Most People Are Fermating Food Wrong (The Hillbilly Way)

Most People Are Fermating Food Wrong (The Hillbilly Way) Pick up the jar you gave up on and lift the lid. Smell that. It does not smell sour and clean. It smells like a wet cellar, and there is a gray fuzz riding on top where the cabbage came up out of the brine. And the cabbage was good. The salt was measured. The jar was clean. That cabbage did not go bad. It got air, and there is a difference. I am Zeb Combs. I farm in the Appalachian hills. When I was young and in a hurry, I put up a whole field of hay as silage and never tramped it down. I thought I had saved a day. By the first frost it was black and slimy and the cows would not touch it. My granddaddy took me to his own silage, packed down hard and weighted over the top, sweet and sour and clean after months of sitting. He said, keep it under, it keeps. Let it breathe, it rots. A jar of kraut is a silo in miniature, and the day you let your cabbage float up out of the brine, you are doing exactly what I did to that hay. What you will learn: Why every vegetable in your garden already carries what it needs to ferment The few things that ruin a ferment, and the one that ruins it fastest How much salt to use, and why you make the brine out of the cabbage itself The mistake behind nearly every jar that ever went to the compost How a bag of water does the job of a store-bought weight The four second spoon test that tells you if your jar is safe Why two jars kept turnabout will feed you better than three The difference between a harmless white skin and mold you cannot save How the same rule makes hot sauce, kimchi, and beet kvass Why boiling brine kills the very thing that does the work What cannot be brought back, and where to keep what can A note on vinegar pickles. None of this applies to them. A pickle made with hot vinegar is sour because you poured the sour in. It is a different job, and it is not a ferment at all. A head of cabbage costs a couple of dollars. A box of salt lasts a year and a jar lasts a lifetime. There is a great deal of money in a man buying his sour food by the jar and very little in telling him how to make it by the crock. No scheme in that. The money simply runs the other way. This week, get one head of cabbage and a box of salt. Pound it, pack it, and weight it. Every few days, press a clean spoon down on the top. If the brine rises, you are doing it right. If it does not, you have found out what went wrong with every jar you ever threw out, and it was never the cabbage. Tell me in the comments how your jar turned out. Tell me your county, how old your house is, and whether your people kept a crock of kraut in the fall. Next time I want to show you how our people kept a cellar cool enough for a crock through the summer, and why a cellar sweats in July and stays dry in January. Keep it under, it keeps. Let it breathe, it rots. The people who built these hills with their hands knew that. #Fermentation #Sauerkraut #Kimchi #FermentedFoods #Homesteading #OldWays #Appalachia #HillbillyWisdom #FoodPreservation #ZebCombs