Traced Elements

Tag: fermentation

Bring your own bubbles: how to make a ginger bug (wild fermented soda) ie your own healthy pop

You know the scene in the BFG when the giant introduces Sophie to the most scrumdiddlyumptious drink in the world, frobscottle?

My mate and I decided to scale back our adult-beverage-drinking, after we went into pandemic survival mode with the help of a case of wine and a couple of cases of beer, and discovered, months (and unwelcome pounds) later (although it still felt like March), that the daily take-the-edge-off habit was not really sustainable over the long-term, or over the conceivable life of COVID-19, which could be years.

Embracing sober-curiosity in July meant asking ourselves questions in a curious way: what need in me is rising up and seeking fulfilment right now? What can I do to meet that need, in lieu of pouring a glass of wine? It was interesting to realise what those needs were, as we found substitutes – glass of water, cup of tea, fancy little cheese and cracker platter to call the day to an end, delicious oxymels brewed up according to Natalie Rousseau’s recipes.

Sometimes I was just thirsty. Sometimes, I wanted a little reward for having done such a good job of adulting all day. Sometimes, we wanted to create a feeling of celebration. Sometimes, the day felt so much like every day that had come before it, that we needed some kind of ritual to mark it as special (which goal was somewhat undermined by choosing alcohol as the ritual every day.) Some days, I just needed to claim one single fucking moment that was mine, after an endless stream of moments catering to everybody else, even if it was literally just a mouthful.

And it has been fun to discover that I can meet these needs in other ways (although the last one is proving the trickiest.)

The celebration, the specialness, the coming together is quite wonderfully met with frobscottle. Or, our version, ginger lemon soda. (Doesn’t make you toot. But the bubbles are spectacular.)

It’s probiotic, if that tag helps you feel generally better about consuming things.

So that’s the long introduction that could be summed up with a clickbait headline: the drink that makes you feel happy, while sober!

In one of the first posts we ever shared on Traced Elements, Denise shared about making a ginger bug, and I was intrigued.

(Here’s the Nourished Kitchen post that explains all about it.:

Ginger bug is a slurry of fresh ginger, sugar and water that has been allowed to ferment until bubbly and foamy. Brewers use the bug to brew probiotic tonics and drinks like root beer, ginger beer or probiotic lemonade.

Like sourdough starter, ginger bug is a starter culture that is rich in wild bacteria and yeast. These starters kickstart the fermentation process for other fermented foods. Sourdough starters provide the bacteria and yeast to make bread. Kombucha mothers make kombucha tea. And ginger bugs make homemade, naturally fermented sodas.
When you mix ginger and sugar together with water and let it sit, the wild bacteria and native yeasts in your kitchen and on the ginger itself begin to proliferate and grow. These wild microorganisms eat the sugar in your bug, and produce carbon dioxide as a result.
When mixed with a sweetened herbal tea, fruit juice or other base, the microorganisms in the ginger bug consume the sugar in the tea or juice. As they do, they reproduce and emit carbon dioxide that gives homemade soft drinks their bubbles.

When I opened up my copy of The New Homemade Kitchen: 250 Recipes and Ideas for Reinventing the Art of Preserving, Canning, Fermenting, Dehydrating and More by Joseph Shuldiner (last mentioned as my pickling bible), I was enchanted by this statement:

Wild Fermented Soda
Fermented soda is made with your own live, wild starter, fermented using only fresh ginger and sugar, charmingly referred to as a “ginger bug.”

It’s super easy.

These instructions follow the recipe from The New Homemade Kitchen, a wicked-good reference for any kitchen, which has emboldened me to experiment joyfully:

Take a large (pint-sized) mason jar, (the book suggests a half pint, but we quickly upsized, to meet our production demands… maybe start with the half pint and then scale up?), add 1 tbsp fresh unpeeled finely chopped ginger and 1tbs white sugar. Fill with filtered water (if using tap water that is treated, let it sit out for a while so the chlorine can burn off; if you are on a well, you can use that water). Leave about an inch of headspace at the top. Stir to combine, then cover the jar and set it aside at room temperature.

Feed your ginger bug every day, at roughly the same time, by adding another 1 tbsp of chopped ginger and 1 tbsp of sugar. Stir, and cover. After 5-7 days of daily feeding, the “bug” should fizz strongly when the ginger is added. It’s now ready for soda making!

Soda making!

The first week was the hardest – remembering to feed it, being patient, feeling sceptical, wondering if I actually really want to cultivate and house and invite the proliferation of invisible bacteria that are *already living in my kitchen* (say what?? I mean, ewwwww.)

To make soda, I strain off 105 ml of the starter at a time, and then refill the jar with water, and keep feeding it. Now and then, I’ll scoop out some of the ginger to make room. But basically, the ginger bug has become a regular countertop companion, alongside the kombucha and the jars of oxymel in various states of infusing. It’s just one more lovely life form I tend to (and the most low maintenance, let’s be honest, especially compared to the Significant-Other-bug, charming as he can be.)

If you’re like me, and need to read recipes six or seven times before they stick, check out the Zero Waste Chef’s blog in which she explains her ginger bug process. (She has a book coming out in the spring!)

As far as I can tell, you need a wire-bale or EZ cap bottle for your concoction, because pressure builds as carbon dioxide is generated.

The New Homemade Kitchen instructs you to mix:

105 ml of strained Ginger Bug starter

1/3 cup of fresh lemon juice

4 tsp of fresh ginger juice (the most finicky part of the process which involves pressing a piece of peeled ginger against a fine mesh sieve to extract some juice… I don’t ever find this very juicy, so I might be doing something wrong… but that’s the best thing I’ve taken away from this whole experiment… You might not do it perfectly, and the results are still delicious.)

When we opened the first bottle, ceremoniously (and slightly nervously, “stand back, stand back, it could possibly explode!” which of course made my 7 year old desperate to be in charge of opening it), the boy-child drank a cup and pronounced it the best ever. “I will never drink another pop again,” he said. Subsequently, it has been increasingly difficult for me to get my hands on. It seems to disappear quickly. I tell myself it’s medicinal – after all, isn’t ginger and lemon tea the prescription to ward of colds and flu? Add probiotics. Drink up, kiddo. I’ll make another batch.

Apparently, you can also use this ginger bug base to brew your own ginger beer… stand by, that may be a future post…

Living in a world held hostage by an invisible pathogen, I have found it to be immensely heartening to make friends with other invisible microbes… to realize the world is full of life forms that we cannot see and barely pay attention to, and they’re part of our daily life, impacting us constantly – and often, beneficially – helping us digest our food, accelerating the action in our compost pile, turning the tea into kombucha… Befriending them, and inviting them into the kitchen as my co-creators, has helped me find a better sense of balance, mentally, than at the start of the pandemic when I hunkered down with my case of wine hoping the invisible lurgy didn’t pounce on me and my loved ones. This, after all, is the actually story of Life. Not ‘eat or be eaten’. But let’s co-exist. Symbiosis, my friends. It’s win-win.

Symbiosis is recognition that the way life actually evolved was through different organisms working out how they could offer something to another organism. Rather than the zero-sum game we’re told Life is in the Selfish Gene concept, (everyone’s out to beat everybody else), that’s not how evolution works. It works by different entities getting together and sharing their particular skills to create something bigger that is better for all, eg the way Fungi take all that debris of plants and animal matter and reorganise it to make the soil fertile for plants. Or, plants, that are superb at photosynthesis, need help moving their seeds around, so they offer nutrition to animals who in turn move the seeds of the plants to enable the whole ecology to strengthen.
Every single element of life is like that: we work together to create something better. ~ Jeremy Lent

October 5, 2020
Space Saving Sauerkraut
I live in a barn. Between the barn and my little house is a mud room. It’s a liminal place: half barn, half house. These days, it’s where I keep all my tack, tools, and wild/crafting materials for the camps that I run. The counter is generally littered with things that need to be put away. Like that unidentified bracket fungi that smells like apricots… and the bags of sand and gravel from October’s Fairy Gardens.

Because I keep it at about ten degrees all winter (to keep the various stored items happy and the pipes from freezing) the mud room is also where I throw all the veggies I pull out of the garden and procrastinate about dealing with. One morning a few weeks (when I had to remove 6 large pumpkins from the top of the washing machine so I could do a load of laundry) I realized things were out of hand. The pumpkins were still too intimidating. I couldn’t quite look them in the eye. Plus they were in great shape so there was no need to rush processing them. The cabbages on the other hand… and the bowl filled with unwashed root veggies… oh dear. Definitely starting to go. I cut away the rotting bits from the cabbages, washed the salvageable carrots and beets, and then did the only responsible thing: I made Kraut.

Sauerkraut is the best way to make a large volume of cabbage store in as small a space as possible. The lactic acid fermentation process loads it with helpful wild gut bacteria, boosts its nutritional value, and enables us to store it for a long time. It also makes a boring vegetable delicious. ‘Kraut- while traditionally just cabbage, salt and water- is also flexible and can accommodate the addition of a wide variety of veggies and flavours. For mine, I used the 3 small heads of cabbage, two handfuls of carrots and beets, kale stalks and leaves from Four Beat Farm, and two wild apples that I picked on the way home from Clinton last summer. For flavour, I added a small thumb of ginger, a handful of dried Saskatoon Berries, and five Juniper Berries.

Kraut-to-be: here you can see the texture and flavourings before salt is added

Directions:
First, shred or chop your cabbage. If you are going to play with adding other veggies, make sure you keep about 75% cabbage to make sure achieve a good lactic acid ferment. You add use almost anything you can think of to flavour your ‘Kraut. Caraway seeds. Black peppercorns. Seaweed. Dried fruit. Spruce tips. Citrus zest.

Add salt, and mix/rub it well into the veggies with your hands. You want to macerate your cabbage, as you want the salt to break down the cell walls and begin to release water. How much salt should you add? Well… more than you think you should. The salt acts as a preservative, and will help your ‘Kraut keep its texture so it doesn’t ferment down into a goopy mess. Taste your cabbage/veggie mix. It should taste quite salty. As you rub them, the veggies should start to shine a little bit, as well as moisten and soften.
Pack your crock! I use a small pottery crock I found at a thrift store. You can also pack your ‘Kraut into a large mouth Mason Jar. You can use utensils for this, but I prefer to use my fist. It’s fun to punch your food, and you can put more pressure on the ‘Kraut. You want to REALLY mash it down so that all the air pockets are squished out and it starts to release water. Add more handfuls of cabbage/veggies, and press down. Continue in this way until all your Kraut-to-be is in the crock. You should have enough water that’s been released at this point that it covers the top of the ‘Kraut when you apply pressure.
Because you can’t stand there squishing it forever, you need to add weight to the top off your ‘Kraut. The ‘Kraut needs to stay submerged in its own juices so that it doesn’t mould as it ferments. (Fermentation=good, mould=bad.) I use a large class coaster that’s a little smaller than the diameter of my crock, topped with a Mason Jar. You can also use rocks as weights, provided they’re clean! Then you can cover the top of your crock with cheesecloth or a dishtowel to keep out dust and mould spores but still let it breathe, which is essential for the Lactic Acid fermentation process. If you don’t have enough juice that’s been released from the veggies to keep your ‘Kraut submerged, you can top it up with a little water or brine.
The crock and (and accompanying Mason Jar of water that acts as a weight to keep the Kraut submerged)
Wait and taste! How long it takes your ‘Kraut to be done depends on how warm your environment is, and how tangy you like your ‘Kraut. The usual window is one to four weeks. The longer you let the fermentation go, the stronger the flavour will be, and the more beneficial bacteria you will cultivate. However, the longer you wait the softer your veggies become. If you keep tasting the ‘Kraut as it progresses, then you will be able to stop the fermentation it when it reaches your favourite balance of flavour and texture.
When you’re smitten with your ‘Kraut, take it out of the crock and compost any bits with surface mould. (Sometimes a little ‘Kraut will stick to the sides of the crock and turn white and fuzzy, but the rest of the batch that is still submerged will be fine). I pack mine into clean half pint jars and keep them in the fridge. This stops the fermentation process, but does not kill any of the lactic acid and other goodness.
Enjoy! Yum. Cleaning up and making more space was never so delicious…
November 24, 2018
April Kitchen Sadhana

In yogi language (Sanskrit) the word sadhana often refers to a conscious spiritual practice, discipline or service.

In the last year I participated in an absolutely divine online course with a local yoga teacher. Each month we got amazing content including a particular kitchen sadhana – ideas like herbal bitters or kitcharis and other ayurvedic potions.

I’ve carried this ritual of kitchen sadhana into my life as I find it very grounding.

This month I have two particular recipes that I’m really excited about.

The first is one of my absolute favourite foods to make when I need something easy to digest that is also a complete meal and very comforting and nourishing. Kitchari (sometimes spelled kichadi) refers to a stew-like one-pot meal which is a mixture of two grains. Spring is often a time when we are shedding the stagnant, dense energy of winter and the heavier foods we’ve been eating to up-shift to the lighter, more buoyant foods of spring, like dandelion greens and fresh nettle. The great thing about kitchari is that you can use any vegetables you have on hand.

This particular recipe is with a mix of mung beans and basmati rice and I had butternut squash, spinach and frozen peas on hand so in they went.

Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.mapi.com/ayurvedic-recipes/soup-and-salad/khichadi-mung-bean-and-basmat-rice-stew.html

The next spring kitchen sadhana is a work in progress. It comes from a cookbook I have taken out from the library seven times in the past three years called The Nourished Kitchen by Jennifer McGruther.

For me, it is not an everyday kind of cookbook but a fun experimental one. Of particular interest to me is her chapter on fermentation. I love water kefir and kombucha and homeade sodas but usually buy them. I am now 3 days in to creating my own live wild yeast and ginger starter. From this, I can then create my own water kefir and beet kvass or flavoured sodas and the starter keeps living as long as you replenish what you use and keep it fed and/or refrigerated.

It doesn’t look super delicious now but I love the simplicity of just ginger, water, unrefined sugar and time in the environment and from here the off shoots will be a complex flavour sensation and also great for gut health like ginger lemon water kefir or beet kvass mixed with spring water on a hot afternoon. A great reward for my kitchen sadhana. You can find this cookbook at the Pemberton Library and she also has a website you can check out at https://nourishedkitchen.com/

April 29, 2018