4 Easy Recipes for Fermented Foods
Fermentation takes time, but it is essential to a balanced diet.
If it seems overwhelming to learn how to make fermented foods, start with some easy fermentation recipes.
These four easy fermented foods are great for fermentation beginners!
The first food is fermented garlic honey. It can flavor blast your home cooking, but only takes two ingredients to make.
Add the peeled cloves from two full heads of garlic to a 12-ounce mason jar, then fill the jar with honey.
If possible, it’s best to use raw honey, which has more natural bacteria. Twist the lid on and put the jar in a cool dark place.
To keep the garlic cloves coated with honey, flip the jar over daily. You will start to see air bubbles appear, and the honey become more liquidy and less viscous.
After a few weeks, the honey has become totally infused with the garlicky flavor. You can open the jar, strain off the cloves, and use the honey in your recipes.
Daikon kimchi is another easy fermented food. Daikon kimchi uses daikon radishes (you can also substitute Korean radishes) as a base, instead of cabbage, and it’s much easier to make than traditional kimchi.
Chop up the radishes and set aside. Now, blend up green onions, garlic, ginger, salt, and gochugaru (a Korean chili). Add asian pear for sweetness (you can substitute with sugar, but you will need some sweet ingredient to make the fermentation magic happen).
Mix the daikon with the blend, until the daikon is fully covered and pop the whole thing in a jar.
When fermenting, the food needs to stay in liquid and out of the air, so leave the daikon jar for a few hours so the radishes can release their liquid.
Then, check that there is enough liquid to keep the whole daikon mixture under water.
If not, you may need to add some additional water to the jar, before placing it in a cool, dark space for a week or so. After a week, your kimchi is ready.
Milk Kefir is easier to make than yogurt and makes a great smoothie base. First, add kefir grains to a jar, along with milk. The milk to kefir ratio should be one teaspoon of grains to one cup of milk.
Leave the lid popped open and store in a dark place for a day. Strain off the kefir grains (you can place them in a jar in the fridge with milk to reuse later).
After straining, you’ll be left with slightly fermented milk. Put it in a closed jar and let it sit for another day or two and your kefir is ready.
Lacto-fermented veggies are another easy fermentation recipe. To make a sauerkraut, slice a cabbage up (retain one whole leaf), and throw it in a bowl with stripped carrots and grated ginger. Add salt to the veggies and add the whole mixture to a jar.
Put the retained whole leaf on top to keep the small bits of cabbage from going above the water line. After a few hours, sealed in the jar, check if you need to add water to make sure all the veggies are covered.
Let it sit for two to three weeks and you have a delicious sauerkraut.
Fermentation doesn’t need to be daunting. These easy fermentation recipes can get you started.
Which recipe is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.
Easy fermented foods
For more simple recipes, discover 4 Cheap Canned Tuna Recipes That Make Mouth-Watering Meals or What You Can Cook For The Price of A Domino's Pizza.
To see more videos, check out the Pro Home Cooks YouTube channel.
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I want to try the kefir recipe but the video showed an abbreviation 'TBSP' which means tablespoon but you said 'teaspoon.' Can you clarify that, please? Thx!