Cultured Salsa

My first attempt to make a cultured whole food salsa turned out to be both flavorful and beautiful.

I started with some beautiful tomatoes in the organic section of my local grocery. As an added benefit they were marked as locally grown, which is a big thing here in the BlueGrass area of Kentucky. The recipe called for two large, but I had four medium.

(Those who know me may wonder why I didn't sit for an hour trying to reason out accurate definitions for "large" and "medium" as it applies to tomatoes, either as weight or diameter. Answer: I did)

I also chopped up one large onion, and almost modified the recipe because they smelled so strong! But I put the whole thing in, throwing gastronomic caution to the wind.

At this point I added my source of lactobacteria. A quarter cup of fully cultured water kefir, with a few of the kefir grains stick-blended into it. These were bubbling enthusiastically in their new sugar water just before I took them out and mixed them into the "second ferment" kefir water. I feel confident the sugar content was negligible.

I added about a half a teaspoon of sea salt to the liquid, this will not stop the good bacteria from growing but will help stop the bad molds and yeasts. You could do this with whey or leftover liquid from other ferments.

I put in peppers, again mistrusting the recipe, but I know that the "sweet" pepper would add the real vegetable pepper flavor missing from a lot of hot sauces and the jalapenos would bring even more heat in the process of breaking down a little. Next time I think I will make it with a green sweet pepper, because the color would have been better in the final product. And maybe an extra hot pepper!

The recipe was just a little more than my 36 oz. jar could hold, but I had the rest fried in with some leftover chicken thighs and I was happy about that!

The chopped vegetables must remain under the fluid and one way to do that is to get a special stone or glass weight. The other way is to use some cabbage leaves (which I just happen to have (hint : sauerkraut) on hand). I cut these using the lids as a guide, and they fit neatly in, pressing down the veggies and holding nicely in the throat of the jar.

In another post I mentioned how easy it is to just take the wires off the clasping Fido jars I use, letting gravity be the valve spring on the rubber gasket and lid. Fortunately at the last minute I remembered to put a bowl under the jar, because before morning it had forced out about a half a cup of pungent liquid which I didn't need on my bar and carpet!

After three days it began to smell really good. Strong, vegetably, rich, and a little like wine. I popped it in the fridge this morning, stopping the fermentation (and vacuum sealing the lid) so I could transfer it to storage jars later.

When I poured it out into a bowl for transfer, it was just beautiful - the onions translucent, the peppers and tomatoes bright and sparkly. It filled two of my 16 ounce storage containers, recycled Coconut Butter jars.

A little tip, I still have my microwave, although I barely ever use it. But when storing food, you want clean and sterile containers. I rinsed my already clean jars in filtered water and then microwaved them for a minute. This kills everything. Between that and sterilizing my small nylon cutting board, it's worth having a microwave around.

I had a little of this with my fast-breaking omelette just now and I was a little hesitant to take the first bite! Had I fermented it wrong? were the peppers going to be too hot? It was great, not musty or vinegary or funky tasting at all. And I am really picky about my food.

So feel encouraged to try this yourself, it's easy, interesting and healthful. See my earlier posts for methods of valving the jars and see my coming posts about the benefits of restoring your gut bacteria using cultured foods.

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All images from pixabay or my camera unless otherwise noted.

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