Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is fermented cabbage. It is both, probiotic as well as prebiotic; it has many good bacterias and fiber that are good for the health of our microbiome.
Many vegetables are good candidate for fermentation, my favourite is red cabbage.
Fermented red cabbage taste great, crunchy and not sour as is the case with white cabbage. It is very easy to ferment red cabbage, the only ingredient required is salt.

Here is how I ferment red cabbage.

Ingredients:
1. One red cabbage head
2. 11/2 to 2 table spoons salt (I use Himalayan Sea Salt)

Red cabbage shredded in food processor; Himalayan salt added.

Steps:
1. Shred the cabbage finely (use food processor if available), save one leaf.
2. Add salt evenly (do it in layers) and mash, squeeze, pound the cabbage until liquid appears.
3. Stuff the shredded cabbage and all liquid into a glass jar; push and pound to the bottom of the jar, the liquid should totally cover the cabbage by about one inch.
4. Cut the cabbage leaf (saved in step 1.) to the size of the diameter of the jar and cover the shredded cabbage with it, push it down.
5. Put something heavy on top of the leaf to keep all cabbage immersed under the liquid (I use a glass filled with marbles).
6. Put some virgin olive oil to cover the surface of the liquid. This acts as a seal, preventing air getting in touch with the liquid but allowing gas from fermentation to escape (similar to airlock).
7. Put the lid on the jar but do not tighten it, allowing gas to escape.
8. Store at room temperature for about 10 days.
9. Remove the leaf and weight, the sauerkraut is ready for consumption.
10. Close the lid tight and store the the sauerkraut in the fridge.

Glass marbles in a glass use as weight.

Notes:
Longer fermentation time makes the sauerkraut more sour.
Sometimes I added a couple dates, cut finely, to the mix (during mashing) to have a little sweet taste.

For more info on making sauerkraut - Click here 

Kefir

There are two kinds of kefir, milk kefir and water kefir. Here I am addressing milk kefir only.

Milk Kefir is fermented milk. It is similar to the more known 'yogurt'. It is thicker than milk but thinner than yogurt. Tastes sour like yogurt. Has many more different strains of bacterias, 30 to 56 for kefir as opposed to 7 to 10 for yogurt; a lot more pro-biotic power.
It is an excellent source of B vitamins, K and biotin.

Milk kefir is made by adding milk kefir grain to milk, and let it sit for 24 hours in room temperature. It is as simple as that. For me this is the easiest fermented food to make.

Here is how I make my milk kefir.

Ingredients:
 1. Milk
 2. Milk kefir grain (looks like cottage cheese).

The kefir is separated from the grain by running through a sieve.

Steps:
1. Put milk kefir grain, about 2 tea spoons, in a glass jar.
2. Pour 1 L of milk over it.
3. Put lid over the jar loosely (allow air to escape) and leave it out at room temperature for 24 hours.
4. Separate the grain from the milk kefir by pouring them over a sieve.
5. Bottled the finish kefir and store in the fridge.
6. The grain is ready to be used for the next batch. It is that easy.

 Notes:
Milk kefir grain is a living organism. It grows and multiplies. Heat will kill it.
To get the most benefit from consuming kefir - never heat it.

Milk kefir grain can be stored with milk in the fridge for more than 2 weeks.

Any type of milk can be used. I have tried 2% and raw organic whole milk, they both work. The grain multiplies and grows faster in the raw organic whole milk.

Milk kefir is lactose free; the lactose is converted to lactic acid during fermentation, and lactic acid is very soothing to the gut. I am lactose intolerant, but I have no issues with consuming milk kefir.

If you are new to kefir, start slowly; drink no more than 4 oz the first few days. Back off, take a couple days off if you have some issues (like bloating etc.) and start again.

If you get hives, you maybe allergic to histamine. Kefir, kombucha and sauerhraut are high histamine foods. If so you should avoid fermented food and take pro-biotic supplements instead.

More info on kefir : Click here.

Kombucha

Kombucha is fermented tea. It is made from tea with sugar and fermented by adding SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast).
It tastes great (not for everybody) and it is pro-biotic, which means that it is good for your health. I love it and drink a bit every day.

Here is how I make my Kombucha drink. I use a 1 gallon (3.6 L) glass container.

3L of filtered water, 1 cup sugar, 7 tea bags.

Ingredients:
 - 3 L of filtered water (room temperature in a 1 gallon glass jar)
 - 7 tea bags (I use green tea, sometime mixed with red tea)
 - 1 cup sugar
 - 1 cup kombucha
 - Scoby

One cup of kombucha and scoby (from previous batch) to be added to the new sweet tea.

Steps:
1. Boil part of the 3 L filtered water (about 1 L), steep the tea bags in it for 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Add 1 cup of sugar to the hot tea, and stir until all the sugar dissolved.
3. Put this sweet tea liquid back in the glass jar to make 3 L of tea, and stir.
4. Let this 3 L of sweet tea cool down to room temperature (about 3 hours or more).
5. Add 1 cup of kombucha and stir.
6. Add the Scoby.
7. Cover the glass jar with a tight woven cloth and leave at room temperature for 10 to 15 days.
8. After 10 days taste if it is done the way you like it, and prepare for the next batch.
9. Bottled the finish product (filtered with fine plastic filter) and let it sit (tightly cap) for another 2 days at room temperature before storing it in the fridge.

The kombucha left some residue (from scoby).

Notes:

Use filtered water to avoid chlorine, fluoride and other contaminants that are not good for the bacterias.

Heat may kill the scoby, so make sure that the tea is cooled to room temperature before adding the scoby and one cup of kombucha into it. The scoby is alive and grows if well fed and taken care of, so treat it as a pet.

Initially you need a starter scoby and one cup of kombucha. For the next batch, you use (move) the scoby from the first batch. As the scoby multiplies you can make more batches or share with others.

Green tea is my favourite, but sometimes I mix one red tea bag with 6 green tea bags.

White sugar, palm sugar, demera cane sugar etc are all fine to use. They all give good results. Just different taste.

Use a tightly woven cloth to cover the glass jar during fermentation to prevent fruit flies entering, but still allows air to move. Use a fresh/clean cloth for the next batch, do not use the same cloth from the previous batch as it may have fruit fly eggs on it.

Some tiny scoby or tea leaves may be floating around in the finish product, so it is best to filter the kombucha into bottles. 

Leaving the finished kombucha in tightly cap bottles out in room temperature for another 2 days before putting in the fridge, will make it 'fizzy', as it continues to ferment. 

Kombucha as other fermented food has lots of good bacterias, but it also has a special yeast that can not be killed by antibiotics. It is Saccharomyces boulardii. This special yeast is abundant in kombucha and it is now use to treat serious diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders.

If you are going away for an extended vacation, you can store the scoby immersed in sweet tea inside the fridge for several weeks.



Please leave comments or questions, below. Hope you find it useful.