Everything is Broken, But There's Kombucha

Today, everything gets a big pouty face from me. I feel pretty awful, achy, sore, grumpy. Apparently my hubby has been nauseous and feeling pukey all day. My worst fear when that happens is that something I cooked has given him food poisoning, even though I'm always careful with cooking and cleanliness. To top things off, yesterday I was so busy I didn't have time and energy to post by the time I remembered and NOW my main power outlets that power up my hot plate and oven are overloaded and thus dead (I don't have a full kitchen, technically it's a sink and a counter... with some fancy counter top appliances). I had the fans, lights, oven and hot plate on, which was too much for the outlets to bear. So now I can't cook. Which gets an extra super pouty face. :-(

It's also about 85 degrees in my kitchen because it's hot and humid today and we don't have air conditioning. I'm mostly melting. In fact, I'm sitting on the couch with a fan hooked up right next to me so I'm not a sweaty, gross mess. TMI? Too late...

So, instead of cooking, I thought I'd show you a little bit about another one of my fermented favorites: kombucha. Are you addicted to soda, regular or diet? Do you crave something fizzy and slightly sweet to cure your sweet tooth? Do you wonder how you can fit these things into your paleo diet? Well worry no longer, because kombucha is here to the rescue.

What is kombucha? It's fermented tea, is the short answer. Basically, with the help of a starter culture, sweetened black tea sits out in the air and ferments for 7 to 21 days (depending on what the climate is like where you live). It turns from sweet tea to a tart, fizzy, and slightly vinegary drink, full of health benefits and detoxifying qualities. It's also a raw beverage, so it has all the benefits of adding good bacteria to your gut biome, aiding in digestion and general gut health.

Like most things, I love kombucha because after thirty minutes of work and a week of Mother Nature, you get an extremely versatile and tasty beverage. Bottling it and keeping it fizzy is another hour or so of work, but that's because my batch produces 24 bottles of kombucha to keep me and my hubby (and a few lucky friends) knee deep in 'booch until the next batch is ready.

The recipe is simple, but one essential ingredient is hard to come by. In 2010, it was "discovered" that kombucha sold commercially sometimes contains alcohol (it is a fermented substance after all) and therefore must be regulated like all alcoholic beverages. This put major kombucha companies like G.T's Kombucha into hot water since its traditional recipe fell into this category. But rather than go under, G.T.'s changed its formula by adding a special kind of bacteria to the brew towards the end of fermentation that would keep the vinegary taste but prevent any sugar from turning into alcohol. Even their "original recipe" kombucha which is sold in brown bottles (as opposed to clear ones which are the new formula) contains some of this bacteria. Why is any of this important? The addition of this bacteria prevents growing the main kombucha ingredient: a SCOBY, or a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. The SCOBY, sometimes called a kombucha mother or a Manchurian Mushroom (despite the fact that it's not a mushroom at all), is a filmy squishy thing ("zoogleal mat" is the technical term) that sits atop the kombucha as it ferments. Since you can't just grow your own anymore from any bottled kombucha, you have to order one from a brewing company like Cultures for Health or GetKombucha.Com. If you are lucky enough to have a small cafe in the area that makes its own 'booch, you can snag a glass of theirs and use it to grow your own SCOBY. But you really can't use the kind in the bottle.  Believe me. I've tried multiple times.

What you need to make kombucha:
1 Gallon filtered water
1c. sugar*
4 black tea bags (or 2 black 2 green, depending on what you like. just use some black tea)
1c Kombucha
SCOBY
enough glass containers to hold all the liquid

Boil the water, add the tea and sugar, and then cool it down in the fridge or freezer until it's room temperature. Then put the kombucha and the sweetened tea into the container, placing the scoby on top at the end so it sorta floats. If it sinks, it's no big deal. Sometimes they sink, sometimes they float. I'm sure science would tell me why, but I'm not concerned enough to find out. Whoo!! Science!!

Now, cover the glass container with something to let the air in but keep dust and funk out. Leave it in a warm place for a week at minimum, maybe longer. Test your kombucha until it reaches your desired level of sour/tart. Then put a tight cap on the container. Wait a few more days, say two or three, and when you open the container again, you'll have a slightly fizzy sweet drink! Yay Kombucha!!!!

*You can try Sucanat or "natural" sugar, but don't use honey which has antibacterial properties, and molasses and maple sugar don't work as well, I've tried those too, though it may be possible to use them. I know, I know. The evil added and processed sugar. But this is pretty much completely eaten by the yeast and turned into all the good stuff. You won't actually be consuming the added sugar itself. You can use unbleached sugar in the raw if it makes you feel better. But my pocketbook can't support that habit right now.

You can halve, double, triple the recipe depending on your needs and abilities to contain that much kombucha. The general rule of thumb is to use a 10%/25% kombucha to 90%/75% sweetened tea ratio when brewing. Your sweetened tea also can't be hot, or even slightly warm, or else you risk killing all your happy yeasts and bacteria. Let's not kill the little guys right away, ok? And, unlike fermented vegetables, the inherent acidic quality of the kombucha keeps it from molding unless contaminants get in, but if you get green or fuzzy mold on your SCOBY, you should throw it out and start over. No sense in risking your health when you can start over and be certain. If you want a more in depth how to, check out Food Renegade's FAQ on kombucha. They have a ton of good resources on eating real food and fermented foods for health. Definitely worth your time to check it out if you're interested.

23 bottles! Jackpot!

Lime and mint, my fave mmmmmmm

This is the brief and easy version of events. You can make it as complicated or as easy as you like. I like to add juice and other flavorings for the second ferment (the part where you seal it up tight so it naturally carbonates). Some of my favorites are ginger slices or ginger syrup, lime juice and fresh mint leaves, and lemon juice with a sprig of fresh thyme. I've tried blueberry juice, cranberry juice and fresh strawberries, all of which were yummy but not my favorite. Or you can leave well enough alone and drink the lovely elixir plain.

I have a whole system of bottles, one has a spigot so I can easily bottle large amounts of the stuff with little effort. I use both stock pots when making more, because I can make so much of the stuff.  And if you live in Hawaii and you have any spare glass receptacles you'd like to donate to my cause, I'd be glad to take them off your hands. You can't ever have enough of this stuff.

So that's it for today. I'm going to be drinking kombucha and grilling something for dinner so I don't turn into a puddle. Stay frosty my friends.

Pickles and Relish and Peppers, Oh My!!!

One of my most favorite things in the world is fermentation. Wine. Beer. Kefir. Kombucha. Pickles. Sauerkraut. All of these things can be made in your home, each imparting their own valuable qualities to your diet. You can buy many kinds of relishes and pickled things at your local store these days, but most are made with vinegar as the pickling agent instead of lactofermentation over the course of days or even months (as is the case of traditional sauerkraut). These items are also heat sealed in jars or cans, a process which kills all the good fermented probiotic qualities it may have had.

None of that is necessary. You don't need vinegar. You don't even have to can your ferments in a pressure cooker like my Swedish grandmother. Letting your veggies sit out in salt water for a few days may sound kinda gross, but that's how everyone's grandmother used to do it. All you need are veggies, clean water, glass jars, salt and time. Like many of the things I make at home, this recipe takes a week or longer. But for only 30 minutes max of work and letting nature do the rest, you can have pickles and relish straight from the kitchen, no preservatives and no ingredients you can't pronounce. Let's do this.

Here we have my very happy red pepper plant. There's a kung pao pepper plant and two Hawaiian pepper plants. They've been on my lanai for three months and they grew from tiny little plants into towering and abundant bushes producing more hot peppers than Dave or I can eat. So rather than try to dry them and make chili powder (I doubt they would dry well without a dehydrator in the warm humidity of Hawaii), I decided to make a hot pepper relish. Maybe some day I'll be adventurous and try to make my own sriracha sauce. I'd call it rooster sauce... or some dirty variant of that.

Let me tell you how I made the relish. Making your own lactofermented dill pickles will be in the next post! You can see the step by step process there.

For this relish you will need 2 cucumbers, scrubbed and roughly chopped into chunks. 10 or so thin peppers. You could probably use poblanos, jalapenos, serranos, even habaneros if you're feeling dangerous. I used what you can see grows on the plant above. They are about four to five inches long but maybe only as big around as a thumb tack, so they're kinda small. Use your best judgment. If you want it hotter, use more, if you want it only slightly hot, use less. Put the cucumber pieces in batches into a food processor or food chopper. Ultimately you want cucumber chunks the size of relish like you'd put on your hot dog at a ball game (the thought of ball park hot dogs makes me vom a little...). Next, cut up the peppers into thin slices. Put all of the cucumber chunks and pepper slices into a large bowl. The cucumbers are pretty liquidy, but don't throw that away! Keep it! Add some garlic (1tsp or a few cloves) if that's your thing, add some fresh dill chopped up if you want. Then, add 1tbs sea salt or non iodized salt, sprinkle it all over so it mixes in well. Now, for the weird part. Add three or four tablespoons of sauerkraut juice* or whey*. Mix this all together in the bowl with your hands or a spatula. I recommend hands. It's much more fun that way. 

Once it's all nice and mixed, scoop out the mixture and start putting it into jars like you see here, filling them about half full. Then take another glass jar that is smaller and will fit into the top of the container and mush down the relish. You might want to do this over the bowl, because a ton of liquid will fly out of the top if you're not careful. Remember keep the liquid. It's got all the good stuff. Once you fill the jars about two thirds full with compacted relish, put a regular sized jar top on the mix. The jars above are wide-mouthed pint jars, so the regular sized lid fits perfectly inside. If you don't have one of these, or you're using your old glass peanut butter jar instead, find something (like a circular piece of plastic cut from those cheap plastic cutting boards or even a plastic baggie full of water) to put on top of the relish to keep it completely submerged. Floaters and non-sunken relish can mold on the top, which will make you very sick. As long as water maintains a barrier over the food, it'll be fine. Take the liquid left in the bowl and pour it over top of the lid slowly, making sure not to rustle up the pieces of relish and ruin your perfectly mushed mix. There's about an inch of liquid in my jars as you can see in the picture. If you don't have enough liquid, add some filtered water to give a good liquid barrier between the air and the relish. Now, cover the jar with something porous enough to let air in and out, but keep dust and bugs (and fur) out of the relish. Coffee filters, paper towels and clean kitchen towels work well. Toilet paper and kleenex do not. Put it in a warm place like near your TV or computer so it can do its fermenty thing. After a day or two you will notice bubbles forming, which is exactly what you want. Things are happening in there! Creating oxygen and fermenting your food! Whoo! Science! 

Give your ferment five to seven days before moving it or testing it. Then, when the time seems right and your cucumbers went from bright green to olive relish green, fish out the lid and test your relish to see if it tastes good to you. If you like it a little more tart and vinegary, mush it back down and cover it back up for another day or two. If you like it the way it is, drain some of the liquid and slap a real metal lid on that puppy and stick her in the fridge. 

Now you have relish. 

You're welcome.

Stay tuned for post #2 for the day, which will be a step by step of how to make dill pickles!

*I, as you will see in my next post, make my own sauerkraut, so I had this readily available. If you're a normal person and don't hoard fermented cabbage in your fridge, there are other options. First, you could use double the amount of salt and double the amount of time. Cucumbers ferment like cabbage, something about naturally growing bacteria on these veggies that allows them to ferment without help from other sources. Second, you may not yet be 100% on the paleo wagon and have some yogurt sitting in your fridge. If it's plain, take that baby out and strain it over a cheese cloth or a fine sieve to separate the whey from the yogurt. You can use that liquid. Third option is to curdle some milk with lemon juice or vinegar, scoop out the curds and use the leftover whey to start your lactoferment.  So many options! Who knew you could even do stuff like that??!? Your grandmother's mother, that's who.