Rob: Bacteria is dangerous,
That fermentation is dangerous for you.
Sandor: Okay. Well, here, check out my shirt.
Please pass the bacteria.
Rob: Hey, everyone, I am here with Sandor Katz,
the Johnny Appleseed of wild fermentation,
and today, he is going to share the top
three misconceptions of fermentation.
So the first one that people ask a lot is,
"I hate fermented foods.
They are all really strong flavored,
or stinky, or things like that."
So what are your thoughts on that?
Sandor: Well, sometimes those are the foods
that people recognize as being fermented.
But, fermentation is so integral
to all of our food traditions
that almost every person
in almost every part of the world
eats and drinks products of fermentation every day.
So if you drink coffee, that is fermented.
If you eat bread, that is fermented.
If you eat cheese, that is fermented.
If you eat cured meats, they are fermented.
If you put a condiment on that sandwich
with those things, that involves fermentation.
Just such an incredible range
of foods and beverages
that people eat every day are fermented,
that you would really have
to go out of your way
to completely avoid fermented food.
All of the food that we eat
is populated by microorganisms.
And it always provides practical benefits,
whether it is making food more easily digestible,
making nutrients more bioavailable,
making foods preserve for longer periods of time,
producing alcohol.
There is always some kind of a practical
benefit to the process.
Rob: Number two is "Bacteria is dangerous,
that fermentation is dangerous for you."
Sandor: Okay. Well, here, check out my shirt.
Please pass the bacteria.
It turns out that bacteria
is the matrix for all life.
All people, all animals, all plants,
all fungi are descended from bacteria
and other single-cell organisms.
And none of us have ever lived without them.
So a healthy human being
is host to more than a trillion bacteria,
which enable us to effectively digest food.
They synthesize certain nutrients for us
so we do not have to find them in our food.
What we call our immune system
is largely the work of bacteria.
And then we are learning that almost
every system of our bodies,
including our brains,
are regulated by bacteria in ways
that we do not fully understand.
Rob: So number three,
speaking of all this bacteria,
people, a lot of people have this idea that,
well, in order to have the right
amount of bacteria and the right bacteria,
you need to use some laboratory stuff,
and advanced things,
and you need to understand microbiology.
What are your thoughts on that?
Sandor: Well, sure, the science of microbiology
has certainly illuminated what people
have been doing for thousands of years.
But all of the fermentation practices
people have been doing for hundreds
or thousands of years.
And people figured these things out
without microscopes, without laboratories.
And so the important thing to understand
is that everything we eat is populated
by a broad range of different kinds of organisms.
And the big question in fermentation is,
which ones are going to develop?
And that is always a matter of creating
conditions that are favorable to those.
So like fermenting vegetables,
which I think is the easiest thing to ferment.
It was my gateway into fermentation.
It is 100% safe.
There is no case history of illness or food poisoning.
It is the perfect place to start.
The bacteria is on the vegetables
and the condition we are trying to create
is simply to get the vegetables submerged.
So either you shred your vegetables
and salt them and pull juice
out of the vegetables
and get them submerged
under their own juices.
Or you mix up a brine solution
and put chunks of vegetables or whole
vegetables into the brine solution.
And either way, the vegetables
are protected from the flow of oxygen.
Lactic acid bacteria that are always
present on the bacteria, dominate.
They produce lactic acid.
And if there happened to be some cells
of salmonella, E coli, other organisms
we associate with food poisoning.
Well, the very convenient and elegant fact
is that none of them can survive
in an acidic environment.
So once those lactic acid bacteria become active,
they create an acidic environment
which will destroy any organisms
that could cause problems for us.
So if people want to experiment with this
in their home kitchens,
they do not need to have a microscope.
They do not need to be able to control everything.
They do not need to use chemicals
to sterilize their vessels.
You can just do it in simple everyday vessels
like jars in your kitchen and just try it.
Check out my website wildfermentation.com.
I have got lots of information to get you started.
Rob: Can I give this one a whiff?
Sandor: Yeah, for sure.
Rob: This one is a new one for me.
What did you call this one?
Sandor: This is a Chinese style
of fermenting vegetables
in a spiced brine called pao cai.
Rob: That is alive.
So a lot simpler than you would think.
And if for brand new people out there
that are wanting to get started,
what would be a suggestion
of maybe a couple of beginner ferments
that really get people started?
Sandor: I think that sauerkraut is
the perfect way to start.
Just shred some vegetables, salt them to taste,
spend 3 minutes squeezing them
or pounding them.
And that basically breaks down cell walls
and helps them release juice quickly.
Once they are nice and juicy,
pack them into a jar.
Make sure that you press hard
to get the vegetables submerged.
And then you just wait a few days,
a few weeks, a few months.
The longer you wait,
the more acids will accumulate.
People who might be worried about strong flavors
might enjoy it after three or five days.
People who enjoy stronger
flavors might want to wait two weeks.
Rob: Thank you all for tuning in.
I hope that this has been some education
and inspiration to get started with fermentation.
I have followed Sandor’s work
for probably seven, eight years,
and it is great to be able
to introduce him to all of you.
His books are just the absolute incredible
resource for having in your kitchen
or on your bookshelf
and so much information online as well.
Thanks for taking time with me, Sandor.
Sandor: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Rob: All right. See you, everyone.
Rob Greenfield Films