on May 11, 2012

Create Your Own Culture. ~ Willow King

The Power of Fermented Foods.

About a year ago my partner Mara and I started a company that makes cultured vegetables. No, not beets and carrots that regularly attend the opera, but live, raw, probiotic, naturally fermented veggies.

We started out just making these goodies for our families and friends and nobody could get enough. It turns out that many people crave the zingy buzz of live food and that lacto-fermented foods, that used to be staple in many places in the world, are making a comeback.

Fermenting is an age-old way to preserve food.

It was a way to use all the access produce from the summer and keep eating it all year round. This in itself is a great process to connect to us to seasonality and keep the strength of the food intact.

Fermentation also makes food easier to digest, and creates new nutrients such as B vitamins—folic acid, niacin, riboflavin, thiamin and biotin.

Some ferments have antioxidants principles and also create omega-3 fatty acids- which we know are key to a healthy immune system.

Basically, fermented foods help supply your digestive tract with cultures that are necessary to break down and assimilate nutrients. These cultures, lactobacilli chief among them, are like little invisible friends that help us stay healthy and happy through the ups and downs of the year.

If you are interested in experimenting we recommend starting with simple sauerkraut and then expand from there.

This is great activity to do with kids (or your dog) as it is a bit of funky food science experiment.

To begin you will need a ball jar, one medium cabbage, sea salt, and a starter like whey, or for a vegan option you can use kombucha.Each starter produces different results and flavors, so you can try a few and find the one you like best.Core and shred the cabbage and then spread on a tray or work surface. Add the sea salt—a good ratio is generally one or two tablespoons salt to one three lb cabbage. Then pound the cabbage and salt with a wooden hammer (or a rolling pin can work) until the juices start to release and the cabbage softens. You can add a bit of starter at this point, or you can just do the cabbage juice and salt, which usually makes a fine ferment.Place the cabbage shreds into a wide mouth ball jar and press down with a fist (you can use a cabbage leaf as a top and the press on that) until the vegetable is submerged in liquid.

Cover this combination and leave it in a cool but not cold space (ideally 65 to 70 degrees) for about 3 days. You may like it stronger, in which case you could let it go for a few more days.

When you are satisfied with the taste, transfer to cold storage, where it will last for up to 6 months.

Now you can enjoy the benefits of your own homemade culture—monocle and all.

Posted April 4, 2012, 11:53 am MT

Probiotic pickling comes naturally to Boulder’s Esoteric Food Company

Boulder's Esoteric Food Company has the recipe for probiotic pickles

Douglas Brown

Pretty, yes? And good. Esoteric Food Company has the recipe for great probiotic foods.

It all began, like so many things in food world, in the kitchen.

Mara King and Willow King — same last name, but they aren’t related — took one day a week to hang out together and make stuff from scratch. They tried sausage. Cheese, from raw milk. Kombucha.

But the Boulderites kept returning to pickled things – cucumbers, cabbage, beets, kale.

They dreamed of opening a restaurant or a delicatessen, but the pickles kept nudging them, whispering: Restaurant schmestaurant. So expensive! So many of them! Stick with pickles!”

It turns out pickles are persuasive.

Boulder's Esoteric Food Company has the recipe for probiotic pickling.

Douglas Brown

Perfectly fried eggs on a bed of Esoteric Food Company’s pickled beets, hijiki, and kale

Instead of turning blank space into a room full of food, last May they began filling pretty jars with vegetables, herbs and spices and selling them in stores in the Boulder area. And soon their business, called Esoteric Food Company, will have a stall at the Boulder Farmer’s Market, and their products – called “Zuke,” short for Tsukemono, which means “pickled things” in Japanese – may also be on shelves at Whole Foods throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

At first, “we were giving it away and selling it at Lucky’s Market in Boulder,” said Willow. “A case here, a case there.”

Now three other people work with them, and twice a week they process 500 pounds of vegetables or more at a commercial kitchen.

They have big plans. Among other things, they want to buy different stuff at the Farmer’s Market every week, pickle it, and sell it until they run out. Each week, they hope, they will have two new pickled products – in addition to their regular line – for sale.

“We are moving away from this idea that dinner comes from a box and it’s always the same,” said Mara. “What is ready now should decide what is for dinner tonight.”

I tried the kimchi. I hadn’t tasted the stuff in maybe 20 years, since I lived in Minneapolis as a 20-something graduate student and nearly OD’d on kimchi and its punch of pungent funk.

I feared it.

But one taste of Esoteric’s version, and I fell in love with it (although later, on a picnic on Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, my daughter Ruby could not stop talking about the aroma. She was not a fan.)

I also had bites of the beet, hijiki and kale, and the dill, caraway and cabbage. Fantastic stuff.

I know at least one of my stops at the Farmer’s Market this year

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Elephant Journal- DIY Fermentation