Fermenting Pickles

Fermenting Pickles

How to Ferment Cucumbers

If you like dill pickles, you love this recipe. This episode of Back to the Homestead starts out with a short demo of what wild fires in Southwestern Idaho can look like...a small one...but nonetheless a wild fire (as seen from the homestead).

Then we discuss how to ferment cucumbers by using lacto fermentation. We'll take the fermentation process from harvesting from the garden to the week after the process has started and the taste test.

Recipe:

Small and medium cucumbers with no blemishes
Peppers (Mild, Medium or Hot)
Garlic
Dill (or Dill Seed)
Brine

Brine: 1 gallon of water to 12 tablespoons (not teaspoons) of sea salt (or kosher salt).

Brewing Kombucha

Brewing Kombucha



This is not a "normal" Back to the Homestead video, but if you have been following Back to the Homestead (The Walker Homestead Updates) for a year or so, you'll likely have seen some recipe videos that I have posted. Kombucha is an effervescent tea-based beverage that is often consumed for its anecdotal health benefits or medicinal purposes. Growing and making things on the homestead that have medicinal purposes is a trend I'd like to develop in the Back to the Homestead video series and though that starting with a Kombucha recipe would be a great place to start.

If you want to get a starter SCOBY (that stands for "Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast"), there are many, many places to go. I got my starter from an eBay seller and have maintained the culture for over two years and will likely for years to come.

Here are some links to try:



Some great books on Kombucha:



The last book called "Wild Fermentation" is not a Kombucha book but is considered by many to be the fermenting "bible."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha

ENJOY!