In an earlier post where we were talking about separating
curds from whey and how whey is a natural preservative, I promised that I would
show how we use whey to preserve foods.
Lacto fermentation is a good alternative to freezing or canning. We like to use a combination of all three
food storage methods. We generally
ferment vegetables and make sauerkraut with cabbage and kimchi with bok
choy. Those are both good. But my favorite lacto-fermented food item (and it's not even close) is
Ginger Carrots. We make this every year
when the carrot crop comes in.
The recipe comes from Sally Fallon’s Nourishing
Traditions Cook book and it is very easy to make. This dish is chock full of beneficial
bacteria. The bacteria that aids in
digestion. So what you are supposed to
do is eat a bit of this just prior to your meal. It’s also great for snacking on. It is cool and tangy. The ingredients to make 1 quart is as follows:
4 cups of grated carrots
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons sea salt
4 Tablespoons Whey
We generally make a gallon at a time. . So
here’s what you do:
First, cut the tops off of your carrots and peel the
skins off. This is a good use for all
the ‘baby carrots’ that we harvested this year.
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| Getting the baby carrots ready |
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| Processing the Carrots |
We love ginger, so we grate the fresh ginger into the big
mixing bowl where we have dumped our grated carrots.
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| Grating fresh ginger root |
We add some sea salt…
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| (If you don't have whey, you can simply add more salt) |
And then we add the whey that we reserved from the curds
the other day. We generally have a jar
of whey in a jar in the back of the fridge for this purpose.
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| Adding the whey... |
Now comes the fun part.
After mixing the shredded carrots, grated ginger, sea salt and whey up,
we use the head to a tenderizing hammer to ‘bruise’ the carrots. We pound and pound and pound. It is a great stress reliever and
exercise. Pounding on the carrots cause
the juices of the carrots to flow.
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| Pounding it out |
Next we spoon the carrots into quart-size mason jars and
tightly pack it into the jars until the carrot mixture is an inch below the top
of the jars. We put the lids and rings
on the jars and set aside on the counter tops out of the way. The orange color lights up the kitchen!
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| Beautiful! But now we have to wait - 3 days, then 2 to 3 months. (Patience is a virtue!) |
We label the top of one of the jars with a sticky
note. You want to leave the jars at room
temperature for 3 days and then we move them into the refrigerator. The sticky note reminds us when to put them
in the fridge.
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| A helpful reminder |
We’ll ‘forget about them’ for a couple of months. We find that they are at the peak flavor at
around the 2-3 month timeframe, so at that time we’ll pull a jar out of the fridge
and have a serving as a side dish or salad prior to every meal. I never would have thought that I would’ve
liked this, but I do!
