Fermenting Archive

Earl Grey Kombucha

Earl Grey is my new favorite tea for making kombucha. While the tea is just a black tea blend, it’s the addition of bergamot orange oil that makes it especially lovely. Read more ›

Naturally Fermented Lime Ginger Ale

Want to try your hand at wild fermentation? Ginger ale soda is an easy first step. Made from freshly grated ginger, lime zest and juice, sugar and water, fermented ginger ale works with wild yeasts and bacterias present on the ginger and in the air. Read more ›

Fermented Dill Pickles

I’m a dill pickle girl all the way. My mother’s dill pickles are the #2 thing I can in the house after tomatoes. So imagine my surprise when I found a fermented version that almost rivals my mom’s? Read more ›

Easy Kimchi

With summer produce in full swing, now is the time to start preserving the harvest. One of my staples is kimchi. Many people are surprised to learn that fermenting kimchi from scratch is really easy. Read more ›

Fermented Cauliflower Pickles

I just opened a jar of fermented cauliflower pickles that I put up last July from a huge head of cauliflower from my garden. The pickles are crisp and tangy, laced with tarragon, garlic, chili and mustard. Best of all, the pickle juice is carbonated. Read more ›

Preserving Winter Citrus

The dead of winter is where we’re at. Heading for -25 windchill tomorrow and I, for one, need as much sparkle in my life as I can muster. The irony is that citrus, the sunniest of fruits, is in season in the middle of winter. Read more ›

Buckwheat Sourdough Flatbread

Buckwheat Sourdough Flatbread combines two favorite things from my childhood; sourdough bread and buckwheat pancakes. The result is a bread that’s crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, with a distinctly pleasant tang. Read more ›

Fruit Kombucha

I’ve been brewing kombucha for a few years now and have my system down pat. I make two gallons at a time in sun tea jars with taps at the bottom. The thick and healthy mother (scobys) in each jar churn out a gallon of kombucha in one to two weeks. Read more ›

My Kombucha

A few years ago I started making my own kombucha. Kombucha is very trendy right now, selling for several bucks a bottle at the store, but it’s a very old concoction. Dating back at least B.C., originating somewhere in northern China,⁽¹⁾ many claim kombucha has all sorts of health benefits. Read more ›

Daikon Kimchi

I like radishes. In the spring there’s an explosion of little red globes, followed again three months later by the fall radish boom. But our Minnesota summers make radishes pithy, bitter and hot, so there’s a long pause in radish season, which I find wholly unacceptable. Then I met the daikon radish. Read more ›

Fermented Corn Relish

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of presenting and cooking at our local Linden Hills Farmer’s Market as part of their Chef Guru series, produced by Kitchen in the Market. The topic was what to do with the season’s abundance of corn, tomatoes and zucchini. My immediate thought was lacto-fermented vegetables which require no cooking at all. Read more ›