It always starts innocently enough: You thought you’d grow red peppers (Capsicum spp.), half a dozen green chiles, maybe a ‘Fresno’ chile or two, and of course you wanted to try to grow ‘Chocolate’ habaneros — oh, and you love poblanos, so put a few of those in, too. They’ve grown and grown — and you’re staring at more than a peck or two of peppers. Now what? The standard preservation choices are freezing, dehydrating, or canning, but you could also freeze-dry them with the right equipment.
Let’s talk about canning. Some vegetables confound even the most seasoned canner, and peppers are one of them. Before discovering fermentation, I was that girl who canned everything. I really did try to roast and can green chiles to make our own homegrown, Hatch-style chiles. Because peppers are low-acid vegetables, they require 45 minutes in a pressure canner. They looked beautiful through the jar, but they disintegrated into mush when I went to make my first chiles rellenos. If you want to can your peppers, you must pickle them first. You have to submerge the peppers in vinegar (as the key to safe preservation is to acidify, the definition of pickling) and then water bath can them. And while they’re certainly delicious, one can only eat so many jars of canned peppers.
Benefits of Fermentation
Enter another preservation option: Create the right environment for an entire team of microbes to do the work for you (without handling hot pots full of boiling water). With fermentation, you can acidify any combination of peppers, spices, herbs, and other vegetables to make a variety of chutneys, condiments, pickles, or hot sauces. The microbes acidify everything equally, which gives you flexibility to explore and create the flavor you desire.
After the fermenting vegetables reach a pH level of 4.6 or below, they’re safe and stable for a considerable amount of time. Shelf life depends on the vegetable, but pepper ferments can last unrefrigerated for a year or more in anaerobic conditions, as long as the ferment remains sealed and not in active use. It’s best, however, to store ferments in a refrigerator. This slows down the bacteria, stabilizes the ferment, and keeps the flavors intact and delicious.
Fermentation has gained a following for various reasons in the past few years, but at its core it’s a simple, inexpensive process that has been used reliably for thousands of years to preserve food. Here we are at the beginning of the 21st century, circling back to our roots. Now fermented foods are considered artisanal, and fermenters use a combination of traditional methods and scientific knowledge to preserve food for its flavor, color, and nutritional value.
Lacto-fermentation of vegetables is simply the best way to preserve the fresh bounty from your garden — it not only retains the existing nutrients, but increases nutrients and their bioavailability and produces amazing flavor. If you place chopped, diced, or shredded vegetables and a little salt in an anaerobic environment inside a vessel and give them time, the lactic acid bacteria already on the vegetables will go to work. They’ll consume the vegetable’s carbohydrates — starches and sugars — and convert them into acids, digestive enzymes, and carbon dioxide. At the same time, they’ll produce nutrients such as B vitamins, including folate and riboflavin. And I can’t neglect to mention the probiotics themselves, which tend to get most of the attention with all the new research about the human gut microbiome. How incredible, really, the process is — easy, safe, and effective at preserving vegetables in a healthy, tasty way.
Fermentation Tips
For the recipes here, you’ll need very little equipment to get started. If you’ve never fermented before and aren’t sure you want to invest in any special equipment, rest assured, you can do this with just a jar and zip-lock bag. You can use a plastic bag as a water-filled weight to keep vegetables submerged in the vinegary brine for both small and very large ferments. I know a few folks who use this same method for 55-gallon drums of kraut; they just use a much bigger, tougher bag. The important thing with this method is to leave space for the bag in the jar — fill the jar about 3/4 full of vegetables and brine and leave the top quarter of the jar empty for the bag.
After filling the jar with your ferment and pressing it down, top the ferment with a quart-sized zip-lock bag — the heavier freezer-style bag is best. To do this, open the bag and place it in the jar on top of the vegetable mixture, pressing it onto the surface and around the edges. Fill the bag with water; you’ll see it seal the ferment as it adds weight. When the water level inside the bag is at the same level as the top of your jar, seal the bag.
As your vegetables are fermenting, watch the ferment for air pockets. Whether they develop will depend on the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the fermentation process; some ferments may never shift, while others may develop air pockets. Every so often, you might need to remove the bag and press the ferment back down — rinse the outside of the bag with water and put it back on the ferment.
When is it done? Unlike cookies that you put in a 350-degree-Fahrenheit oven and know are ready after 15 minutes, a ferment’s doneness can vary by 24 hours or more. This is normal and nothing to worry about — just watch it and pay attention to how it changes. You’ll know when it’s done because you’ll see certain signs. You might note that it changes color, such as vibrant greens becoming a dull olive; it may smell pickle-y; or it might taste acidic and sour, no longer like salted, wilted veggies.
The temperatures for successful fermentation fortunately match the living environment in most households — somewhere between 60 and 75 degrees is perfect. Of course, in summer your kitchen may get warmer, but don’t worry — that means your ferment will be very active and will finish quickly.
These fermentation recipes range in spiciness from mild to hot, and will provide a flavorful table-ready accompaniment to nearly any dish.
Fiery Fermented Pepper Recipes
•‘Bulgarian Carrot’ Pepper Relish Recipe
• Green Bean Kimchi Recipe
•Turmeric Golden Beet Salad Recipe
Bio: Kirsten K. Shockey and co-author Christopher Shockey live on a 40-acre homestead in Oregon, where they’ve created more than 40 versions of cultured vegetables and krauts and have focused their efforts on teaching the art of fermentation. Excerpted with permission from Fiery Ferments (Storey Publishing, 2017).
