Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> I got really into experimenting with fermentation

I really like fermented food. Love kefir (fermented milk product), kvass (a Russian fermented bread drink). Pickles, sauerkraut...

He mentions fermented chickpeas. If you get organic foods with less preservatives in them, say some fresh salsa or chickpea salads, it will ferment pretty quickly even in the fridge and you can sort of taste it. I rather like it, and have left some things around long enough for them to ferment a bit.

Btw, if you buy pickles and they have anything else in the ingredients besides spices, water, salt and cucumbers, you are probably getting just boiled cucumbers with vinegar, so the sourness doesn't come from fermentation but from the vinegar. That is a very different taste than a properly fermented pickle. So next time look at the label and see what you are getting. One brand I have been getting lately is Bubbies (http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills) found it in a smaller local store, but there are probably others.

Start making your own kimchi and there is no going back. Stuff goes with everything: in paninis, on oatmeal with a poached egg and sesame seeds, on a baked potato...

Thanks for the tip on the pickles. Hadn't heard this before.

Indeed. It's not hard. My family started making kimchi, by just adapting a mainstream sauerkraut recipe. You have to get the amount of salt right, hence the reason for starting with an "official" recipe. Too much salt will cause "yellow kraut" which is a disaster. We used nappa or Chinese cabbage, and then began to experiment with our own amounts of red pepper and other stuff. A half-gallon batch is not to hard to manage.

On the same subject, you can make your own "refrigerator" pickles, that are fermented in a non sealed container. It's a matter of personal preference when they're ready to eat, and they continue to work, so you can experience a variety of flavors over the space of a couple weeks.

> You have to get the amount of salt right

Correction: you have to simultaneously have TOO MUCH salt and TOO LITTLE salt. I read David Chang one time...

(just practicing how to spin this article for maximum snobbery)

I'm not sure that all pickled food "should" be fermented to attain sourness. It's perfectly normal to pickle many foods in vinegar, is it not? Fermentation changes the flavour in a particular way and you don't always want that (though vinegar also changes it, and in more ways than just souring).

But I'm not a native speaker so maybe I'm confused about the definition of the word "pickling". Does it always imply fermentation? When you do it with vinegar is it just called "preserving" maybe?

I believe Whole Foods also carry that brand.

Britt's Pickles (pike place, Seattle) is wholesaling now but I don't know what their distribution area looks like. They also sell pickling kits if you want to try your own.

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