Brine Fermentation

Please read the page on best practices before you start! General Good Practice

If you are looking for sauerkraut, that has its own page, here: Sauerkraut

Brine fermentation is pretty simple.  You chop up the vegis you want to ferment, cover them with brine, add a starter, and ferment!  

My favorite brine is 3 TBS salt into 1 liter of water.  That is the strongest brine that Sandor Katz recommends, but I like it. Consult his book for other options. 

Here are some of my favorite fermented vegi recipes that are Viking Age possible

1.  CARROTS 

Oh. my. gosh.  This might be one of the best fermented foods of all time. 

My absolute favorite is just plain carrots, cut into coins, and fermented.  SO good.  I could eat the whole jar.  

I also make them shredded, with garlic (this is an outstanding condiment, crunchy and garlicy, delicious!).  There is no volumes given here, because I put carrots in a jar, fill with brine, ferment.  Don't pack the shredded ones tight or they'll overflow for a week, sigh. You can cut coins, shred, make spears, etc.  Also good with dill. 

2. Viking Possible "kimchee"

I took a large bunch of curly purple kale.  I pulled off the leaf parts, and finely tore and chopped them up. I also VERY finely chopped the stems. I finely chopped several carrots.  I added a LOT of garlic, both whole cloves and sliced cloves.  Standard brine and starter.  I only fermented this about two weeks, but in VERY hot weather. This is really good, especially with a fatty meat dish. 

3. Cherries. 

I couldn't get pie cherries, so I used bings. I pitted them, and packed them in a jar. I filled it with water, and the usual starter.  Added an airlock, and fermented one week in very hot weather. These are DELICIOUS.  Next time, I'd like to try it with yeast as well. 

4. Onions.

We finely sliced onions, and added two halved bing cherries or two blackberries (or any dark fruit) to the whole thing.  Usual starter and brine. 

DELICIOUS!!!!

5. Keeper Garlic.

This is my way of keeping vegis for a long time. I mix up the usual brine and starter. I add LOTS of peeled garlic cloves, and put the whole thing in the fridge. They keep for months, and taste great.

6. Turnip, onions, apples. 

Finely slice everything. This one needed something, it wasn't super awesome. 

7. Carrots, celery, onions. 

Fine, not super amazing? Maybe needs some mustard seeds or something. I sliced the carrots and onions, the celery sticks and leaves went in. 

8. Cabbage and roasted garlic. 

I roughly chopped the cabbage, the garlic cloves went in whole. This stuff was quite good. 

9. Kale Stems. 

    A. Cut them to length (so they fit in the jar). Cover with brine and ferment. These remind me of pickled asparagus for some reason. If the stems are too               tough, you can preblanche them, or whack with a mallet. 

   B. As above, but we added roasted garlic and pine needles. This one also had some kale leaves in it. This was quite good.