Making Milk Kefir: temperature & how to choose a culturing period

May 13, 2013 in Kefir

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Once you have successfully rehydrated your kefir grains you can get started on producing milk kefir every day in your home kitchen.

Milk kefir is a mesophilic culture, meaning it does not require the warmer temperature range, 100-115 degrees, that many yogurt cultures require. That said, temperature is a consideration in kefir-making.

The other big consideration is just how long you should allow your kefir to culture. You can achieve different flavors and viscosity depending on how long you allow it to culture. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first lets talk temperature.

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the Weekly Cultured Gathering: May 11th

May 11, 2013 in Weekly Cultured Gathering

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Welcome to the Weekly Cultured Gathering! We’re here to share and celebrate our adventures in food fermentation. From recipes to tips & tricks to food preservation – cultured foods are as old as food itself.

Maybe you eat cultured food because of the health benefits. Maybe you make it for the art and science involved. Maybe you believe that this age-old practice of souring dough, culturing dairy, brewing beverages, and fermenting vegetables is wonderfully sustainable. Maybe you feed them to your family because of all of the above.

Whatever draws you to the art of fermentation, this weekly gathering is a place where you can find others working towards the same goals as you are. It is a community.

So please share what’s culturing on your counter. Have a new recipe? What’s your favorite ferment right now? Why do you eat cultured foods? What have you learned that might help others?

Please share a link to your favorite cultured blog post below. If you don’t have a blog, I’d love to hear what you’re up to in the comments. Next week I’ll highlight a few of your posts & comments for everyone to take a closer look at.

Feel free to grab the banner above by right clicking and saving to your desktop. Then insert it into your post so everyone can find us!

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The Weekly Cultured Food Round-Up: Edition #1

May 10, 2013 in What's New at CFH

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Every week we’re going to bring you the best of the week in posts from right here at the CFH blog, news you can use from the CFH site, and a few interesting links from around the web.

So, welcome to our first edition of the Weekly Cultured Food Round Up. Let’s start with some awesome new content you can find at the CFH site… and you’ll want to keep reading to get to an announcement.

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encouraging young children to love cultured foods

May 9, 2013 in Child-Friendly Cultures

annabellekraut

 (our 10 month old daughter’s first taste of sauerkraut)

I was in college before I began to regularly eat fermented foods, and then it was only in the form of store-bought low-fat yogurt filled with aspartame – not exactly a traditional cultured food.

It wasn’t until after my first child was born, over six years ago now, that I really knew anything about fermented foods. Sure the cheese, bread, beer, wine, and yogurt I had seen all of my life had fermented roots, but still I was eating the industrialized American version of them.

So it took me a while to get used to the flavor. Because most of the standard American diet consists of heavily salty and sweet foods, the flavor of a fermented food – rich, tangy, nutty, earthy – is a bit foreign.

Having recovered from a serious sugar addiction, it took quite some time to get my own taste buds wrapped around sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, and sourdough bread.

I did not want to put my children in the same scenario – trying desperately as an adult to change my ways and learn to eat as so many who came before me.

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recipe: our cortido (latin american sauerkraut)

May 8, 2013 in Fermented Vegetables, Fruits & Condiments

mexoreg

It took me a while to come around to fermented vegetables. The only one I was familiar with was the jarred sauerkraut that my roommate used in a crock pot, cooked with sausages all day.

And it stunk. The whole house, all three floors, and all five bedrooms just plain old stunk. I didn’t much care for the taste of it either – slimy and tangy all at the same time, nothing like the homemade sauerkraut we have grown to make and love.

When I learned about the difference between that bottled sauerkraut and the real stuff I gave it a shot. The first batch I made had way too much salt in it and I thought sauerkraut tasted like salty cabbage. I ate it, but didn’t love it.

Then I tried cortido – a Latin American sauerkraut filled with the bold flavors of Mexican oregano, onion, garlic, and chili flakes. It is sauerkraut kicked up a few notches and it sold me on fermented vegetables forever.

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