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Should I can Lacto-fermented foods?

 
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Hello,

I LOVE making lactofermented foods - sauerkraut, pickles, hot sauce, preserved lemon, olives, etc.  I use a recipes that, scientifically speaking, do truly preserve the food within them.

however, I usually store these in the fridge after I have made them, just to be safe/make other people eating them feel more safe, but; if I don't want to store these lactofermented veggies in the fridge, should I still can them, just to seal out the air?

Furthermore, If i do end up canning them: due to the lactic acid from the fermentation, these only need to be water bath canned, and not pressure canned - does that sound right?
 
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Hey Dustin, the only fermented food I have made in large enough quantity to justify canning was saurkraut. I find that fermented foods will store for a long time in the fridge, but I find that the texture becomes increasingly off-putting. They will store in a cool place just fine, but the quality goes downhill faster. After even a few months in the fridge, I have found that saurkraut gets kinda mushy and slimy. If you can it, it kills all the probiotic bacteria, and probably degrades a certain amount of the vitamin content - but it tastes great and maintains a pleasant texture for much longer.

If I make a big batch, I will keep whatever I think I will eat in the next month or two, and then can the rest. It is super easy - you just heat it up, pack it into jars, and then do a quick water bath. Ball blue book has guidelines I think, if not, Joy of Pickling would for sure.  

For some reason I have found that kimchi does not suffer from the same loss of quality in the fridge. We had a gallon jar go missing in the back of the beer fridge once, and a year later it was still delicious!
 
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In general, no.  Canning pressure canning, and probably hot bath would kill the pro biotics.  Anything cooler would lead to explosions.  Fermented foods are self-preserving.  I am still eating pickles my grandmother made over 30 years ago.  Fermentation is pre-canning preservation tech and fermented foods are alive - they should stay that way.
 
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Judson Carroll wrote:In general, no.  Canning pressure canning, and probably hot bath would kill the pro biotics.  Anything cooler would lead to explosions.  Fermented foods are self-preserving.  I am still eating pickles my grandmother made over 30 years ago.  Fermentation is pre-canning preservation tech and fermented foods are alive - they should stay that way.



Please tell me more about these 30 year old pickles! I love pickles and they are next on my list of foods to learn how to ferment. I’m taking it slow - started with sauerkraut (came out perfect), made a quick batch of fermented dilly beans last fall (so delicious!), now I’m trying kimchi (first batch was no good, think the cabbage was a bit too old). I’m loving both Sandor Katz’s books for recipes and tips but don’t recall anything about pickles that can last that long.

Back to the original topic.. It seems to me like canning fermented foods cancels out all the good reasons for fermenting in the first place. I do it for the delicious bacteria and increased nutrients. But I suppose if you’re just looking for flavor and longevity, it’s an option to be considered.
 
Judson Carroll
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Shasta Bacon wrote:

Judson Carroll wrote:In general, no.  Canning pressure canning, and probably hot bath would kill the pro biotics.  Anything cooler would lead to explosions.  Fermented foods are self-preserving.  I am still eating pickles my grandmother made over 30 years ago.  Fermentation is pre-canning preservation tech and fermented foods are alive - they should stay that way.



Please tell me more about these 30 year old pickles! I love pickles and they are next on my list of foods to learn how to ferment. I’m taking it slow - started with sauerkraut (came out perfect), made a quick batch of fermented dilly beans last fall (so delicious!), now I’m trying kimchi (first batch was no good, think the cabbage was a bit too old). I’m loving both Sandor Katz’s books for recipes and tips but don’t recall anything about pickles that can last that long.

Back to the original topic.. It seems to me like canning fermented foods cancels out all the good reasons for fermenting in the first place. I do it for the delicious bacteria and increased nutrients. But I suppose if you’re just looking for flavor and longevity, it’s an option to be considered.



It is pretty incredible, especially considering that they were stored in a room off of the barn, no air conditioned in the NC heat!  These were done with home made apple cider vinegar (so not a salt lacto ferment), with the addition of sugar and spices.  Thy are sweet and sour, still somewhat crunchy and smell strong ly of anise, cloves, cinnamon and such.  The lacto fermented cucumber pickle's out there were mushy, but not bad in flavor.  The firmer fermented pickles were just fine. the beets and the onions were awesome!  The kraut was perfect, decades later and only loosely covered in an old crock.
 
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If you are going for taste. I'd try a small batch and see how the taste and texture are altered.

As others mentioned you will kill some of those microbes, although some extremophiles may be present and survive!
 
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Shasta Bacon wrote:Back to the original topic.. It seems to me like canning fermented foods cancels out all the good reasons for fermenting in the first place. I do it for the delicious bacteria and increased nutrients. But I suppose if you’re just looking for flavor and longevity, it’s an option to be considered.



No, not ALL of the good reasons.  Home-fermented foods have many positive nutritional benefits.  Among those benefits are the live pro-biotic cultures, which will be killed by canning,  But that doesn't render the foods nutritionally inert, just less-awesome than they were originally.

In my experience, though, if you ferment seasonally - i.e. produce large quantities of lacto-ferments to preserve a short-term harvest surplus for long-term storage - you have few other choices.  I'm awed by the observation above of 30-year-old uncanned (vinegar) pickles but, again, that has not been my experience.

The closest I've ever come was an end-of-season batch of chow-chow - a spicy cabbage and green tomato condiment with lots of vinegar and sugar, or in my case I used xylitol.  Now, I refrigerated mine immediately, but still figured it would have an expiration date.  Yet 6 years later I'm still eating it and can't tell the difference.  Perhaps there is a fundamental difference in the lifespan and progression of vinegar pickles vs fermented pickles?  I don't know, but it sounds like an excellent topic for another thread if someone does know!

One reason I love making kraut and pickles is because they can sit out at room temperature.  But only for so long.  The longer they sit, the more fermented they become.  A mild batch of kraut eventually becomes a much stronger batch, and then past that eventually starts heading distinctly downhill, losing texture and taste  By placing them in a cold place, whether fridge or cellar, this process is slowed down considerably.  What would have taken weeks at room temperature now stretches out for months.  But it doesn't stop; eventually my refrigerated ferments definitely start to taste "past their prime."

Canning will prevent this and create a shelf-stable product, albeit at the costs of killing the live cultures.
 
Matthew Nistico
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Let me amend my prior post.  I wrote that canning was the only dependable choice for long-term storage of ferments.  But it occurs to me that this depends on your definition of "long term."  If, for instance, you live in a fairly mild climate with long growing seasons, as I do, perhaps your definition of long-term storage is pretty limited.

Let's say you harvest a big batch of Fall cabbage in December, which sounds perfectly reasonable where I live.  You make it into sauerkraut and stash it in the fridge or root cellar.  You only need it to last until your Spring cabbage crop comes ripe in mid- to-late April.  Provided you are tolerant of "strong tasting" kraut, which you will definitely have towards the end of that period, you might do perfectly well with the cold-stored kraut without needing to can it.

If, on the other hand, you envision stocking your pantry with kraut for years to come, then I'd can it.
 
Matthew Nistico
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Dustin Rhodes wrote:Furthermore, If i do end up canning them: due to the lactic acid from the fermentation, these only need to be water bath canned, and not pressure canned - does that sound right?



I don't think anyone has answered the OP's question yet in this regard.  I'm fairly certain that water batch canning is perfectly adequate for putting lacto-ferments on the shelf for long-term storage.  Pressure canning should not be required.
 
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Judson Carroll wrote:In general, no.  Canning pressure canning, and probably hot bath would kill the pro biotics.  Anything cooler would lead to explosions.  Fermented foods are self-preserving.  I am still eating pickles my grandmother made over 30 years ago.  Fermentation is pre-canning preservation tech and fermented foods are alive - they should stay that way.



The bit about your grandmother'es pickles you are still eating - INCREDIBLE!
 
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