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Hexigrammus posted:I might start doing that too - we'd like reduce our plastic use as much as possible. It would be a good use for our extra wide mouth jars. We use the standards first because the lids are significantly cheaper. I imagine a freezer only lid identified with a felt pen could be re-used for a long time. Lab Sharpies work better than regular sharpies, but the physical scraping by the dish detergent still wears it away with time.
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Jan 21, 2021 02:30
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:52 |
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My house is a little warm to ferment sauerkraut right now, but I had lots of extra cabbage from making coleslaw: There is a glass weight in there, but it's hard to see. I stuck it in a quiet closet. I will put a fresh ice pack nearby once a day to try to keep the temp down a few degrees. Our AC is set to 75F right now, so it just needs a little help. Thinking of picking up a cheap foam cooler. If it turns out it is too warm, I'm only out time!
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Jul 3, 2021 21:38
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effika posted:My house is a little warm to ferment sauerkraut right now, but I had lots of extra cabbage from making coleslaw: This is going pretty well, actually! The closet stays around 70F with a twice daily change of cold packs. Fermentation has gone well, to the point that mold tried to grow down from the airlock this last week, and was stopped by the brine. Cleaned it up and put it back in its closet this evening. I'll sample it after 21 total days of fermentation, since that seems to be the minimum in literature for e. coli control. It smells like sauerkraut and looks pretty! Except for that mold stalactite, of course.    Scooped away the cabbage bit that had floated off as I moved the jar and the dot of mold that fell from the stalactite, and the rest seemed pretty good.
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Jul 17, 2021 03:58
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effika posted:My house is a little warm to ferment sauerkraut right now, but I had lots of extra cabbage from making coleslaw:  Look what a difference 3 weeks makes! (Chemistry junkies: Look at that red cabbage pH indicator color change! Definitely below 4 pH now.) It is juuuust sour enough for me to like it. If I weren't impatient I'd do another week, but it's complex and tasty enough now. Yum. 
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Jul 24, 2021 21:20
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Something to be aware off if one is using quart mason jars with the freezer plastic lids set up like that with the air lock, the plastic lids themselves aren’t air tight. It's got a silicone gasket in the lid to help that, along with a gasket around the air lock. It was the Jillmo plastic lids fermentation set of off Amazon. Maybe not airtight but pretty good.
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Jul 24, 2021 22:56
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Cool cool. It is good remember next time for sure, in case I get lazy and don't want to use the gasket.
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Jul 25, 2021 00:02
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I had some bubbles day one. The first stage of fermenting produces gas, so you should see something if it's warm within a day or two. Tiny bubbles caught in the cabbage, changes at the airlock, bubbly foam starting to form, etc. This page has a good overview of the process, though you have to scroll down a lot to get to the fermentation signs.
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Aug 4, 2021 21:17
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My grandmother's bread & butter pickles were never crunchy, but we weren't eating them for the texture! I might try making some of those soon. This afternoon I moved 1.7kg of sauerkraut from the closet to the fridge. At 70F for 4 weeks, they were ready! I can't wait for it to cool down here so I can get some longer ferments at lower temperatures. (70F was after switching out ice packs twice a day.)  Half red, half green cabbage again to take advantage of a sale.
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Sep 6, 2021 21:36
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 I didn't actually can these-- please forgive me thread. I only had the energy for fridge pickles today. My grandmother's bread & butter recipe never, ever tasted like anything I could get anywhere else, and I finally got an aunt to give me the recipe. The secret? Curry powder and ginger! Plus a 1:1 ratio of vinegar and brown sugar. Sweet, tangy, and a bit of heat.  Happy to share the recipe if anyone wants to give it a go.
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Oct 1, 2021 18:41
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It's November, so my closet finally maintains an ambient temperature that's good for sauerkraut fermentation without me having to change ice packs out twice a day! Looking forward to blurple turning pink in the coming week.
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Nov 12, 2021 19:53
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City of Glompton posted:oooh pretty! I do! I got them in the Jillmo fermentation kit. The kit comes with gaskets for everything and has held up well so far. I also got some extra heavy glass weights for it: "Premium Hand-Crafted Glass Fermentation Weights with Easy Handle for Wide Mouth Mason Jar Fermenting Sauerkraut, Pickles, Kimchi and More Home Fermented Foods 6pck New & Improved 7.1oz" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TCD5MKY/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_4ACEBB2A57D0TCS220BW
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Nov 12, 2021 21:11
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Time for some Christmas fermenting and my first solo canning attempt! First up, my grandmother's bread and butter pickles. Her recipe was really close to the Ball one, so I followed that except for her ginger-heavy spice blend and using onions for half the cucumber weight. These are my dad's favorite pickles and they should make a good present for him, assuming they seal!  Next, two batches of cranberries! One is a salt brine with some orange juice, cinnamon, cloves, candied ginger, and maple syrup (to give the LAB something to eat). The other is honey, orange juice, cloves, and ginger root. Had to bash the cranberries open with my kraut pounder and found that a very therapeutic process.  I wound up using a really small silicone bowl cover to hold the cranberries down in the salt brine. Those suckers float! If this works out well I may do that for sauerkraut as a floaties trap, too. I hope one of the two ferments is edible! They sound delicious.
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Nov 24, 2021 23:50
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Fermentation update! Is now  Though the brine shrank in the last week or so, the LAB did their job so there wasn't any mold or yeast or decomposition. It is very tasty! Next to it is bag of delicious brats from the local German restaurant. Excellent pairing. Is now  These guys I'm not sure about. The honey one seems to be going along slowly, but so far seems on track. The honey is thinning out, and there is a cloudiness to it now. It smells nice when I burp it, at least! The brine one has some hot pink build up that worries me. It's under the brine, but over the silicone pusher, so I don't know what the environment is like there. The brine one took about a week to get going but bubbled happily for the next week. I have less faith in this fermention colony's ability so I'm kind of loathe to open it up to see if it smells or what. I think I'll just wait another 2 weeks and see if Santa brought me coals or presents! (I will end up tossing it if there's any doubt it's not 100% safe.) 
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Dec 11, 2021 02:35
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Brine fermented cranberries are finished after 3 weeks in my hall closet! Once I got the jar into good light it was clear the pink stuff was just very pigmented lees, and not what I'd expect for something like rhodotorula yeast build up. (At least, I hope so. This is based on classes from *cough* years ago now.)   It turns out that I do not like cloves as much as I thought, so these taste a little medicinal. Nothing a drizzle of honey doesn't fix! Salty-sour with hints of cinnamon, orange, and ginger, too. Success! Next time: less cloves, more ginger! I went through my honey ferment and picked out all the cloves so it doesn't get any more medicinal. That jar is going very slowly and I think needed more juice added or more cranberries popped. Maybe in a few more weeks it will be ready! Or it'll turn into mead. The berry I tried from it was pleasantly sweet and sour, but there's definitely a whiff of yeast from that jar. Oops.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:16
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Yep, you can water bath-process whole or half tomatoes, as long as you add extra acid, per NCFP. Just too dicey on the actual acidity level of each batch of tomatoes, and this way you should always meet the pH needed. Looks like a bunch of tomato products can be hot water processed-- though some of the recipes on that page will need a pressure canner. e: fixed link effika fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 03:02
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Pham Nuwen posted:I've got a few pounds of asparagus and I'd like to put up some pickled asparagus. Does this recipe look ok? https://www.seriouseats.com/pickled-asparagus-recipe-how-to-make Oh hey I had a draft saved and never posted! Sorry. When in doubt, I go back to the NCHFP's website to compare against their recipes. Here's what they have for pickled asparagus. 50/50 water/vinegar is pretty common, yeah. I put up more sauerkraut today. It's warm enough that I need ice packs in the closet again, but that's a small price to pay for deliciousness!  Oh, and for anyone wondering about my honey fermented cranberries: I gave up on them this month. They never really sank, though they did shrink up, and the honey got cloudier in a way that didn't seem right. Chucked it all to be safe. I think I will give it another try next cranberry season, but I'll make sure all the cranberries are pierced open. (Or I'll just brine ferment all my bags, because OH WOW were those delicious in cocktails and mocktails, or on their own with a drizzle of honey.)
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Apr 10, 2022 21:37
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Cranberries are going to be very hard only bad cranberries stink naturally. They can mess with bacteria, which is why people drink them for UTIs. Yeah last fall I literally screamed at a jar of cranberries before finding the right trap/weight combo to keep them down. And they ferment fine in a salt brine if the skins are broken open so the bacteria can get to the nutrition inside. Not all bacteria hate them! I just didn't have success with the honey preserved versions I see everywhere.
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Apr 11, 2022 12:19
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I wonder if you're not missing some caraway flavor in your sauerkraut, vs the store-bought stuff? I love mine plain, but I made a few jars with caraway, dill, and mustard seeds and it's definitely closer to what I get at restaurants and the store. Also I wonder about your fermentation temperature and how long you let your sauerkraut ferment. All will affect what bacteria colonize and ultimately thrive in your jars. A longer and slower ferment usually will invite more of the bacteria that make a variety of good chemicals. See this website for all you could ever want to know about making sauerkraut. No affiliation, she just has solid info. Of note, the best batch of sauerkraut I made was with Morton's kosher salt and 75% red cabbage and left in my hallway closet for 6 weeks this winter (ambient temp around 68F).
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Jul 26, 2022 02:24
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The store had cranberries out! I had to throw away a lot of gross ones but hopefully I have enough good ones around to get some lactofermentation going for pickled cranberries. I'm using this recipe again, but only added one clove bud this time. I learned my lesson! Also trying out the Pickle Pusher, which completely solved my issue last year with floating berries. 
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Oct 22, 2022 18:25
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effika posted:The store had cranberries out! I had to throw away a lot of gross ones but hopefully I have enough good ones around to get some lactofermentation going for pickled cranberries. I'm using this recipe again, but only added one clove bud this time. I learned my lesson! And here they are 4 weeks later! The recipe says 3 weeks, but 4 weeks is fine. They single clove was definitely a better choice - these are far less medicinal than last year's batch! Tangy with notes of cinnamon, ginger, and citrus, plus that fun CO2 tingle. 
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Nov 20, 2022 17:24
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It's a delicious way to use up an extra bag of cranberries! The only fiddly part is piercing each cranberry.
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Nov 20, 2022 18:37
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Yeah, toss those jams out and start using a recipe again to make sure you have enough sugar to bring that water activity to a safe range.
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May 4, 2023 20:54
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can you clarify what you mean by "water activity" here? I'd really like to understand the theory behind water bath canning better than I do. My (potentially mistaken) impression was that the boiling water killed off everything that couldn't survive in an anaerobic environment, except for botulinum, which is kept under control by the acidity. So what purpose does the sugar serve? Joburg posted:Sugar doesn’t do anything for the safety of the canned food, it’s only for the taste and color of the end product. According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation you can can NCHFP is correct, but there is more to the story. There are many ways to render products shelf-stable. Home water bath canning uses heat and pH as primary controls against microorganism growth. The heating step is a kill step, and the pH should be low enough to keep anything remaining from growing at room temperature as long as the seal is undisturbed. (If the seals didn't take, storing the jars at a temperature low enough to control growth is an option.) Another way to keep microorganisms from growing is to limit the amount of water available for use. The amount of water available for use (that can become an active participant in chemical reactions) is called Water Activity. Keeping that under a certain amount will mean the microbes can't use it and won't grow. Salt and sugar are to common ways to keep more of the water off-limits to the microbes (as is simply evaporating it away). (It's also why bread bakers will sometimes use special yeasts in high-sugar breads.) So, why did I say to add sugar and decrease the water activity, if canning shouldn't depend on it? Honestly, I'd been working with people who have lab-tested recipes and a lot of lab equipment to measure stuff like water activity and pH all this week and it was in my mind. It isn't a primary control for home canning, and shouldn't be. But it can help if something starts to go wrong. It's another barrier to microbial growth, but it probably wouldn't have saved that no-recipe jam alone. And speaking of the recipe... Go back to using the recipe so you get more consistent results. Make sure you use a vinegar with at least 5% acidity. Boil longer, if it seems that's needed. Talk to your ag extension. Maybe you just got unlucky with something that day. Good luck on the next batch!
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May 5, 2023 02:16
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berries in water, they don’t require syrup.
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Add butter to your strawberry jam anyway; it's so good
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Jun 1, 2023 21:09
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indigi posted:alright my last batch was much better but still not really what I’m looking for. If anyone's tried the Oh Snap carrots and can let me know what they think goes into that brine, I'd appreciate it. I've been googling around for clone recipes but it seems like that isn't really a thing in pickling like I’m familiar with from brewing and baking Dill, caraway, garlic, black pepper would be my guess based on the last bag I had. Add a bit of curry powder or some of these too: turmeric, fennel, fenugreek, ginger. Ginger goes really well in a dill pickle recipe when it plays a background note.
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Jul 4, 2023 19:11
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Soul Dentist posted:I would bet that all tomatoes are plenty acidic enough on their own, and citric is just a safety measure. Hence "some" additional acid. I am curious how much difference there can be in tomatoes. Like what the official pH range is. Tomatoes are being bred to be less acidic for easier harvesting and taste reasons. They can go up to a pH of at least 4.8 or 5 now, so to be safe always add acid. https://www.clemson.edu/extension/food/canning/canning-tips/27tomato-products-acidify.html
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Oct 8, 2023 01:11
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Cranberries have hardly any sugar, yeah. The honey fermented recipes I see are basically just piercing cranberries, adding some spices, and covering it with honey. What other flavors might it have had? Ginger, orange, cinnamon? I'll expect it to be down to what spices were added and the fermentation conditions, ultimately. I do need to get some cranberries started for Thanksgiving (I just lactic acid pickle them using a less-clovey version of this recipe), so that's a good reminder.
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Oct 28, 2023 18:52
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:52 |
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Some of those spices will interfere with a ferment if you use too much, cloves especially. Very true, though the MakeSauerKraut recipe works as written, even with the cinnamon & clove amounts. I can't stand that many cloves, though, so now just add one or two buds.
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Oct 29, 2023 02:27
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