Buy a watercooker on which you can change the temperature of the water for God tier tea experience. Some teas don’t need cooking water but 80 degrees Celsius for example and the tastes really change if you do it properly.
Whole flake oats with chia seeds, pea protein, ground flaxseed, a banana (or a packet of aspartame to balance the protein) and some blueberries is a really really healthy cheap filling low cal meal.
Get some quality handmade Japanese carbon steel knives, and learn how to use them and sharpen them. I’m filled with joy every day simply by chopping vegetables.
So I have made several ways. One way is I started making Kombucha with a Scoby I order off Etsy for like $5. If you let it sit for about 3 months you get super sour vinegar instead of a somewhat fizzy kombucha. Alternatively you can make it out of just about any fruit and a little extra sugar. I have made the following vinegars:
Apple
Blueberry
Raisin
Cranberry + kombucha
Cherry
Red wine
white wine
Basically vinegar is made from acetobacteria fermenting alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar) while in the presence of oxygen. This is why alcohol is fermented under an air lock so the CO2 pushes out any oxygen and the acetobacteria doesn’t have a chance to start eating the ethanol. This is also why weaker wines “sour” over time after they are opened. Anything above about 10% alcohol however is too strong for the acetobacteria to do anything. So you have to dilute stronger wines or let them sit for a looong time.
So all you have to do is ferment some sugars into alcohol while open to the air. What I do for the fruit (I use dried fruit as fresh fruit had a higher chance of molding) is: Fill a jar about 1/4 - 1/2 the way full with dried fruit. Some fruit “plumps” up a bit more than others when you add the wayer. You want the end result to be a jar that’s about 2/3 - 3/4 filled with fruit. Fill up the jar all the way with fresh water, NO SALT. If you have a fruit thats not super sweet you can add a little sugar. I did this with the blueberries the most. Cherries a little less and apples a tad bit but not really necessary. The dried cranberries I used were already sweetened. If you want, you can splash some unfiltered, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar in the mix to act as a starter. Then cover it with a cloth instead of a hard lid so air can pass but dust and shit can’t. Then let it sit for several weeks. Stir it every day or two so as to prevent mold growth. If you don’t you WILL get mold. After about 3 or 4 weeks, once the fruit stop visibly fermenting (you will see lots of bubbles at first as all the wild yeast get funky) I strain off the solids. I poured off most the liquid, and saved it, first then put the solids in a food processor and then squeezed out the juice with a cheesecloth. Then add that juice back to the rest of the liquid. Messy but gets more of the good stuff. Then leave all the liquid to ferment for another few months. You can taste it at this point but it will probably be like a slightly sour alcohol. The acetobacteria take their time. You should see a pellicle form at the top of the liquid after a while. This is made from the acetobacteria and yeasts.
Some issues I had were:
Cranberries inhibit fermentation significantly. To get them to ferment I added extra wine making yeast. THEN when I strained it I added about 1/4, of the total amount in fresh kombucha to act as a booster to get the vinegar going.
I also added kombucha to the blue berry as it didn’t want to move on from being hooch which honestly was a pretty darn good hooch. Slightly sour, mildly alcoholic, very blueberry.
Raising vinegar is basically a wine vinegar. lol
If making some vinegar from store bought wine you will need to dilute it, and also add a little hydrogen peroxide as this reacts with some additives that prevent the wine from fermenting further and removes them. Let it sit for a few days then add you vinegar mother from either apple cider vinegar or other ferments. Aged kombucha works as well.
It’s really a neat process and I’d look up videos and stuff too. I basically learned as I went.
Bewarned, you can get some funky looking stuff in those jars but generally as long as it’s below the water and not “fuzzy” like a mold you are generally safe. This here is a pellicle from kombucha. They can grow long strands reaching down into the liquid which are just yeast colonies. The acetobacteria like the surface because oxygen and the yeast like it down under.
This one here is the cranberry after I added the extra yeast it made these weird structures like some kind of yeast skyscrapers growing up into the liquid.
I know a lot of people here are trying to go vegan or at least eat more plant based. The most common complaint I hear is less “I miss the taste of meat” but much more generally “there’s not that much variety in taste”. I mean, most of the vegan food in the West is basically salad and various forms of fairly simple cooking like boiling, steaming, maybe baking or roasting if you’re lucky. In that case, yeah, most of the flavor is in the meat portion and the vegetables are considered sides for a reason.
My answer to that is: familiarize yourself with using spices. Particularly East/Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and African spices. There’s a joke that “Europe colonized the entire world for spices yet their food is still boring as hell” and, honestly that’s pretty fricking real. Instead of another salad or veggie bowl, make vegan Indian curry or daal, or Chinese spicy soup (Ma La Tang) or hot pot, Ethiopian wot, etc. These also don’t segregate the ingredients nearly as much as western food, so it’s a lot easier to compensate for not including meat. There’s a whole world of food that does really well being veganized with way more flavour and variety. IMO a huge part of the problems is that Western food doesn’t know how to be creative and have fun with vegetables since meat is such an important part of it, part culture (or lack thereof in places like the US and Canada where the many rich and varied Indigenous cultures that were there was wiped put) and part privilege (they just have access to a lot more meat).
Pro tip, don’t go to those soulless corporate chain “ethnic” grocery stores owned by billionaire white people, hit up your local run down hole in the wall little shop probably run by a family with English as a second language who only take cash. Those have wayyy better and more kinds of stuff often for cheaper. Speaking from experience as an immigrant to the West. See if you can find a market hall or plaza with a lot of small, independent stores, instead of a mall with a few large, franchise stores.
When making instant noodles, boil some broccoli in it both to lessen the unhealthiness of it but also because all those little buds soak up the broth and soft boiled broccoli has a very unique taste and texture all on its own.
I’ve tried potatoes, different kinds of cabbage, book choy, etc, and they all work well but IMO broccoli is the best.
This works best if you have an actual stove though. Microwave works okay too but just pouring hot water will not cook them all the way.
Another tip to add for me is I’ll add a big handful of red lentils to the water and boil them for 5-7 minutes before I add the noodles, makes it a little creamier and you get the extra protein and fibre.
Safe water, a kitchen scale that does grams and ounces, a reliable supply chain for bulk dry goods, and a reliable marketplace for fresh produce, and pounds of salt.
Add salt to each stage of cooking. Taste as one goes. Brown things when possible. Cook in the pans that food is browned in when possible.
Add a spice grinder (manual, electric, or mortar and pestle) and switch to whole spices. Get a supplier for spices. Toast them before you grind them. Whole new level of cuisine.
Balance salt, acid, sugar, spice, and bitter. Taste things and add what’s missing.
Pay attention, source good ingredients affordably, don’t over optimize your process, and the result will never be bad.
Finally, chop everything before you start cooking. Mis en place = Life is good
One technique, if it can be called that, is to cook any homemade tomato sauce slowly (25 minutes minimum) at a low temperature (the lowest setting on the hob) and to add half a teaspoon of sugar per 500g of pasata or chopped tomatoes. Other ingredients are often needed, too, but don’t forget the sugar as tomatoes can be bitter. Taste to see if it needs a little more sweetness and add another quarter teaspoon at a time.
If you ferment the tomatoes in salt brine (like pickles or sauerkraut) it will significantly enhance their flavor. It’s has a kind of ripening effect. Another issues modern tomatoes have is the “flavor gene” disappeared as we bred them for size and production. This gene cause many of the carbs in the tomatoes to break down in a way and this added more flavor to the tomatoes. Fermenting them kind of does this to a degree I think. I fermented a bunch of Roma tomatoes and made sauce and paste out of them and it beat the shit out of anything I made with fresh or store bought.
Yes. 2% salt brine. Tare container and then weigh the tomatoes and water. Then add 2% of that weight in salt. Slice tomatoes up into at least quarters. You can get more in that way and also lets the lactobacillus bois get into the tomatoes better. And keep it all submerged under the brine.
Alternatively, if you are feeling risky, just make up a bunch of salt water that’s like 2.5-3% salt. Then just pour that into whatever you want to ferment. As long as you have an air lock on your fermenter you shouldn’t have issues with mold anyway. It’s just not as exact but then tbf, people salt brine fermented stuff for centuries before scales were widely available. lol. Some stuff might be a little more or less salty that what is “ideal” but generally should be fine. If you see mold don’t mess with it though. Try not to open a moldy jar outside either. I only ever had a moldy jar of I lost my air seal or on a jar I had opened then lost in the fridge for many months.
Sounds delicious. I have a possibly silly question: are those bacteria the same as in yoghurt? Where do they come from, are they already on the tomatoes? Or would I add a splash of the liquid from sauerkraut or even yoghurt as a starter, like the kombucha with the vinegar? (Apologies if you’ve explained this elsewhere.)
I think I’ll try this before I try making vinegar. I can’t wait. I do love fermented foods. I’ve been drinking quite a bit of kefir, lately. I’ve wondered what would happen if I poured a splash in a litre of milk and left it for a week. But I don’t know if I’d dare drink the result.
So the “probiotics” that make sauerkraut and stuff are already in the vegetables. They are in the air and dirt and stuff along will all kinds of also not good shit. The salt water and lack of oxygen (anaerobic environment) just makes a very good environment for them and not much else.
Other potentially harmful can also survive in these conditions, like Clostridium botulinum (botulism), but you know what those things don’t do well in? Acidic environments. Know what lactobacillus does? Makes foods acidic and also outcompetes the botulinum. This is why botulism is usually only from improperly canned foods where the competing bacteria were killed off but not the botulinum and also there’s typically a lack of acidity due to the food being prepared to be heat preserved and not needing it.
As far as yogurt is concerned I have never actually made it but the started bacteria is specific. You can easily just get some plain Greek yogurt and collect the liquid from it as a starter. The best way to do this is take a spoon to a zero fat plain Greek yogurt (the really firm shit) and dig out a hole in the middle of it. The liquid will seep out and fill the hole. I figured this out when I needed a super firm yogurt for a recipe and doing this makes the yogurt very firm and collects all the liquid for other stuff. Like for instance, if you make your own mayonnaise add some yogurt liquid to it and let it sit at room temp for a day or two and it’ll basically ferment it slightly which makes it keep significantly longer in the fridge. Likewise you could use this as a yogurt starter since that’s basically what it is. I think it can also make sour cream too it’s just different fermenting temperatures and/or times.
I do know that if you can actually make a starter using chili/jalapeno pepper stems. Specifically the stems and a bit of the top. There’s are specific bacteria and enzymes in there that kick start the process. You make this as a starter then use that to make the actual cream. I have not done this mond you. I have not done any milk based ferments. Mostly fruit and vegetables.
Ferment your garlic. Trust me on this. Tare a jar. Fill with garlic and water and get the weight. Add salt equal to 2% of that weight. Let ferment for a few weeks then refrigerate. Use the garlic in other things you ferment and it will hasten the ferment by acting as a started. Also it tastes better.
Have you tried roasting whole garlic cloves or bulbs with just the bottom(s) cut off? You can then squeeze out a roast garlic puree.
Also, a tip that I find useful is not to add the garlic too soon. It burns easily. So when e.g. frying off some onions or peppers, add the garlic when the firmer ingredients are almost cooked so that it doesn’t burn.
I’ve definitely gone over to adding garlic towards the end! I feel like the flavor holds better. There’s nothing worse than charred garlic overpowering the dish!
I’ve roasted garlic maybe one time. I’m not usually patient enough for it, but I should try it more!
If I remember, I tend to stick some garlic into the same roasting pan that I’m roasting something else in, maybe potatoes or carrots. Then I can save the garlic in the fridge for a couple of days, depending on how much I roast and what I use it for.
This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
If you haven’t already found it, this GitHub page is an excellent collection of sources about socialism, imperialism, and other relevant topics, made by @dessalines and others.
I shouldnt need to say this but just season your damn vegetables. Hated vegetables my entire life because my mom never seasoned them lol
Buy a watercooker on which you can change the temperature of the water for God tier tea experience. Some teas don’t need cooking water but 80 degrees Celsius for example and the tastes really change if you do it properly.
That’s neat! I didn’t know kettles could be adjusted like that!
Also, pour in and cook a mixture of water and vinegar every once in a while to keep your watercooker clean.
Whole flake oats with chia seeds, pea protein, ground flaxseed, a banana (or a packet of aspartame to balance the protein) and some blueberries is a really really healthy cheap filling low cal meal.
Get some quality handmade Japanese carbon steel knives, and learn how to use them and sharpen them. I’m filled with joy every day simply by chopping vegetables.
Vinegar is your friend. You can also make it yourself.
It stinks tho 😩
How does one make vinegar!? (I know I can search for this, but if you’ve got experience, that counts for more than just a recipe.)
Wall o text spoiler
spoiler
So I have made several ways. One way is I started making Kombucha with a Scoby I order off Etsy for like $5. If you let it sit for about 3 months you get super sour vinegar instead of a somewhat fizzy kombucha. Alternatively you can make it out of just about any fruit and a little extra sugar. I have made the following vinegars:
Basically vinegar is made from acetobacteria fermenting alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar) while in the presence of oxygen. This is why alcohol is fermented under an air lock so the CO2 pushes out any oxygen and the acetobacteria doesn’t have a chance to start eating the ethanol. This is also why weaker wines “sour” over time after they are opened. Anything above about 10% alcohol however is too strong for the acetobacteria to do anything. So you have to dilute stronger wines or let them sit for a looong time.
So all you have to do is ferment some sugars into alcohol while open to the air. What I do for the fruit (I use dried fruit as fresh fruit had a higher chance of molding) is: Fill a jar about 1/4 - 1/2 the way full with dried fruit. Some fruit “plumps” up a bit more than others when you add the wayer. You want the end result to be a jar that’s about 2/3 - 3/4 filled with fruit. Fill up the jar all the way with fresh water, NO SALT. If you have a fruit thats not super sweet you can add a little sugar. I did this with the blueberries the most. Cherries a little less and apples a tad bit but not really necessary. The dried cranberries I used were already sweetened. If you want, you can splash some unfiltered, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar in the mix to act as a starter. Then cover it with a cloth instead of a hard lid so air can pass but dust and shit can’t. Then let it sit for several weeks. Stir it every day or two so as to prevent mold growth. If you don’t you WILL get mold. After about 3 or 4 weeks, once the fruit stop visibly fermenting (you will see lots of bubbles at first as all the wild yeast get funky) I strain off the solids. I poured off most the liquid, and saved it, first then put the solids in a food processor and then squeezed out the juice with a cheesecloth. Then add that juice back to the rest of the liquid. Messy but gets more of the good stuff. Then leave all the liquid to ferment for another few months. You can taste it at this point but it will probably be like a slightly sour alcohol. The acetobacteria take their time. You should see a pellicle form at the top of the liquid after a while. This is made from the acetobacteria and yeasts.
Some issues I had were: Cranberries inhibit fermentation significantly. To get them to ferment I added extra wine making yeast. THEN when I strained it I added about 1/4, of the total amount in fresh kombucha to act as a booster to get the vinegar going.
I also added kombucha to the blue berry as it didn’t want to move on from being hooch which honestly was a pretty darn good hooch. Slightly sour, mildly alcoholic, very blueberry.
Raising vinegar is basically a wine vinegar. lol
If making some vinegar from store bought wine you will need to dilute it, and also add a little hydrogen peroxide as this reacts with some additives that prevent the wine from fermenting further and removes them. Let it sit for a few days then add you vinegar mother from either apple cider vinegar or other ferments. Aged kombucha works as well.
It’s really a neat process and I’d look up videos and stuff too. I basically learned as I went.
You’re a genius, btw.
I’ll need to prepare my setup properly, but I really want to try this. Thanks for the instructions and inspiration!
Bewarned, you can get some funky looking stuff in those jars but generally as long as it’s below the water and not “fuzzy” like a mold you are generally safe. This here is a pellicle from kombucha. They can grow long strands reaching down into the liquid which are just yeast colonies. The acetobacteria like the surface because oxygen and the yeast like it down under.
This one here is the cranberry after I added the extra yeast it made these weird structures like some kind of yeast skyscrapers growing up into the liquid.
I know a lot of people here are trying to go vegan or at least eat more plant based. The most common complaint I hear is less “I miss the taste of meat” but much more generally “there’s not that much variety in taste”. I mean, most of the vegan food in the West is basically salad and various forms of fairly simple cooking like boiling, steaming, maybe baking or roasting if you’re lucky. In that case, yeah, most of the flavor is in the meat portion and the vegetables are considered sides for a reason.
My answer to that is: familiarize yourself with using spices. Particularly East/Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and African spices. There’s a joke that “Europe colonized the entire world for spices yet their food is still boring as hell” and, honestly that’s pretty fricking real. Instead of another salad or veggie bowl, make vegan Indian curry or daal, or Chinese spicy soup (Ma La Tang) or hot pot, Ethiopian wot, etc. These also don’t segregate the ingredients nearly as much as western food, so it’s a lot easier to compensate for not including meat. There’s a whole world of food that does really well being veganized with way more flavour and variety. IMO a huge part of the problems is that Western food doesn’t know how to be creative and have fun with vegetables since meat is such an important part of it, part culture (or lack thereof in places like the US and Canada where the many rich and varied Indigenous cultures that were there was wiped put) and part privilege (they just have access to a lot more meat).
Pro tip, don’t go to those soulless corporate chain “ethnic” grocery stores owned by billionaire white people, hit up your local run down hole in the wall little shop probably run by a family with English as a second language who only take cash. Those have wayyy better and more kinds of stuff often for cheaper. Speaking from experience as an immigrant to the West. See if you can find a market hall or plaza with a lot of small, independent stores, instead of a mall with a few large, franchise stores.
Paprika, onion/garlic powder, mushroom powder, msg are basics that can add a ton of savory flavour.
what can I say, the spice must flow.
When making instant noodles, boil some broccoli in it both to lessen the unhealthiness of it but also because all those little buds soak up the broth and soft boiled broccoli has a very unique taste and texture all on its own.
I’ve tried potatoes, different kinds of cabbage, book choy, etc, and they all work well but IMO broccoli is the best.
This works best if you have an actual stove though. Microwave works okay too but just pouring hot water will not cook them all the way.
Another tip to add for me is I’ll add a big handful of red lentils to the water and boil them for 5-7 minutes before I add the noodles, makes it a little creamier and you get the extra protein and fibre.
Safe water, a kitchen scale that does grams and ounces, a reliable supply chain for bulk dry goods, and a reliable marketplace for fresh produce, and pounds of salt.
Add salt to each stage of cooking. Taste as one goes. Brown things when possible. Cook in the pans that food is browned in when possible.
Add a spice grinder (manual, electric, or mortar and pestle) and switch to whole spices. Get a supplier for spices. Toast them before you grind them. Whole new level of cuisine.
Balance salt, acid, sugar, spice, and bitter. Taste things and add what’s missing.
Pay attention, source good ingredients affordably, don’t over optimize your process, and the result will never be bad.
Finally, chop everything before you start cooking. Mis en place = Life is good
One technique, if it can be called that, is to cook any homemade tomato sauce slowly (25 minutes minimum) at a low temperature (the lowest setting on the hob) and to add half a teaspoon of sugar per 500g of pasata or chopped tomatoes. Other ingredients are often needed, too, but don’t forget the sugar as tomatoes can be bitter. Taste to see if it needs a little more sweetness and add another quarter teaspoon at a time.
If you ferment the tomatoes in salt brine (like pickles or sauerkraut) it will significantly enhance their flavor. It’s has a kind of ripening effect. Another issues modern tomatoes have is the “flavor gene” disappeared as we bred them for size and production. This gene cause many of the carbs in the tomatoes to break down in a way and this added more flavor to the tomatoes. Fermenting them kind of does this to a degree I think. I fermented a bunch of Roma tomatoes and made sauce and paste out of them and it beat the shit out of anything I made with fresh or store bought.
Would I do this in the same way as you suggested to ferment garlic?
Yes. 2% salt brine. Tare container and then weigh the tomatoes and water. Then add 2% of that weight in salt. Slice tomatoes up into at least quarters. You can get more in that way and also lets the lactobacillus bois get into the tomatoes better. And keep it all submerged under the brine.
Alternatively, if you are feeling risky, just make up a bunch of salt water that’s like 2.5-3% salt. Then just pour that into whatever you want to ferment. As long as you have an air lock on your fermenter you shouldn’t have issues with mold anyway. It’s just not as exact but then tbf, people salt brine fermented stuff for centuries before scales were widely available. lol. Some stuff might be a little more or less salty that what is “ideal” but generally should be fine. If you see mold don’t mess with it though. Try not to open a moldy jar outside either. I only ever had a moldy jar of I lost my air seal or on a jar I had opened then lost in the fridge for many months.
Sounds delicious. I have a possibly silly question: are those bacteria the same as in yoghurt? Where do they come from, are they already on the tomatoes? Or would I add a splash of the liquid from sauerkraut or even yoghurt as a starter, like the kombucha with the vinegar? (Apologies if you’ve explained this elsewhere.)
I think I’ll try this before I try making vinegar. I can’t wait. I do love fermented foods. I’ve been drinking quite a bit of kefir, lately. I’ve wondered what would happen if I poured a splash in a litre of milk and left it for a week. But I don’t know if I’d dare drink the result.
So the “probiotics” that make sauerkraut and stuff are already in the vegetables. They are in the air and dirt and stuff along will all kinds of also not good shit. The salt water and lack of oxygen (anaerobic environment) just makes a very good environment for them and not much else.
Other potentially harmful can also survive in these conditions, like Clostridium botulinum (botulism), but you know what those things don’t do well in? Acidic environments. Know what lactobacillus does? Makes foods acidic and also outcompetes the botulinum. This is why botulism is usually only from improperly canned foods where the competing bacteria were killed off but not the botulinum and also there’s typically a lack of acidity due to the food being prepared to be heat preserved and not needing it.
As far as yogurt is concerned I have never actually made it but the started bacteria is specific. You can easily just get some plain Greek yogurt and collect the liquid from it as a starter. The best way to do this is take a spoon to a zero fat plain Greek yogurt (the really firm shit) and dig out a hole in the middle of it. The liquid will seep out and fill the hole. I figured this out when I needed a super firm yogurt for a recipe and doing this makes the yogurt very firm and collects all the liquid for other stuff. Like for instance, if you make your own mayonnaise add some yogurt liquid to it and let it sit at room temp for a day or two and it’ll basically ferment it slightly which makes it keep significantly longer in the fridge. Likewise you could use this as a yogurt starter since that’s basically what it is. I think it can also make sour cream too it’s just different fermenting temperatures and/or times.
I do know that if you can actually make a starter using chili/jalapeno pepper stems. Specifically the stems and a bit of the top. There’s are specific bacteria and enzymes in there that kick start the process. You make this as a starter then use that to make the actual cream. I have not done this mond you. I have not done any milk based ferments. Mostly fruit and vegetables.
This is super informative, thank you.
Getting a garlic press helped me use way more garlic. Sometimes I don’t even take the papers off the cloves and just squash 'em.
I did break my first garlic press recently, though.
Ferment your garlic. Trust me on this. Tare a jar. Fill with garlic and water and get the weight. Add salt equal to 2% of that weight. Let ferment for a few weeks then refrigerate. Use the garlic in other things you ferment and it will hasten the ferment by acting as a started. Also it tastes better.
You have the coolest fucking ferment advice. I’ll definitely try it!
They’re so handy. But horrid to clean.
Have you tried roasting whole garlic cloves or bulbs with just the bottom(s) cut off? You can then squeeze out a roast garlic puree.
Also, a tip that I find useful is not to add the garlic too soon. It burns easily. So when e.g. frying off some onions or peppers, add the garlic when the firmer ingredients are almost cooked so that it doesn’t burn.
I’ve definitely gone over to adding garlic towards the end! I feel like the flavor holds better. There’s nothing worse than charred garlic overpowering the dish!
I’ve roasted garlic maybe one time. I’m not usually patient enough for it, but I should try it more!
If I remember, I tend to stick some garlic into the same roasting pan that I’m roasting something else in, maybe potatoes or carrots. Then I can save the garlic in the fridge for a couple of days, depending on how much I roast and what I use it for.
Oh, that’s a great idea!