fermenting Archives -

Sweet Miso, Small Batch

Posted by Lindsay on June 8, 2017

Sweet soybean miso, 13 months old

Sweet soybean miso, 13 months old: Salt crust on surface, with tamari pool in the centre

I made this miso with the intention to begin eating it after just six months… Hence the almost equal ratio of beans to koji rice, as it was meant to be a quick ferment, by miso standards! But then I mostly forgot about it, and it sat in the cool darkness beneath my house for over a year. Luckily, miso is pretty forgiving. This is utterly delicious! The recipe came from the files of the always inspiring Art of Miso group on Facebook.

Mixing the miso

Salting the inside of the jar

2 1/2 cups dried soy beans
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp coarse canning salt (plus more for jar)
2 1/4 cup koji rice
3/4 to 1 cup bean cooking liquid

Cover beans with several inches of water, and cook until soft. Strain and reserve cooking liquid.
Let beans cool.
Wash and dry a 2 Litre jar.
Dissolve salt in 3/4 cup bean cooking liquid.
Mash or puree beans, with immersion blender or food mill or hands, adding the salt and bean cooking liquid as needed to make a thick paste.
Mix in koji rice, and more liquid if desired.
Wet the inside of the jar with fresh water and coat lightly with salt.
Form miso into tight balls in your hands, then pack tightly into jar, pushing them down firmly intro each other to fill jar with no air holes.
Fill jar to within 3″ of top.
Add 1/2″ of salt on surface.
If desired, add a small jar on surface as a weight; this helps to create a pool of tamari to harvest later.
Put on lid, but do not fully tighten… We need air!
Store somewhere cool and dark for 6 months.

Freshly made! See the salt crystals still clear on the surface and edges?

After 13 months! There’s tamari visible on the surface, as well as some in the bottom of the jar

Want to come make miso with me? We’ll be doing just that on Saturday, June 17th, at the Compost Education Centre!

FIJ Challenge: Sunchoke Kraut (A Jerusalem Artichoke Experiment)

Posted by Lindsay on February 12, 2017

I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. February’s challenge was preserving with salt, which is one of my favourite things. I hope to make a few recipes before the month is through! Today, however, I decided to try out an experiment, by fermenting a kraut made from sunchokes, the tuber also known as Jerusalem artichokes.

My inspiration came from the simple fact that these showed up in my veggie box from Saanich Organics this week! And they didn’t make it into last night’s dinner.

While a quick search turned up a couple blogs and websites with recipes for brined sunchoke pickles, I saw nothing about turning it into a simple salt-and-shredded-tuber kraut. So, I have no idea how this will turn out. Fun!

I decided to go with a 3% salinity, for the ease of math and because my house is so cold at this time of year that I don’t worry about mold growing. If it were summer, I’d likely bump that up to 5% or so, just to reduce the chances of gross stuff growing.

It didn’t look too appealing once I’d packed it into the jar, frankly… The brine that developed was an unpleasant colour. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Sunchoke Kraut

300 g sunchokes, shredded (2 cups)

10 g coarse pickling salt (1 1/2 teaspoons)

Mix sunchokes with salt and pack firmly into a fermentation vessel; I used a mason jar with an airlock lid. Let sit at room temperature for at least a week… Maybe more? Stay tuned!