The Big Red One: A ferment

The Big Red One here refers not to the famous 1st Infantry Division (aka “The Fighting First”) but to my new ferment:

• red cabbage
• red kale
• red beet
• red onion
• red apple
• red cayenne peppers
• red Russian garlic
• fresh ginger root
• Medjool dates
• chipotle and ancho chiles

I was aiming for 3 liters (two 1.5-liter jars), but on looking at the gathered ingredients, I thought I would exceed that by about a liter, and I was right:

The two large jars are 1.5 liter each, the small jar is 1 liter. The whole batch, once prepared in my biggest bowl, weighed 2,735g (6 pounds), not counting the weight of the bowl, so I used 55g Himalayan pink salt (salt-to-veggie ratio of 2% by weight).

Below is what I did with each ingredient. (The links below are not affiliate links; they’re just meant to be specific and helpful.) It occurs to me that preparing the vegetables would be much easier and faster if I still had my big Cuisinart food processor: slicing and grating the vegetables would be a snap. However, doing it by hand wasn’t all that onerous.

• red cabbage – quartered and cored it, then I sliced the wedges 1mm thick using my Oxo handheld mandoline (Oxo makes several; link is to the one that I use.)
• red kale – chopped stems very small, then sliced leaves thin
• red beet – coarsely grated using my Rösle coarse grater
• red onion – quartered vertically, then quarters sliced thin with my chef’s knife. (Now that I think about it, I could have used the mandoline, and that may have worked better.)
• red apple – grated using the Rösle coarse grater
• red cayenne peppers – sliced in thin cross-sections, using the knife
• red Russian garlic – peeled (very easy — this garlic’s skin is like a shell and it pops off readily) and then sliced thin using my Oxo garlic mandoline.
• fresh ginger root – I used about 1/3 of the piece shown, and sliced it thin with my knife; I did not peel it.
• Medjool dates – pitted and chopped
• chipotle and ancho chiles – I ground these in my Cuisinart spice & nut grinder

After all the veggies were prepped (sliced or grated or chopped or ground) and in my big bowl, I poured 1/2 cup spring water into my 1-cup measure and stirred in a packet of starter culture. This must hydrate for 10 minutes before use, so I let it hydrate while I mixed and massaged the vegetables.

I added the 55g Himalayan coarse salt to the veggies, and then I massaged and mixed everything by hand, with some vigor and firmness. I made sure the ingredients were well mixed, which required some effort since when I started they were more or less layered in the bowl in the order I had prepared them.

Lesson learned: Mix as I go: add a vegetable or two, then mix that well with everything so far in the bowl. As a result, the mixing at the end will be easy, since I must mix only that last vegetable (in this case, the cabbage) into a well-mixed pile of the earlier ingredients. 

One advantage of using my hands to mix is that I occasionally came across a largish lump of cabbage or onion. When I did, I removed it, sliced it thin with the chef’s knife, and returned the slivers to the bowl.

After 15-20 minutes of mixing and massaging, the vegetables were softened and liquid had pooled in the bottom of the bowl.

At that point I added the culture water and continued to mix and massage for another five minutes to make sure the culture was well distributed throughout the vegetables.

I then packed the two 1.5-liter jars, put the leftover veggies into the 1-liter jar, split the liquid in the bowl among the three jars, and put a fermentation weight into each jar. Then I poured in enough spring water just to cover the weights, and put fermentation airlocks on two of the jars. For the Weck jar, I just rest the lid on top of its gasket. — update: I later realized that the spring water should have been brine.

This should be ready on August 25. Lesson learned: start the next batch before this is completely gone so I don’t have to go without for two weeks.

See also my general reference post on fermenting vegetables.

Update: I really like the Weck 1.5L jar — easy to pack and to unpack — and I’m thinking I’ll get two more, which for me is ideal. Having three of these jars means that I can make a 3-liter batch (using two of the three jars), and then after I’ve consumed the contents of one of the jars, I can wash it and use it and the third jar to make another 3-liter batch, which can ferment while I finish the second jar of the earlier batch.

That way, I will never run out of fermented vegetables, and I can always make a 3-liter batch using Weck 1.5L cylindrical jars and let it ferment while I finish off the already-fermented vegetables in the third Weck jar.

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Outcome

I refrigerated the batch after two weeks and have been enjoying it. Very tasty with a little spiciness from the cayenne peppers — not too much, just some warmth. Very good taste. I eat about 1/2 cup a day, with a meal or as a snack.

And the fermented red cayenne pepper sauce also turned out excellent.

19 Sept 2022 – Just had another bowl after a brisk (3.4mph) walk. I have about 3/4 cup with 2 tablespoons hemp hearts poured over it. Really tasty and refreshing, quite apart from health and digestive benefits. Today I had my first serving from the last jar, the 1.5-liter jar on the right in the photo above. I’ll probably make something like this again once I’m close to finishing this batch.