When Food Goes Bad But Stays Good

The list of fermented food in our lives is staggering: bread, coffee, pickles, beer, cheese,We offer you the top quality plasticmoulds design yogurt and soy sauce are all transformed at some point during their production process by microscopic organisms that extend their usefulness and enhance their flavors.

The process of fermenting our food isn't a new one: Evidence indicates that early civilizations were making wine and beer between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago — and bread even before that.

But was exactly is fermentation? And how does it work? Those were the questions that fascinated Sandor Katz for years. Katz calls himself a "fermentation revivalist" and has spent the past decade teaching workshops around the country on the ancient practice of fermenting food.

Katz collects many of his recipes and techniques in a new book, The Art of Fermentation, in which he describes fermentation as "the flavorful space between fresh and rotten."

"If you walk into a gourmet food store and start thinking about the nature of the foods that we elevate on the gourmet pedestal, almost all of them are the products of fermentation," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "Fermentation creates strong flavors. But they're not always flavors that everybody can agree on."

Take cheese, for instance. Cheese exists in a variety of flavors, including the extra-stinky varieties Katz says he fancies.I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production. "But once in a while I'll buy cheese and I've learned that some friends will smell the cheese and walk out of the room," he says. "They'll never think about putting that in their mouths. ... So around the world, you find these iconic foods created by fermentation that create strong, strong flavors that become strong markers of cultural identity and in many cases, people who have not been raised within the culture find these foods very challenging."

In addition to enhancing flavors, fermentation also allows food items to be preserved well past their shelf-life date, says Katz.

"It's not forever like canned foods that you can put into a pantry or storm cellar and forget about for 10 years and still eat it,The term "Hands free access" means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag." he says. "These foods are alive, they're dynamic, but they're extremely effective strategies for preserving food through a few seasons,What you should know about stone mosaic. which is really the point."

For fermentation newbies, Katz recommends starting with sauerkraut because it's particularly easy to make. To begin, take a cabbage and any additional vegetables you want and chop it up. Put your chopped veggies in a large bowl and lightly salt them.

After salting the veggies, which helps get rid of excess water, Katz squeezes them for a few minutes to release their juices, so that they can be submerged under their own liquid. He then stuffs the veggies and the juices they've released into a jar.

"You want to press really hard to force out any air bubbles," he notes. "And you want to make sure that the vegetables are pressed down under their juices. And then just seal the jar — but be aware that pressure will be produced, so you don't want to leave it for days and days."

Katz recommends checking the jar on a daily basis to release the pressure — and then after maybe 3-5 days, enjoying your new creation.

"The flavors transform very quickly," he says. "The bacteria proliferate, the texture changes, and what I recommend to people experimenting for the first time, is just to taste it at periodic intervals. And then you're getting a sense of whether you're liking it more and more as the flavor gets more acidic or whether it's acidic enough and you want to move it into your fermentation-slowing device, which is your refrigerator.UK chickencoop Specialist."