What if there was a food you could eat every day, in every meal, that would amaze you with its flavor while it nurtured and healed your body? What if this food were inexpensive and simple to make? And what if it were also essential to healthy digestion, helping you get the most out of the nutrients in the foods you eat?
This wondrous food exists! It’s good old-fashioned, raw-fermented vegetables. Celebrated by cultures around the world and integral to cuisines for thousands of years, this age-old food-preserving technique is reclaiming its rightful place in kitchens today.
In Fresh & Fermented, we’ll teach you how to make your own small-batch fermented veggies with the award-winning flavors of the products from Firefly Kitchens. You don’t need much to get going—a few very basic tools, some fresh vegetables, pure sea salt, and spices. We’ll give you detailed instructions and tips based on our broad experience to set you confidently on your way. By planning ahead and letting Mother Nature do the work, you can have a jar of tangy, fresh ferments on your counter at all times.
After you’ve made your first jar of kraut, you’ll find more than eighty mouth watering ways you can put it to good use. Our home-tested recipes are written with an attention to detail that can help even the most novice cook turn out delicious meals. Transform your breakfasts; add zip to dips, salads, and sandwiches; and boost the vitality of dinners and sparkle of desserts. And the recipes don’t stop there—they’ll inspire you with ideas for how you can adapt everyday foods to incorporate fermented veggies and give you plenty of permission to experiment. We like a tablespoon or three of kraut at every meal. These recipes allow you to incorporate those servings in ways you’d never imagine.
In these pages, you’ll also learn a bit of the science behind fermentation—about the bacteria that make it happen, the critical and integral role they play in our digestion and immune systems, and the incredible health benefits and healing powers that these beneficial bacteria (called probiotics) confer.
We live kraut every single day—we make it, jar it, sell it, talk about it, and teach people to make it. The more we listened to the stories of our customers and friends across the country about how kraut has changed their lives, the more we realized just how little was known about this incredibly healthy food, and how few people were eating it. How could we keep this delicious and healthful secret to ourselves? We wanted both to tell people about it and empower them to do something about it.
So we wrote Fresh & Fermented to bring the bright magic of fermented foods from Firefly Kitchens into your kitchen at home.
—JULIE O’BRIEN & RICHARD CLIMENHAGE