Fermenting

Fermented onions on an egg salad sandwich, so good. All sandwiches really, but they make egg salad sublime.

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I’ve got a couple of large onions in the basket on the counter, and an empty jar… Thanks to you and @monkeyoh I think I know what I’m doing in the next hour or so.

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We went to Trader Joe’s this morning and my spouse went to grab some carrots. I saw that they also had packages with red, orange, yellow and white carrots, so of course, I said, “No, get those. I totally want to ferment them.” Let’s just say I got an eyeroll in response, along with “You don’t have to ferment everything.”

Pfffft.

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Pshaw.

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The garlic in my onion ferment has turned blue! It’s a good thing I’d read about it beforehand, because otherwise I’d be freaking out right now, thinking it was ruined.

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Carrot ferment just started!

1.5 red
1 yellow
1 orange
1 off-white

Plus 4 garlic cloves, 1 tsp of mustard seeds, 2 T brine from the radish ferment, and topped off with salted water (and a pickle pebble).

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And I just finished up a different kind of fermentation…

It’s the no-knead recipe. I subbed whole wheat for 1/2 cup of the flour. Mixed it together Friday night, let it sit and bubble for 18 hours, then put it in the fridge. Pulled it out tonight and baked the heck out of it.

I’m pretty pleased with the results!

And trying not to eat the whole damn thing right now…

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I picked up some daikon at the store today, with the goal of fermenting it. And when I say “some” daikon, I mean 3 big ol’ roots. I would’ve bought just 1, but the store sells them in a “bunch”. So yeah, I have almost 2.5 pounds of radish to play with.

I was thinking of something like this: http://phickle.com/the-worlds-best-banh-mi-pickles/ , but without the jalapeño, maybe a higher ratio of daikon to carrot, and some garlic cloves thrown in for good measure.

Any ideas for what’s sure to be left? Daikon and onion, maybe some red pepper flakes? I was eyeballing the fresh turmeric and wondering if that might go (but it’s not organic, so I dunno if it’s OK to ferment or what). I also have a bunch of regular old radishes in the fridge.

Thank you very much!

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So a few weeks ago, I bottled the Pale Ale (using this priming sugar calculator). A shot of the leftovers from “dry hopping” 2 oz of Simcoe:

All of which kept me thinking about the manifold at the bottom of my mash tun. It WAS a kinked, bent, and poorly suited piece of stainless-steel mesh…and NOW it looks like this:

Problems, though:

  1. I used PVC, not CPVC, b/c I didn’t even stop to consider it, and
  2. I used the nasty yellow PVC cement, b/c I was drinking, and I"m not so bright to begin with

So. I’ll be pouring ~170-180 degree water on this manifold, then letting that water sit for ~1 hour, maybe more, maybe less, and really, I wasn’t pouring the cement onto the pipe ends to join them–do I need to rebuild this thing to keep from ingesting mass quantities of potentially harmful chemicals?

EDIT: This belongs in the gardening thread, but meh. This thing:

…disappeared in the garden last September, the day I bought it. Used it that day…maybe a hour, spent the rest of the day looking around for it. Pulled up the compost heap yesterday, and there it was. Hooray! Found my garden tool! What joy! Literally bent and touched it to the soil to dig, heard a little ‘clink’ sound, and this is what’s left. It sat outside for a long time, wet weather, mom was addicted to polyphenols, blah blah blah, fuck you Ames, your gardening handtools are cheap shit.

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Whole wheat walnut bread, shaped and starting its final rising.

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For manifords, nothing beats copper. Suck it up, get a torch, the right flux, the right solder, some 220 grit sandpaper, and do it right. Also a tube cutter. …and a dremel :slight_smile:

Super clean joints, and aim your heat where you want the solder to go, not to melt the solder itself.

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Must. See. Final. Crumb.

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… and they just got substantially smaller because the dog just got her nose up onto the counter and ate the near ends off. I think she got almost two cups of raw bread dough, still rising.

So after we made a call to the vet, she is in the back yard getting dosed with some hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting so she doesn’t rupture her stomach. Goddamn idiot dog, and goddamn idiot me for leaving them where they could be reached. Yep, she’s a dog.

Anyway, after trimming off the chewed bits and reshaping the heels, they’re in the oven now. Probably could have stood a longer rising but that would have been tempting fate.

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My dog ate a pound of blue, full cream butter. All she did was burp :smiley:

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The problem with bread dough, at least what I’ve heard, is that expanding in the stomach can do serious damage. Anyway the vet thought the best thing was to induce vomiting, so we did and after some puking outside she seems fine. Will she do the same again if she ever gets the chance? Of course she will, she’s a dog.

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We have a counter-surfer, table-surfer, getter-in-to-dang-near-everything rescue dog who must be part beaver. Chews on, eats, destroys everything. Castor beans, for instance.

It’s only because we keep lots and lots of fresh unopened bottles of hydrogen peroxide around that this dog is still alive. Usually we use those to wash him with when he gets skunked.

Inducing vomiting for most things a dog isn’t supposed to eat usually works pretty well for us.

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What’s fermenting right now:

Carrots and daikon, cut into pieces slightly larger than matchsticks. A couple teaspoons of salt, massaged into the veg, a couple tablespoons of brine from another ferment, and a few garlic cloves. It got really gassy almost right away.

This one is daikon, regular old red radishes and onions, also with a few garlic cloves, plus a couple teaspoons of mustard seeds (yellow and brown). Plus brine from another ferment. Total gas-o-rama with this one, too!

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How do you feel about pickled and/or fermented burdock root? I had some tonight in sushi and it really intrigued me. Carroty in texture but I can’t even come close to pinpointing the flavor, it was very odd in a good way.

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I’ve never had it! I’ve read about it in my fermentation books, but I don’t think I’ve seen it at the store. I’ll have to look a lottle harder next time - maybe it’s hiding near the lemongrass or something.

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I always thought it was poisonous, or only used for medicine, so I was surprised to find it in Sushi, but the flavor was intriguing.

EDIT: Ok the wikipedia description for the flavor of the root is suprisingly spot on, I would only add that it was also just a little bitter:

Burdock root is very crisp and has a sweet, mild, and pungent flavour with a little muddy harshness

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