Christmas Fermentation Workshop
with Amelia Pannett
Cabbage, salt, and about ten minutes of decent hand strength. This is – I have learned after attending Climate Action Torfaen’s Christmas Fermentation Workshop – pretty much all you need to make a basic sauerkraut.
- Saturday 30th November 2024
- 17:00 - 19:00
- able, Upper Cwmbran
The Workshop
Our workshop started with a brief history of fermentation from tutor, Amelia Pannett. We learned that humans have been fermenting foods for thousands of years (I remember some strange fact about an ancient mummy being found wearing a necklace of kefir… ?!), and although fermentation is very much alive and well today, in the UK this is largely done through industrialised processes, and isn’t as well known in the average home. Fortunately for us, Amelia has spent a lot of time exploring how we can reclaim this forgotten art of food preservation, and had brought in a cornucopia of her own ferments for us to try, including sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kefir and kombucha. Whilst we sampled these goodies (some more pungent than others), Amelia talked about how fermented foods are produced through controlled microbial growth, and that in our introductory workshop we would be focusing on something called lacto fermentation. I later realised that this pretty much meant adding salt and squeezing the living daylights out of a cabbage until it was swimming in it’s own juice.
Why Ferment?
There are three main reasons that we might want to ferment our food:
- To preserve it
- To improve its nutritional value
- Because it’s yummy.
Before the invention of refrigeration, people used all sorts of methods to store food to make sure there would be enough to eat during harsh winters and the springtime “hungry gap”. By fermenting our food, we can create an environment in which good bacteria thrive and bad bacteria can’t get a look in, thereby extending the life of our food by weeks, months, or possibly even years. This abundance of good bacteria also means that raw, fermented foods are absolutely filled with the microbes needed to maintain a healthy gut biome, and as the digestion process has essentially already begun by the time fermented foods reach our bellies, our bodies can actually access more of the nutritional goodness contained within the vegetables. So it’s a win for our wallets, a win for our bodies, a great way to prevent food waste… and it also tastes pretty bloomin’ spectacular.
Amelia’s Christmas Kraut Recipe
Slice, dice, chop or otherwise disassemble a red cabbage and put it in a bowl. Keep one leaf whole and put it safely to one side. This is the sacrificial leaf and will be needed later.
Weigh your cabbage mixture and add 2% salt.
Massage your salty cabbage for about 5 minutes. Your fingertips will likely turn purple, and you’ll suddenly become painfully aware of any little cuts on your hands.
Leave the mixture to settle for about 30 minutes, and enjoy the opportunity to learn about all the unexpected things that people can, and do ferment (fermented mashed potato, anyone?).
Massage your salty cabbage for a second time. You should notice that the cabbage feels softer and it will start losing juice. It’s working!
Slice, dice or chop up an apple, and add that to the bowl along with orange zest, star anise, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg… or whatever other Christmassy spices you have to hand. There are no hard and fast rules, so be as creative as you dare!
Handful by handful, press the mixture firmly down into a glass jar (kilner jars are ideal) and let its beautiful purple juices rise to the top. By the end of this process, your cabbage should be completely submerged by a layer of liquid.
Place your sacrificial cabbage leaf over the top (this forms a kind of barrier to prevent oxygen getting in and is definitely not suitable for eating afterwards), and then keep everything submerged by placing a weight on top (you can buy fancy fermentation weights for this exact purpose… but even a clean stone would do the job).
Close the jar and leave it on a kitchen counter top to ferment for 4 days. BUT! Remember to open the jar a crack for just a second every day. Your cabbage is going to get very gassy, and if you don’t let it burp now, you’ll regret it later.
And there you have it! A beautiful Christmas kraut. Store it in the fridge, and remember to serve a generous helping with your Christmas dinner… if you can resist it for that long.
This event received funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.
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This event was part of Root for Our Future, a two-year project exploring food sustainability within Torfaen. Everyone is welcome to attend one of our events. They’re completely free!
