thank you so much for posting this video. I started my first sauerkraut three days ago and today I've put up my extra zucchini using the same approach (roughly grated to increase the surface area of the pieces).
Yum!
Meesto, great! Be aware that the zucchini might get mushy. Remember to check on your veggies every day or two!
We really enjoyed the video from here in Sonoma. Have an enormous cabbage and getting ready to make some kraut.
Yannick, Rachel, and Javier
PS. Nice hat.
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