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Lacto fermented veggies

Published on 30 min side , preserve , summer , fall

Ingredients

  • Veggies (cut into pieces)
  • Water
  • Salt

Instructions

  1. Put a clean jar on a precise scale and press "tare".
  2. Add your vegetables to your jar, and then enough water to cover them. We are only interested in the weight of the veggies and water combined, so don't worry about how much the veggies weigh alone.
  3. Now it's time to calculate how much salt is needed to keep your fermentation safe. Typically you'll want between two and three percent, so multiplying your veggie-water weight by .025 is a pretty safe bet. Peppers are an example of a vegetable that's prone to mold, so you'll want to be in the 3%-5% range. If you're making fermented pickles from cucumbers, 5% is often recommended. But for the majority of harder veggies that aren't super high in moisture content, 2.5% does the trick.
  4. Grab a bowl and weigh out the salt that you calculated in grams.
  5. Pour the water from your jar into your salt, and mix the salt until it dissolves completely. Add that saltwater back to your jar.
  6. "Close" your jar with a plastic sandwich bag full of water. If you don't have fermentation weights or an airlock, this is a great way to keep your vegetables under water. You might be wondering why an airtight lid is a no-go, and that's because gas needs to escape. Your jar can and will explode if you don't let air escape.
  7. Find any room temperature space that doesn't get direct sunlight, and you're officially fermenting! Check on your ferment around day 3. You can taste it and decide if you like the flavor. If you don't, wait another day or two and taste again. Continue this until it has developed a flavor that you enjoy.
  8. Once you're satisfied with the flavor, it's time for cold storage. You want to store it somewhere that is consistently below 12 °C. The colder it is, the longer your ferment will hold the same flavor. For many people, the best place is the refrigerator, but you can use a cellar, a chilly basement, or somewhere else that is always cold.

Adapted from this original recipe