Pickled Probiotic Garlic

I am still on my lacto-fermentation kick. My latest project came to me as the answer to the question of what to do with the 3-pound bag of garlic I bought at Costco – pickle it, of course.

1 pint wide-mouth canning jar
1 pound garlic cloves, peeled (about 4 to 5 heads)
1 cup bottled or filtered water
9 grams (about 1 tablespoon coarse sea or Diamond-brand kosher salt)
3 dried red chiles, (arbol in this case)

In a small saucepan,  heat the water to a simmer. Add salt and stir until it dissolves. Remove  pan from heat and let to cool to room temperature.

Put peppers in the jar first, then top with garlic. Fill jar to within an inch from the top with tightly packed garlic cloves. Pour cooled brine over garlic, filling jar to within a half inch of the top.

Seal jar with a lid that will keep room air out while letting CO2 gas escape. A setup with an airlock like Pickl-It or Kraut Kap work great.

Let the jar sit on a dark spot on your counter for 7 days, checking every day to make sure that you are seeing small bubbles at the top of the brine and that nothing funky is growing there.

After a week, open the jar and take a whiff – it should smell very garlicky, but also sour and slightly fermented. You should smell little bit of sulfur, but it shouldn’t smell rotten. If it does, pitch it out and try again.

Now take a taste – a sour, salty, tang should have replaced  a lot of the garlic’s bite and mellowed out the flavor.

Does it taste good to you? If so, seal the jar with an airtight lid and move it off to the fridge. If it’s not quite done enough,  reseal it with the airlock and check it again in a few days. When it’s ready, seal and stash in the fridge. It will continue to slowly age there and store well for up to a year.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
The end result is a little less punchy than fresh garlic, but has a much more well-rounded (almost roasted) garlic flavor.

You can use it just like fresh garlic. I sliver raw cloves and toss them into salads, or blend them into salad dressing. They also add a big kick to hummus, guacamole, and salsas. When the winter holidays roll around, I plan to put whole cloves out with a bunch of toothpicks and serve them as appetizers.

Sunny Bang Hot Sauce Review

I have been trying my hand at lacto-fermentation – making kimchi, sauerkraut, hot sauce, and veggie pickles the old-fashioned way using little more than salt, time, and  gut-friendly lactobacillus. It’s a little putzy and time-consuming, but I’m enjoying the results and am glad to be adding more probiotics to our diet.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find Sunny Bang Private Label commercially producing a lacto-fermented hot sauce that is still “alive” when you get it. Of course, I had to give it a try.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
The bright, orangey-red sauce comes in a very cool swing-top bottle. It has a nice, thick texture and a bright, fresh veggie aroma. There’s not much heat to it, but what there is comes all up front and doesn’t build up over time or linger. It has a bit if zip from the lactic acid and vinegar, but nothing harsh. The finish is all fruity sweetness with a little effervescence.

In short – this ain’t no bubba-slurping, taste-hiding, vinegary hot sauce. It’s harmonious (not a word I would ever imagine using to describe a hot sauce) – all the flavors work together to give everything you put it on a bright and tangy bit of heat.

Kimchi

I’ve loved this fiery Korean side dish ever since I had it with our New Year’s Bo Samm. While our local Korean market carries jar upon jar of it (some as large as a small child) in their cooler, I know that this is traditionally a home-made dish and have been wanting to try my hand at making it myself.

Kimchi is like sauerkraut’s kick-ass evil twin. They both start out as innocently enough as lacto-fermented cabbage, but sauerkraut ends up tart and humble, while kimchi gets hot and funky.

This is actually my second attempt at making home-fermented kimchi. The first batch was tasty, but it got a bit over-fermented and very odoriferous. It was tasty, but well… let’s just say I got a whole seat on the bus to myself the next day.

Gear note: for fermenting you’ll need at least a quart-sized jar or other non-reactive container with a lid. I use a Kraut Kap airlock on a mason jar or a dedicated pickling container like Primal Pickler or Pickl-it.

1 pound Napa cabbage or bok choy
1 small daikon radish
1 carrot
1 small onion
1/2 inch long finger of fresh ginger
4 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons Singsong Korean Hot Pepper
4 tablespoons sea or kosher salt
6 cups bottled or filtered water

Make your brine by adding the salt in 6 cups of water and stirring until the salt completely dissolved. Note: using sea or kosher salt and filtered water is not just a bit of foodie pretentiousness  – iodine, anti-caking additives, and chlorine will screw up your fermentation and kill the good bugs that you want to foster.

Wash and dry all the veggies. Slice the cabbage lengthwise into quarters and then chop into bite-sized chunks.  Julienne or grate the carrot, radish, and ginger. Quarter the onion.

Kimchi

Put the cabbage, carrot, radish, and ginger in a very large bowl and cover with the brine. Put a plate on top to keep them submerged, then let sit for at least 2 hours.

Put the garlic, onion, fish sauce, and pepper in a food processor and give it a whirl to combine. Add a bit of the brine if needed to form a thick paste. Stash in the fridge while the veggies soak up the brine.

Kimchi

After 2 hours, taste the cabbage – it should have softened a bit but still have a little crunch and be pleasantly salty. How salty? It should taste like the sea, or that first sip of a salt-rimmed margarita. You can do some adjusting at this point by letting it soak for another hour if it’s not salty enough, or by rinsing with fresh bottled water if it’s too salty.

When you’ve got it tasting right, drain the veggies, reserving the brine.

Add the chile paste to the veggies and (wearing gloves to avoid stains and smells) use your hands to mix everything together.

Kimchi

Pack the kimchi in a clean quart-sized jar or pickling container. Tamp the veggies down to remove any trapped air bubbles, making sure to leave 1 1/2 inches of head space at the top of the jar.

Kimchi

Add enough reserved brine cover the kimchi and still leave an inch of head space to allow for expansion during fermentation.

If you are not using an airlock, seal the jar loosely to let air escape as the fermentation bugs crank out their CO2. If you are using an airlock, seal the jar tightly, insert the airlock and add water up to the fill line.

Let stand for one to two days in a dark place at about room temperature. You may see bubbles forming in the jar or bubbling through the airlock – this is a good thing. Taste the kimchi now and then to see how it is progressing. It should start to taste a bit wild and tangy after about 4 days. This flavor will get stronger as it sits, so once the flavor is where you like it, remove the airlock and seal the jar then move it to the fridge.

I like to let it sit for a week in the fridge to mellow a bit. It keeps for several months, longer if you push the remaining back down as you use it to keep most of the cabbage submerged in the brine.

Serve as a side to any Korean dish, particularly anything with pork. It is also a great addition to fried rice, or omelets and makes a great hearty soup.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
This dish has it all – tangy, savory, funky, rich and spicy. There are so many things going on (including a slight tingle from the fermentation) that it gives your taste buds a real wallop. It’s hitting so many flavor buttons that it’s pretty addictive.

I am particularly happy considering this one of my early attempts at lacto-fermentation. I’ve been trying to get more healthy, probiotic bugs into our diet and kimchi is definitely the gateway food for that. I am already looking at getting another fermenter to keep us in all the sauerkraut, pickled onions, kimchi, and hot sauce we can eat.

%d bloggers like this: