Alan's and Melissa's Food Recipes

Bodensatz Brewing

Food Recipes

Some of these recipes are related to beer, while others are not.

Fermented Foods

There are a number of different vegetables which can be naturally fermented to produce some excellent "old world" delicacies. The two most popular of these are cucumbers, which make dill pickles, and cabbage, which makes sauerkraut. There is a type of bacteria which naturally lives on these (and other) vegetables which under the right conditions causes a type of fermentation that converts sugars and liquids into vinegar, preserving the vegetables and making some very yummy treats! One of the key ingredients in the process is salt, and it is very important that you do not dramatically change the amount of salt in these recipes. The friendly bacteria that we want to encourage actually like salt, while the unfriendly bacteria do not. So if you lower the amount of salt too much, you not only make life more difficult for the friendly bacteria, you also encourage the growth of the unfriendly stuff which can actually be very harmful to your health.

When making fermented foods like this you must check on them daily, and skim and scum or (in rare occasions) mold which may form at the surface. You also want to make sure that the vegetables stay below the surface of the brine by placing a plate or other heavy food-grade object down onto the surface of the fermenting food. This alone will go a very long way to keeping molds at bay.