[music] Alright!
This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for
you, I’m here in my backyard garden, and question I get a lot is “John, what do you
do with all that food?”
I mean I got all these raised beds, these ones happen to be like four foot by 15 feet,
and it’s filled with 80 pepper plants, and as you guys can see you got a pepper abundance.
There’s just super peppers, I mean if you just look in the camera, all the little red
spots and behind me, there’s so many peppers, and people as “John, what do you do all
the food man, do you like sell it?”
No I don’t sell my food, I want to eat all my food, that’s why I’m growing and I
want you guys also to grow as much food as you guys possibly can to eat yourself, and
eat it yourself fresh.
So one of the ways I really love to use my peppers is just to pick them and eat them,
another way I like to do it is actually I pick a whole bunch, and then I’ll juice
them and I’ll make like 32 ounces of pepper juice, and that’ll be my soup base.
So I use that as my soup stock to add other things into, maybe some nuts, some spices,
some herbs, and blend that up into creamy mixed soup mixture, and then I’ll cut up
lettuce and other greens from my garden and chunks of tomatoes and put some [inaudible]
in there, and then have a nice fresh soup all from my garden.
Those are the ways I like to use my plants immediately.
But unfortunately even though I grow a lot, and juicing does use a lot of produce, I have
so much extra.
So the extra I do two things with normally.
One is I dehydrate them.
So I always encourage you guys to use dehydration as one of your primary storage vehicles, because
it will get you from point A to point B, point A from having fresh foods that you grow in
the summer to a point in the winter when you don’t have these fresh foods, but you can
still enjoy the bounties and harvests from your garden.
So I love to dry my things like peppers and tomatoes, also even things like greens, making
my own kale chips, kale powders, green powders out of different leaves in my garden, drying
my different herbs, powdering them up and having my own delicious herb shakers so I
can flavor things with my own herbs that I grew instead of buying herbs in little shakers
out of the grocery store and they can get expensive.
And the other way I like to do is what I’m going to show you guys today.
It’s super simple, super easy, I’ve had episodes on it in the past, I’ll put a link
down below for my winter garden actually when I fermented some winter vegetables to make
a sauerkraut, but I like to do the same thing with my summer vegetables, and it’s totally
possible, it’s called lactic acid fermentation, and I guess I’m just going to go ahead and
show you guys how you can preserve some of your summer harvest, such as onions, beans,
peppers, and of course, the almighty cucumbers.
Oh and okra, okra’s a good one, I think I’m going to do that one too actually.
But yeah, let’s go over to a table that I got set up here on the garden, and share
with you guys how easy making your own fermented cucumbers or pickles can be.
So now I’m going to go ahead and show you guys how easy it is to ferment your own vegetables
from your garden, or even if you don’t’ have a garden you bought them at the store,
at home.
Super simple, super easy, here are some examples of what I did, this was ready in about two
weeks, these are fermented peppers, mostly pepperchini peppers in there, and these are
fermented lemon cucumber halves that I cut and then fermented.
And those were ready in about a week.
So you leave them out in a cool, dark place or maybe on your countertop for about a week,
for the pickles maybe five to seven days, and two weeks for the peppers, and they’ll
be ready.
I mean one of the favorite things that I used to have when I was a kid was picked pepperchinis,
and I think it was mescalas, I don’t know starts with an M, brand, and these are way
better because I grew them and they’re fresh.
Most pickles that you buy that’s sitting on the counter in a jar like this are basically
heat processed, so you’re losing a lot of the beneficial properties of eating it in
its live and natural state.
Once the fermentation is completed, and you’ve done that outside your fridge, then you’re
going to take off the top apparatus which I’ll s how you in a minute, put a cap on
it, and then put it in the fridge.
It’ll store easily for a half a year although if your pickles are anywhere near as good
as mine, they’re not even going to last a month unfortunately, because man, these
guys are so delicious.
Anyways to make your own pickles super-simple, super easy, you’re going to need a few things.
A pack of pickles.
I mean a pack of peppers, no a pack of cucumbers.
So we got a whole bunch of cucumbers here that I picked fresh.
Next thing you’re going to need is some clean water, so I’m using some reverse osmosis
water, also you can use some filtered water.
I do not recommend using any kind of chlorinated water, this may affect the culture.
Next we’re going to need some salt, and so I have some Seasons 90 sea salt here, which
is the Sea 90 brand of salt that you can use in your garden, but also use for eating, and
this is the human grade version.
The next thing that you may want to use are some spices, so I have some fresh spices that
I’ve picked fresh, including some sage and some rosemary, and of course since we’re
making dill pickles we’ve also got a sprig of dill there.
And then another [inaudible] that you could use fresh herbs and spices, also sometimes
use depending on what I’m making like onions and garlic in my ferments, and also I got
some pre-made dried spices.
So you know it’s been really challenging for me to find a really good pickling spice
for cucumbers that doesn’t have cinnamon because I don’t know why, some people in
some places put cinnamon in it, I don’t like cinnamon in my cucumbers, and so I just
got this one, it’s Marshall’s Creek Spices by Pure and Natural Spices Pickling Spice,
16 ounces, this was on eBay, and this stuff is the bomb.
The only thing I wish, I wish it was organic, alright.
So those are the main ingredients you’ll need, but you’ll need two more things.
Number one, you’ll need a jar.
So I like to use Mason jars, right?
And I like to use either the smaller 32 ounce Mason jar, or the larger 64 ounce Mason jar,
I prefer the 64 ounce Mason jar since you can do larger batches, and the final thing
you’ll need is actually, in my opinion you should be using an air lock.
So they have these little air lock things right here, that basically you could get at
a beer shop, so at my local beer shop these are a buck fifty, buck and a quarter each.
And basically what this does, this allows the ferment to off gas, but not let additional
air in, because we want to have an oxygen-deprived environment for the lactic acid bacteria to
flourish, you know if you just do this with a lid or a cover set on top gently, you have
a much stronger and larger possibility of a chance of getting some kind of a negative
or bad bacterial contamination, that’s why I only recommend you guys using and fermenting
in something with an air lock such as my ceramic crock that I use to pickle or ferment my whole
cabbages, or something like this, the problem is you can’t just stick this into the Mason
jar, you need something else.
So the first thing I looked into was this, this is actually called the Recap, and this
was meant to go on a Mason jar, and then you could actually have a cap on it and then you
could actually drink out of your Mason jar.
And then what you would do is you would go down to a local beer shop and then you would
get, also when you were there you would get a little cork stopper.
And this cork stopper or rubber stopper, would actually fit inside the Recap just like that,
and then you would put this in here like that.
And you know, if it was like this,that would probably work if there was no leakage.
The problem I’ve seen with the Recap so I cannot actually recommend the Recap I’ve
bought 20 of them, and they will not answer my e-mails, and they leak, and they’re a
defective design and they need to change it.
The problem is the seal at the bottom on my Mason jars, they just don’t seal properly,
even if I wrench it on really tight it might have a small leak, and then I’ve got to
get an oil filter wrench to undo how tight I put them on.
So these could also be a challenge to get on, so I cannot recommend the Recap and do
not encourage you guys to buy the Recap until they fix their defective design and minimally
have good customer service to contact me to replace all the defective ones, maybe I got
a bad batch, with better gaskets, because I did like this option, because it’s really
simple, easy, you go ahead and buy these online, you just go to the beer shop, get these two
components, and you’re going to be [inaudible] fermenting, so yes, no Recaps, even though
they’re made in the USA, they’re garbage.
Alright, so the way I determined that would be actually less expensive and more beneficial
is this way, so I just went to a local Wal-Mart, got these plastic tops that go on the top
of the Mason jars, made by the same Ball or Mason company, and what I did was a drilled
a hole in it, in the middle, and then I got these little grommets.
It’s like Gromit and Oscar, no, Arthur and Gromit?
Wally and Gromit, right.
So I got these little silicon grommets on eBay, so there’s a grommet here that protects
that hole right down the middle so that no additional air could get in, and the inside
of this does not have any kind of gasket either, so then I got these round gaskets also on
eBay for really cheap in bulk, right?
So then I made my own.
So then I drilled my own, made my own, they’re way cheaper, you could buy these already pre-made,
but they’re going to charge you a bunch more than if you just buy gaskets and buy
the little grommets here, and the plastic lids.
So then once you have this, you could screw that on, and that has a good positive gasket
there, and then you could put your air lock in there, and now you’re going to create
a space where oxygen can’t get in, but the CO2 coming out can actually bubble out of
this guy.
So I mean that’s what I recommend, super-simple, super-easy.
So next step is we just simply got to pack the pickles in the jar, you could just dump
them in, haphazardly, but then that would leave a lot of airspace, air pockets, and
I want to have as many pickles as I can fit in this jar, so I might get a little bit anal
and just place one pickle in at a time, and try to get them as close as I can.
So we’re coming back at you once I got them all in there.
Alright so I got about one layer of pickles in there, we’re going to go ahead and drop
in the herbs, I like to just drop in the herbs on the side there, and I like to keep them
whole, the flavor, the essence will actually just percolate out into the cucumbers.
So now I got the fresh spices in there, I want to put some of these dried spices in
there.
So I mean I don’t know if there’s any kind of measurement on how much you should
put, but I just put a good solid sprinkle full to make sure my cucumbers have really
rich flavor like you’re used to buying at the store.
And I want to let you guys know, we got to get used to food tasting not what it tastes
like at the store, because food you buy at the store is industrial processed food and
it’s always made to taste consistent, like it’s always going to taste this way.
And especially when you grow things in your garden it’s going to taste better, and it’s
going to taste a little bit different and it’s not always going to taste the same.
And this is just one of the spices of life that I like to partake in, one of the spices
of [inaudible] that I do not like to partake in is different girls.
Lauren, I love you.
So let’s go ahead and continue to pack the cucumbers into my jar.
Alright so as you guys can see, I got my cucumbers packed in here man, I really like to pack
things in tight, except I don’t like to pack in the fudge, but we’re packing in
the cucumbers as tight as we can for a few reasons.
Number one to fit more, but number two so that when we do add the water they don’t
float up to the top and get above the water line, this is very important, now if you’re
doing something like peppers, I usually generally cut my peppers in half to ferment them and
then I’ll use a little weight on the top of this jar, and what I find works pretty
well is a smaller, I think it’s like an eight ounce Mason jar standard lid that’ll
actually fit into this wide lid, and I’ll use that to weight my things down which is
also available locally, they do have a glass weights and ceramic weights that can cost
you a bunch of money, but I just use some jars that I fill up with water.
We’re going to go ahead and put this last cucumber in here and shove it in so it’s
super tight and all these cucumbers can’t rise up.
Look at that [inaudible] losing my spices, forgot about those, alright.
But yeah anyways the cucumbers won’t fall out now, add a few more spices.
Let’s see if we can fit one more cucumber in there really tightly.
Alright so I think we got all my cucumbers except one, I’ve planned that fairly well.
Next, one of the most important steps is to create the proper brine solution.
So to do this, what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to put the
water with the proper amount of salt.
Now I’m using about a 3.5 percent salt ratio, so I’ve got about one liter of water to
about 36 grams of salt here.
We’re going to go ahead and pour that in and stir it up, so we’re going to get all
that salt dissolved in there to the best of my ability.
Now there’s some people that say lactic acid fermentation requires salt, well I don’t
know that it requires salt, you can do it salt-free with some certain vegetables, like
I wouldn’t have a problem doing a salt-free sauerkraut if done properly, but on things
like cucumbers, they can tend to spoil quicker, and I want to always encourage you guys to
use salt, and use the healthiest salt you can like don’t get the white table salt,
I use the Sea 90 salt, if you can’t find the Sea 90 salt you can use a Himalayan salt,
the [inaudible] Sea salt, they’re just standard sea salt.
I got this sea salt from Italy, and it’s the big large granules, and that’s what
I really like to use, I don’t like to use any kind of iodized, processed salt made my
man.
But I do want to encourage you guys to get the Sea 90 or the Seasons 90 salt that I’m
using.
I like that the best because it has trace minerals that are good for us, also good for
your garden, so it’s kind of cool, I really like to use fertilizers that you could actually
eat, and I know some of you guys still use the manures, and I wouldn’t eat manure,
but I would eat rock dust, alright.
Alright so we got that pretty well mixed up, now we’re just going to go ahead and pour
this mixture into all our pickles.
And we want to make sure that this is completely covered up to the top.
Alright looks like it’s completely covered up to the top, sometimes what I might like
to do if I have to is add some extra brine solution from the last batch, so this is some
brine solution from the last batch where I had a successful batch, and I’ll add a little
bit of that as a salt starter culture to my new batch to help it get fermenting and help
it get going.
This is an optional step that I would encourage you guys to do, it’ll speed up the process
a little bit.
I guess the last step is to just put your cap on, so once again we make sure we got
that gasket in there, we’re going to go ahead and screw this guy in, make sure it’s
nice and tight, and we’ve got a nice gasket seal so there’s no air leaks in there, and
then it’s very important to put water in the airlock up to the fill line, the bottom
line, there’s two lines.
And we just got that in there, then we’re just going to put the lid on, and we’re
going to go ahead and set this in a cool, dark place, so like to do it usually in a
cupboard would be the best, you can put it on your kitchen counter, but I like to keep
it in the dark, and let this ferment, and occasionally, depending on where you live,
you’re going to have to make sure there’ still water in here, you don’t want the
water to run out, that’s very important, or this is not going to operate correctly,
and you just leave this out four seven days, five to seven days depending on your temperature,
your climate where you live, and then you’re going to have some pickles, you’re going
to take this top off, seal it with a lid, put it in your fridge, it’ll store easily
for the next six months to get you to the following season when you’re able again
to eat fresh fruits and vegetables out of your garden.
I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode learning how to make the pickles, I can’t
wait to have these little pickles, I’ve been snacking on my other pickles they are
amazing.
And I want to encourage you guys, nothing is better than food you can grow and process
yourself, I want you guys to get away from eating processed foods, things that are already
made for you in the store, those are a lot of foods that contain different preservatives
that are preserving you and not healthy, and the food that you can grow yourself in the
garden is some of the best food that you could be eating and I’m glad that I got to share
with you guys another way I like to preserve my harvest so I can eat it later in the year
when I don’t have the cucumbers, because that time is coming up soon.
If you guys liked this video and want me to do more showing how I prepare my food, because
I’ve been preparing my own food for the last 20 years, I’ve been only gardening
for 10 plus years now, please give me a thumbs up to let me know, I’ll try to do more videos
where they show preparing food because I’m a chef in my own heart, in my own right, and
be sure to click that subscribe button down below to be notified of all my new and upcoming
episodes, I have new episodes coming out every three days approximately, and also be sure
to check my past episodes, I have over 1100 episodes on all aspects of growing your own
food, preserving your own food, making recipes so that you can be the healthiest person you
can, and we can do the least amount of impact in the world that we can.
Be the change you want to see in the world is what I like to say, and that’s also what
Gandhi said actually.
So once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we’ll see you next
time and until then remember, keep on growing.