Thanks for purchasing a FARMcurious Fermenting Set!  These instructions will help guide you through using and enjoying your set.

1) Wash the ReCAP lid in warm, soapy water and rinse well.

2) Open the flip-top lid on the ReCAP and insert the rubber stopper into the hole. Insert the narrow end of the airlock into the top of the stopper.

3) Remove the airlock lid to fill the airlock to the etched line with water and replace the lid.

4) Wash with warm, soapy water any canning jar with the size opening that matches your ReCAP lid (regular or wide mouth). Add the salted chopped produce that you’ll be fermenting and pack down tightly. If the brine extracted from the produce by the salt doesn’t rise up to cover the produce you can add brine made up of one 1 TB Kosher salt to one cup of water.

5) Screw the ReCAP Fermenting Set to the top of the filled jar and leave in a cool dark place for several days to several weeks to ferment.  Within 24 hours you should see bubbles rising to the top – this is carbon dioxide produced during fermentation.

6) Taste the product periodically to get a sense of how long to ferment it – it will become more sour and less crunchy with time. The key to excellent fermentation is cool and slow, which is why many people keep fermentation vessels buried in the ground or in root cellars. When the acidity and texture have reached your preferred level, remove the stopper and airlock, close the ReCAP lid and store in the refrigerator where it will keep for many months.

Process for Basic Fermenting:

Here is a basic recipe that you can use and adapt to your taste.

1) Slice 1 lb cabbage or other produce to the thickness you prefer

2) Sprinkle a total of 2 tsp salt in layers as you go

3) Pack into a standard mason jar and press down to extract juices

4) Use a large piece of produce like a whole cabbage leaf or onion layer to keep the veggies submerged under the juices.

5) Press every few hours to extract juices

6) Add additional salt water (1TB salt to 1 cup water) after 24 hours if the juice doesn’t fully cover the produce

7) Apply ReCAP fermenting top using instructions on opposite side

8) Store in a cool place or at room temperature & taste after several days.  You might prefer it after 4 weeks or more!  Cooler temps ferment more slowly & create more mellow flavors and crisper texture

9) Eat or refrigerate once it reaches your preferred level of sourness and crunch

Some particularly tasty combinations:

• Carrots with ginger
• Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots with garlic and basil
• French breakfast radishes with carrots
• Mixed red with green cabbage
• Apples with cabbage and ginger
• Beets, radishes, carrots
• Red onions with one or two bays leaves and four peppercorns
• Green cabbage with seaweed (cut up small and soaked in warm water at least 30 min)

Purchase more ReCAP fermenting sets here: (http://www.farmcurious.com/widerecapset/)

A match made in heaven.  Save money when you buy the three together (mason jar not included).

Check out more on how to set up your fermenting vessel here. 

Please note that you may receive one of two styles of airlock, the one pictured above or the S-Style shown below.  Rest assured they both perform the same!

The Fermenting Sets pictured are the regular mouth sets but you are purchasing the wide mouth set by adding this product to your cart.

**NOTE ON FREE SHIPPING – Google Wallet doesn’t allow us to remove the shipping on the front end so please submit your order and choose the shipping method.  It will look as though you’re getting charged for the shipping but we’ll remove it before we charge your order.  All orders will be shipped first class mail at no cost to you.  We apologize for the inconvenience – we’re a small company and doing the best we can.  ;-)

A design inspired by the classic American zinc cap, but enhanced with the practicality of BPA-free recyclable plastic. With reCAP Wide Mouth, you can easily shake, pour and store right from your wide mouth mason jars!

• Fits wide mouth jars
• Spill-proof
• BPA free
• Made in USA

Bread. Cheese. Wine. Beer. Coffee. Chocolate. Most people consume fermented foods and drinks every day. For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed the distinctive flavors and nutrition resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi. Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods is the first cookbook to widely explore the culinary magic of fermentation.

“Fermentation has been an important journey of discovery for me,” writes author Sandor Ellix Katz. “I invite you to join me along this effervescent path, well trodden for thousands of years yet largely forgotten in our time and place, bypassed by the superhighway of industrial food production.” The flavours of fermentation are compelling and complex, quite literally alive.

This book takes readers on a whirlwind trip through the wide world of fermentation, providing readers with basic and delicious recipes-some familiar, others exotic-that are easy to make at home.

The Art of Fermentation is the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published. Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide greater understanding and insight for experienced practitioners.

While Katz expertly contextualizes fermentation in terms of biological and cultural evolution, health and nutrition, and even economics, this is primarily a compendium of practical information-how the processes work; parameters for safety; techniques for effective preservation; troubleshooting; and more.

With illustrations and extended resources, this book provides essential wisdom for cooks, homesteaders, farmers, gleaners, foragers, and food lovers of any kind who want to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for arguably the oldest form of food preservation, and part of the roots of culture itself. Readers will find detailed information on fermenting vegetables; sugars into alcohol (meads, wines, and ciders); sour tonic beverages; milk; grains and starchy tubers; beers (and other grain-based alcoholic beverages); beans; seeds; nuts; fish; meat; and eggs, as well as growing mold cultures, using fermentation in agriculture, art, and energy production, and considerations for commercial enterprises. Sandor Katz has introduced what will undoubtedly remain a classic in food literature, and is the first-and only-of its kind.

Check out more on how to set up your fermenting vessel here.

Please note that you may receive one of two styles of airlock, the one pictured above or the S-Style shown below.  Rest assured they both perform the same!

**NOTE ON FREE SHIPPING - Google Wallet doesn’t allow us to remove the shipping on the front end so please submit your order and choose the shipping method.  It will look as though you’re getting charged for the shipping but we’ll remove it before we charge your order.  All orders will be shipped first class mail at no cost to you.  We apologize for the inconvenience – we’re a small company and doing the best we can.  ;-)

A design inspired by the classic American zinc cap, but enhanced with the practicality of BPA-free recyclable plastic. With reCAP, you can easily shake, pour and store right from your mason jars!

• Fits regular mouth jars
• Spill-proof
• BPA free
• Made in USA

Gorgeous hand-made fermenting crock

Fermentation is an age-old practice that may date back to as many as 12,000 years ago during the Paleolithic period.

That said, it’s a practice that holds as much value today as it did thousands of years ago.  Not only is fermentation a time-honored way to preserve the harvest or create a mind-altering beverage, it’s also a healthful and natural way to boost the nutritional value of the food.

History:

According to Sandor Katz the author of “Wild Fermentation”, early methods of fermentation may date back to as early at the Paleolithic era, 12,000 years ago based upon evidence found in cave paintings.  Historians tend to agree that tea has been fermented in China for at least 3,000 years, possibly longer.  Ancient Mayas fermented honey and used it as an enema and cacao beans have been fermented in South America as long as 2,600 years ago.

It’s clear fermentation has been popular cross-culturally for thousands of years but it wasn’t until the mid-1800′s when Louis Pasteur identified bacteria that scientists really began to understand what was happening during fermentation.  During Roman times, Pliny the Elder attempted to explain fermentation as spontaneous generation, or something that just “magically” appeared under the right circumstances, much like (sorry for this analogy) maggots in meat or rats in grain.  Despite their lack of understanding for how it worked, over thousands of years, societies discovered the immense nutritional benefits of fermentation.  In 1770, Captain James Cook was actually recognized for preventing scurvy over the spam of a 27-month trip at sea by feeding 60 barrels of kraut to his men!  It was the perfect at-sea sustenance, healthful and well-preserved, though I have no doubts that the last serving of kraut was probably a bit funky!

Thanks to Pasteur, we now know that fermentation is the action of micro-organisms on plant or animal matter.  Many food items from everyday goods to luxury items are fermented.  Here is a partial list of common fermented foods, some of which may surprise you:

Chocolate
Cheese
Bread
Coffee
Wine
Beer
Miso, soy sauce
Kimchi, pickles & sauerkraut of course

Culture:

Many cultures are known for their own specific fermentations and palatability is not necessarily agreed upon across cultures.  For example, sauerkraut is very common in Germany, while Kimchi is the spicy Korean version of fermented cabbage.  In Sweden fish is treated with lye then fermented for several weeks to create the traditional lutfisk, a delicacy many Americans would simply rather do without.  The slimy Japanese fermentation natto is just beginning to gain traction in the San Francisco Bay Area, thanks to some local natto small-scale producers and restaurants.  The French could do without natto but rather salivate over their own bizarre fermentation in the form of gym-sock-scented cheese.  And anyone whose ever walked a night market in Taiwan is familiar with the pervasive, sickening smell of stinky tofu, a delicacy to be enjoyed by only the most trained palate.  Fermented fish sauce may date back to the 7th Century B.C and even catsup started out as a fermented food according to this Smithsonian article.

In some ways, I think it’s refreshing to know that in this globalized world there are still things done in some cultures that totally gross out other cultures.  According the Katz’ book, Annie Hubert, the former director of France’s National Scientific Research Center was quoted in Slow Food International’s periodical as saying,  “The concept of ‘rottenness’ belongs to the cultural rather than the biological sphere.”  She added, “The term defines a point where a food becomes unsuitable for consumption according to criteria associated with taste, presentation, and the concept of hygiene in different human societies.”  The memory of a little Taiwanese lady gobbling down stinky tofu with relish while I gagged into my sleeve has me convinced she’s onto something.

Nutrition:

While some fermentations are only a stage in the process before cooking the item such as is the case with chocolate and bread, other ferments are best served raw in their most alive and nutritious stage, such as miso, yogurt and sauerkraut.  Though these items are frequently pasteurized commercially, making them at home can be a cost-effective way to enjoy them while retaining their nutritive qualities.

Here are several of the many benefits of consuming unpasteurized fermented foods:

Micro-organisms in fermented foods help pre-digest our food into a form of nutrients our bodies can absorb.  For example, soybeans are fairly indigestible in their raw form though fermentation renders them much more easily digestible.  Similarly, many people lack the enzymes in the their body to digest the lactose in milk, though after transforming into lactic acid by making yogurt renders it digestible.

Increased nutrition – fermentation creates new nutrients like B vitamins like B12, otherwise unavailable from plant sources and very important to nutrition, especially for vegans and vegetarians

Human bodies host 100 trillion bacteria.  Because microorganisms present in live, fermented foods colonize our intestines with digestion-friendly bacteria, the introduction of a more dangerous strain of bacteria becomes less dangerous.  The ‘friendly’ bacteria stake their claim in your body and are fairly unfriendly to anything else that attempts to take over.  Dangerous bacteria are generally attacked and destroyed before they have an opportunity to do much harm.  In this way, our immune systems are constantly trained and primed to fight unfriendly invaders.

Food Preservation:

As alluded to above, fermentation has been used as a common method of food preservation cross-culturally for a very long time.  The process of fermentation may produce either alcohol (in the case of wine), lactic acid (in the case of sauerkraut) or acetic acid (in the case of vinegar), all of which are natural preservatives, allowing food to be stored for a longer period of time before refrigeration became common.

Are you convinced yet that fermentation is the secret to a delicious scurvy-free life?  So how hard is it to start fermenting at home?

SO EASY!  Here’s the gist, and i don’t mean to be cute, but it really is this simple: cut up food and add salt.  Wait a week.  Eat.  Seriously.  That is all (mostly).  Just in case you don’t believe me, though, you can find a recipe for simple sauerkraut here.

Fermentation line-up

Fermenting cabbage into a cultural delicacy such as sauerkraut or kimchi is an age-old practice that is still appreciated today; indeed is experiencing a renaissance of sorts.   The good folks at Cultured in Berkeley plus the popularity of a class we’re teaching at Workshop in SF on April 28 can attest to this new-found love of sour things.  How could we help but be inspired to write this post on how to make delicious fermented kraut and kimchi?

Perhaps you read our earlier post about fermentation and the benefits of raw, fermented foods or maybe you’ve just always known you love kraut with your dogs.  Either way, home fermenting is way easier than you think, is a project that can be ignored for weeks, and yields delicious results!

While it’s true that the basis of fermenting is adding salt to cut up meat or produce, submerging under brine then weighting and waiting, there are lots of ways to finesse the process to yield superior results.  Here are our recommendations.

Some tools you’ll need and others you’ll want:

• 

  Gorgeous hand-made fermenting crock

  Fermentation Vessel – fermentation can happen in almost any type of wide-mouthed container.  We love this gorgeous hand-made crock, created by an American artist and endorsed by Sandor Katz himself, but don’t limit yourself to just the beautiful receptacles.  You can easily use a wide-mouthed glass mason jar, a deep dish or even a plastic food-grade bucket, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the risk of BPA-leaching when using plastic.  For a simpler and more economical option, check out this inexpensive DIY fermenting set made from  a mason jar and ReCAP lid.

• Sharp knife or mandoline – I personally think that finely chopped cabbage and other produce make the best kraut so make sure your chef’s knife is sharp or you have a nice mandoline, which make things easier as long as you can avoid chopping your own fingers off.
• 

  Tamper for packing cabbage down tightly

  Tamper  - This is a tool you’ll use to firmly pack down your kraut, drawing out its natural juices and submerging it under the brine.  It’s not totally required since we assume you can make your own personal tamper out of a fist but this is a tool I find incredibly handy in most cases and actually quite necessary when you’re fermenting in wide-mouthed mason jars which you can’t fit a fist into without recruiting a child (and who wants their fingers in your food?).

• Follower and weight – a follower an object that fits within your fermenting vessel to hold the kraut submerged under the brine.  it can be fancy like the one that comes with [our hand-made crock] or it can be humble like these smaller jars filled with water (the weight) which we’ve set into our larger fermenting jars.

Cabbage bound for greatness

Sauerkraut Recipe:

Ingredients:

5 lbs cabbage and/or other add-ins (see below for add-in suggestions)

3TB sea salt or pickling salt

Process for Sauerkraut:

1. 1. Slice cabbage and other produce to the thickness you prefer (thin is traditional)
2. 2. Sprinkle salt in layers as you go.
3. 3. Pack into a crock and press down to extract juices
4. 

   Thinly sliced kraut is traditional

   4. Weight the crock

5. 5. Press every few hours to extract juices
6. 6. Add additional salt water (1TB salt to 1 cup water) after 24 hours if the juice doesn’t fully cover the produce
7. 7. Cover with cheese cloth to keep out flies and dust then store out of the way at room temperature.
8. 8. Wait – taste after about a week.  You might prefer it after 4 weeks or more!  Cooler temps ferment more slowly than warmer temps and over time water may evaporate to the point where you want to add more salt water to keep the cabbage submerged.
9. 9. Eat or refrigerate once its reached your preferred level of sourness.  Fermentation will show down, though the flavor will continue to mature even while refrigerated.  You can store this way for months on end.

Some tasty additions to kraut:

Add apple and ginger to kraut for a fresh zing

• Mixed red with green cabbage
• Apple
• Ginger
• Beets
• Onions or leeks
• Wine
• Caraway seeds
• Seaweed (cut up small and soaked in warm water at least 30 min)
• Turnips
• Anything you want!