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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2014
This is one of the two books that got me interested in fermenting food. The other is
Real Food Fermentation: Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen
. I've looked through a few others, but these seem to be the best. Sandor Katz is probably the most quoted on fermentation websites and blogs, sometimes affectionately referred to as "Sandorkraut". His book is the perfect one to read if you are a little wary of fermenting, like I was. I thought fermentation was more like canning where you have to boil and sterilize jars and with very much deviation from instructions one could end up with Botulism. I found that while everything needs to be clean and fresh, containers don't really need to be boiled and in fact great container for fermenting an earthenware crock. The high pH of most fermented vegetables isn't very hospitable to Botulism spores. Katz made me feel comfortable with being creative with recipes and trying new things.
So I purchased a Ohio Stoneware 2gallon Crock-MidnightBlue crock and 5 or 6 heads of cabbage and set off to make sauerkraut. I've always loved sauerkraut, even as a little kid. I sliced up the cabbage, mixed it with salt and caraway seed and packed it into the crock. There is a recipe in the book for basic sauerkraut and how much salt to use. The natural juices from the cabbage were released, just as he said. I put a plate over the cabbage in the crock and weighted it down to keep it submerged, then put a lid on the crock. Checking it each day was so interesting the first time. At first it got sort of fizzy and then started getting sour. By Day 8 it tasted wonderfully sour and crunchy and I paced get into mason jars and put it in the refrigerator to keep it from fermenting even more. I've made another batch since and let it ferment a couple of weeks and it was even more sour. For someone with a "sour tooth" as well as a sweet one, it was amazing.
I've also done a batch of Kombucha and have another one brewing. I grew my own scoby from about a third of a bottle of a commercial product along with black tea and sugar and water. The taste was amazing! I've also got some lemons preserving (They take longer) and some wine that is becoming vinegar. And I have a whole list of other things I want to try. I have Sandor Katz to thank for the inspiration. I'm so glad I bought this book!
So I purchased a Ohio Stoneware 2gallon Crock-MidnightBlue crock and 5 or 6 heads of cabbage and set off to make sauerkraut. I've always loved sauerkraut, even as a little kid. I sliced up the cabbage, mixed it with salt and caraway seed and packed it into the crock. There is a recipe in the book for basic sauerkraut and how much salt to use. The natural juices from the cabbage were released, just as he said. I put a plate over the cabbage in the crock and weighted it down to keep it submerged, then put a lid on the crock. Checking it each day was so interesting the first time. At first it got sort of fizzy and then started getting sour. By Day 8 it tasted wonderfully sour and crunchy and I paced get into mason jars and put it in the refrigerator to keep it from fermenting even more. I've made another batch since and let it ferment a couple of weeks and it was even more sour. For someone with a "sour tooth" as well as a sweet one, it was amazing.
I've also done a batch of Kombucha and have another one brewing. I grew my own scoby from about a third of a bottle of a commercial product along with black tea and sugar and water. The taste was amazing! I've also got some lemons preserving (They take longer) and some wine that is becoming vinegar. And I have a whole list of other things I want to try. I have Sandor Katz to thank for the inspiration. I'm so glad I bought this book!
