Fermented Foods for a Healthy Gut

I see so many questions about what foods to eat for some sort of ailment.

I saw this and thought I would share this infographic:



Source

What do you think?  Was this helpful?

Do you agree that these fermented foods help maintain a healthy gut?

I like the pictures and it does a good job of explaining the steps in making fermented foods. One note, when I make beer, wine and other fermented things cleaning is the first step. I read in a beer magazine once " You can sanitize dog poop but that does not make it clean." Next I sanitize everything that will come in contact with the ingredients.  And I will admit sometimes I forgot to sanitize a fermenter but the beer turned out good.

When my gut is not in a good place, miso does help me out. And sauerkraut is good with potatoes. Kimchi is good really if you like hot things. Last tempeh, I need to make some!

Anne Miller wrote:I see so many questions about what foods to eat for some sort of ailment.

I saw this and thought I would share this infographic:



Source

What do you think?  Was this helpful?

Do you agree that these fermented foods help maintain a healthy gut?

Many thanks for this, Anne. I love sauerkraut.

I've been sticking my toes into the fermented food world and have stumbled upon this graphic. Thank you for sharing it, it is very helpful.

I've been on a kimchi kick to take the place where pickles once were.

I have found it unnecessary to make a brine for sauerkraut, simply pounding the sliced cabbage between layers of salt is sufficient to draw sufficient liquid out of the cabbage to cover the cabbage.

I also like to add finely shredded fresh ginger and sliced garlic to my sauerkraut.

I've always got a jar of saurkraut on the go at home. I'm the only one who eats it though, so a jar lasts me a long time.

I use a 2-litre jar with an airlock lid for the fermentation process. Buying a dedicated lid was a definite improvement over the various improvised arrangements I had previously, as I now get zero discolouration of the upper surface.

Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients like salt in cups/tablespoons etc... There is way too much variability in terms of how dense your salt actually is. A tablespoon of sea salt flakes is quite different to a tablespoon of fine table salt. Instead, I aim for a salt concentration by weight.  I chop up whatever ingredients I am using and weigh them. I typically do about 2kg of cabbage at a time. Then I do 2% of that weight as salt.  eg if I end up with 1876g of cabbage I will weigh out 37g of whatever salt I am using (2% of the weight). Add it to a mixing bowl with the chopped cabbage and (with clean hands) vigorously mix it together, aiming to bruise the cabbage a bit. Transfer to the fermentation jar and add the glass weight to hold it down. If I need a bit more liquid then I mix up some salt water at the same concentration (20g salt to 1000ml of water) and top up as needed.

Before I got accurate scales, I was sort of guessing and had some batches that were way too salty.

I also love adding a few caraway seeds to my saurkraut. If you haven't previously tried it, give it a whirl.

My only beef with that infographic is the false dichotomy between fermenting and pickling. To my experience pickles are preserved vegetables and in my house they're fermented, though I'm obviously aware that vinegar pickling exists.

Michael Cox wrote:Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients...

Haha! I saw this and got jazzed because that's just how I feel -- I don't measure anything. But then the rest of the paragraph is all about how to be even more precise in one's measurements. Different strokes I suppose. :)

Christopher Weeks wrote:My only beef with that infographic is the false dichotomy between fermenting and pickling. To my experience pickles are preserved vegetables and in my house they're fermented, though I'm obviously aware that vinegar pickling exists.

Michael Cox wrote:Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients...

Haha! I saw this and got jazzed because that's just how I feel -- I don't measure anything. But then the rest of the paragraph is all about how to be even more precise in one's measurements. Different strokes I suppose. :)

I teach maths, and am an engineer by training. If I'm aiming for a 2% salt concentration by weight then why on earth would I measure something like salt by "cups"? I find the concept genuinely baffling.

The scales live on the kitchen surface so using them is easy. And every batch has come out perfect, where as the unmeasured batches were all over the place.

The infographic for saurkraut was particularly bad... it mixed oz, litres, lbs and teaspoons... and still required kitchen scales!