Paper on Fermentable Foods: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.12520
Chocolate Fermentation: https://www.thechocolatejournalist.com/blog/fermentation-magical-step-chocolate
Find us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/jewishfermentationpodcast/
Our Website:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1789715
Paper on Fermentable Foods: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.12520
Chocolate Fermentation: https://www.thechocolatejournalist.com/blog/fermentation-magical-step-chocolate
Find us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/jewishfermentationpodcast/
Our Website:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1789715
Welcome to episode three of She Brews Hebrews a Jewish fermenting podcast, where we hope to discuss all things, home brewing and fermentation, both biblical and modern from a Jewish perspective, including beers, Meads, ciders, wines, breads, pickles, cheeses, and much, much more. Today. We're talking about some of our preferred potent potables and our favorite fermented foods. I'm your host, Evan Harris. And with me today as always is my co-host Alison Shay. How are you doing
Alison:I'm good. How are you?
Evan:Doing quite well. I am now broadcasting from deep, within the mountains accessible only by post and ski And some birds.
Alison:Got to check out the birds?
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:What are you drinking today? That looks dark.
Evan:It is a dark beer. A local beer to me. I am in Utah. So, it's one of the breweries around me is named after the local part of the Rockies, the Wasatch, and they have a beer that is, appropriate for one of the major religious groups, and is called polygamy porter.
Alison:One, of the local religious groups to be more specific.
Evan:I think everyone hopefully knows which one I'm talking about.
Alison:Presumably.
Evan:Presumably, but it's a nice dark beer. Good to find on nitro. If people like nitro beer, what about you? You've got some experements, I believe.
Alison:I do. What I'm drinking right now is some apple cider. I think I mentioned it a previous week. I made it with, trader Joe's, unfiltered, apple cider. It's come out quite tart, which I wasn't really expecting. And it's also, I bottled it a little bit early. It was 7.7% alcohol, which pretty high for an apple cider. But, it's very fizzy. I'm keep tasting it and I keep going. I didn't add any carbonation to this. It just bottles it a little early. And the carbonation sticks around in this guy, which I am very happy about. Not really sure how it happened, but it is the other thing I've got. Which I think is more interesting and is definitely something that we're going to do an episode on in the coming weeks. I have a batch of my homemade yogurt that I'm munching on or kind of sipping on it's pretty liquidy. It's super, super basic. I was going to make a batch of mozzarella. But. There was a minor mix-up on my Costco run. and my roommate ended up bringing back ultra pasteurized milk. I should have been more specific, which is not suitable for mozzarella making, but is suitable for yogurt making. So I added a little bit of vanilla and a little bit of sugar to this, and it is a delightful snack. I also froze much of it into frozen yogurt, which did not come out great, but it tastes good. Even if the
Evan:that sounds good. Right, Now it up as high as I'm up in the mountain. So it's not too warm, but, it was down in the valley earlier today and it was a hundred plus, so nice cold food sound delicious to me. I need to try doing yogurt. I think we've got some ultra pasteurized milk leftover from having family here recently. So maybe I'll give it a go. My other thought was maybe a clarified milk punch, which is a really interesting cocktail with a lot of history that, I will definitely discuss, I don't know if there's much of a Jewish history to it, but I'll discuss, when we do an episode on cocktails.
Alison:Sounds tasty. I'm down for it. Yogurt, definitely shows up in a lot of Jewish foods, especially regional. but one of the things that I really, really like about it just as a fermentation process, super easy, the whole process for making yogurt, you heat the milk.
Evan:Okay.
Alison:You cool. The milk down. You add a little bit of your starter in there. I usually just like use a spoonful from a regular or a preexisting yogurt. Or, or some preexisting yogurt if I've made some other recently. and then you cover it up and incubated at about 110 degrees overnight, and then you wake up in the morning and you've got a fresh tasty batch of yogurt. It's very, hands-off it just sits there for a while and you end up with some great yogurt.
Evan:I still have a sous vide up here, so I can definitely do that.
Alison:that's really ideal for
Evan:Put the milk into jars, obviously, and put those jars in the sous vide. I can do that pretty easily. I might do that. in the next few days. So maybe by the next episode, we'll have more yoga to discuss. So we've got a few things.,how about we start with discussing some of our preferred potent potables and then we'll get to our favorable fermented foods.
Alison:So just when Evan and I were talking about what we wanted to do for this episode, we were just kinda talking, I guess we were more just texting back and forth about things that we liked,
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:is a common thing for the two of us.
Evan:Just a little.
Alison:Yeah. So we have this list of things we want to talk about when we say, Hey, why don't we just talk about stuff that we like? And, I figured add on to that, you know, things that we like, things that we would like to do again, and things that we don't think about as fermentation. So that's kind of what to expect today.
Evan:I mentioned a few things that may have done in glossed over as what people don't think about in fermentation in episode zero or one, but it's always good to go over them. Cause there's some that everyone always forgets that are definitely fermentation, but let's start. If you don't mind, I'm going to start with, one of my favorite brews, a commercial product I've had that I really have been trying to replicate and I need to do it. And that is Samuel Smith Perry.
Alison:What is that?
Evan:so Perry is basically pear cider. Smith is a brewery in Yorkshire. You can get it in the states there, oatmeal stout is very popular. They've got a lot of their IPA is also popular. It is a traditional brew, that you can find in a lot of liquor stores and, beer shops. They've been organic since, before things could not be organic and they never switched away from it. That's the sort of place. This is very traditional doing it. Solid brewing the traditional way, keeping everything together. And they do a Perry, which is, I said as a pear cider. The issue with Perry is that pears have a lot of sorbitol, which is a non fermentable sugar. So pears tastes frequently sweeter than apples, but they don't have as much fermentable sugar, which means that they're more likely if you've just used pear juice, you're more likely to. Other things growing in it and not properly established a yeast colony.
Alison:So you got to add a whole load of sugar in there, if you want to do anything with it. Yeah.
Evan:So you've gotta add, a whole lot of sugar. I would probably use honey Samuel Smith uses organic raw cane sugar to my knowledge. But, yeah, I'd probably use honey, which it just would make it, instead of perry. Or is a pie or a Pizer, an apple pie flavored cider listeners. Let us know what you think it should be. We'll put a vote up on Instagram.
Alison:honestly, call it whatever the heck you want. Cause people are going to ask you what it is anyways.
Evan:Exactly. I don't know if there's a technical name. It doesn't matter. It's fun. It should be tasty.
Alison:Like if I tell somebody that I have a home-brewed apple cider, I feel like that's pretty straight forward, but no matter how straight forward it sounds, I still get, huh?
Evan:Yeah. I also, I will see people asking, is that legal?
Alison:I get that too.
Evan:Yeah, it is.
Alison:I also get people asking, oh, so are you going to make moonshine? Like if I was going to make moonshine, I would not be telling anybody about it. Cause that is not legal, but I have no plans to make moonshine at the current time.
Evan:If home distillation were legal, I would be home distilling. It is not legal. In general is not legal in the United States. It is legal in New Zealand.
Alison:It's also a key from what I understand about distilling home distilling can be somewhat volatile.
Evan:The biggest issue with home distilling and volatility comes down to open flames. So if using electric heating elements, you're fine. If you use a PID controller, you're even better, which both of us are engineers. I think we have some idea of how to
Alison:that. out.
Evan:The other thing of that is if you're using unfiltered liquid and, distilling it, it can clog the stale, which doesn't have a pressure release valve, which then explodes. So if you use a large enough, still such that you're not going to cloug your column or your, cooler. Or you put in something like cider, which has no particulate in it. You have no problems in that regard. For full disclosure before the pandemic, I was working with a local distillery in Minnesota doing tastings I really liked whiskey and distilled spirits as well as it is fermentation. You take something fermented and you separate it out. So I worked with a distillery and I talked to the head distiller and got to chatting just about all these interesting facts and it was fun and text them occasionally,
Alison:Cool future plans for, for getting an
Evan:if it's ever legal.
Alison:Yes, you know, I was talking to my mom About my home brewing. And she said, Hey, would you ever sell it? And I said, no, that's not legal. I wouldn't sell it. I wouldn't need the liquor license to do that. And she said, Hey, if you ever made something that you really, really loved and were able to replicate it pretty easily, would you ever be interested in doing that? And, you know, I think that would be kind of cool.
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:I do think that would be really cool. And like I said, Something that I added to the list of fermentations we love, is actually my mom's favorite liqour, which is called I'm definitely mispronouncing it. Echte kroatzbeere. everybody's going to tell you when they think of German brewing, the first thing their mind goes to is beer Germany. Their alcohol wise Germany is super synonymous with beer. And I think that means that some really interesting stuff kind of gets the short straw there. And Echte kroatzbeere is really one of those. It's a Blackberry look cor Again, I've only had it a few times. And I thought it was fantastic. But it is truly one of my mom's favorite things. And it's something that I plan to replicate in the near future. I mean, obviously I'm not going to get it to the same level of alcohol, but if I
Evan:I have a way that you could, not by fermenting your own or distilling your own because it is a distilled product. But this is actually something I learned from Alton brown of good eats.
Alison:Huh? What is it?
Evan:So,
Alison:is it just to add everclear?
Evan:It is effectively through infused vodka or Everclear, I've made his recipe for a allspice DRAM it's even faster if you have a But you can,
Alison:but I do have a, an express crock that I can hold at a temperature,
Evan:Yeah, that,
Alison:accurate.
Evan:that might work. But, the way to make this at home, more accurately, a Blackberry wine would be completely different. And I think would be incredible. And I really want to try that. So I'm not saying don't make Blackberry wine, but just, I want to try it.
Alison:Is. next on my list. It's going to be Blackberry mint wine, and getting the mint from my boss, I have to like he's on vacation this week. So it probably won't start up until the following week.
Evan:Yeah, well, you can start fermentation and then add the mints later and the mint will still infuse but so for our listeners at home, if they're interested in making a liquore style product looked into Alton Browns. Sous Vide liquore. He has done a few and they're all very good. It's part of his, sous vide episode, but I actually don't think I've had this, so I am interested in trying it,
Alison:It's real good. I You usually have to order it online in the states.
Evan:There's another liquor I want to talk about, a little bit later and we'll probably end up getting a whole episode on the Jewish history of, but what about the other, brew you want to really replicate?
Alison:Oh, man. I've mentioned this a bunch of times on this podcast. When I made that lemon Rosemarie Mead, the technic. I'm gonna say it metheglin
Evan:metheglin.
Alison:methiglin when I made that metheglin I was so good. Genuinely the best thing that I've made in my car, boy, so far, that's something that I'm going to make some much larger batches of in the future. Oh boy, that was, that was really a treat.
Evan:I really want to try that.
Alison:Yeah, would recommend
Evan:yeah. I believe we've included a link to that recipe in the show notes. If not, I will make sure it's in today's show notes anyway.
Alison:one other thing that we thought should be mentioned here. This is the Jewish podcast. This is an iconic Jewish brew. That's very tasty. And basically the Jewish version of like vodka, I guess. I don't know what else you'd say. Like, if you, if you meet some old Jewish folks, they will down this stuff. Like nobody's business.
Evan:So, yes, it is a plum liqueur or plum snaps. This is something I have a bit of a family history with it. But I'll also again, discuss this when, we discussed it because it deserves. A whole episode on its own, but the short I love Slivovitz. the story is that. So my grandfather, died well before I was born. So I never met him, he was part of a relatively large family. So I've got a lot of second cousins and his favorite liquor, especially during Passover, was slivovitz an I grew up in, this was a story that gets told occasionally, never saw it in the liquor store. Heard anything about it? Clearly I've inherited some genes, some genes from him. Now they have a fermentation podcast to discuss the in traits of fermented foods. But, I was traveling in 2016 in Europe and I was in Prague and I saw a bottle that says slivovitz on it. I'd never seen a bottle in the states and never seen it. And so, because it's native to Eastern Europe, especially, Czech Republic and the pale of settlement. And so I'd never actually seen it for sale. So I bought two bottles, one for myself, and one is a gift from my grandmother. Because even if she doesn't drink much, she would love just having it. And as a gift, knowing the memories. And so I bought two bottles. And when I got back from, from prod and drank it as if this stuff is delicious. I have to find it. It turns out my local liquor store.had itAnd I've almost always had a bottle on hand since, it is still a favorite of mine during Passover alone with my meads and ciders which are kosher for Passover.
Alison:Yeah.
Evan:thing of that is my grandmother brought the bottle to shul during Passover for kiddush And my, great-uncle well, so my grandfather's brothers, we're drinking and we're all loving it. And some of my parents' generation and my generation, I was not in Pittsburgh at that time, so I wasn't drinking it with them, but a lot of people thoroughly enjoyed it and the bottle was drunk in a single day.
Alison:Sounds about right. And so I'd expect.
Evan:So it for me is a great family story, and a liquor that I thoroughly enjoy and almost always have a bottle of on hand.
Alison:I've been looking for it. So I've mentioned this before I live in North Carolina, which will come up again later in this podcast. But anyways, here in North Carolina, we have, ABC stores. So all liquor stores are run through the state government.
Evan:Same here in Utah, in Pennsylvania.
Alison:Yeah, it's not uncommon. But I've been trying to find slivovitz in stores and they do not carry it in the North Carolina ABC stores. So I am going to have to get some on the internet if I want anymore.
Evan:I have not yet looked for bottle in Utah. I'm going to be looking for it in next time we go to the store
Alison:yeah, the Options. There are definitely downsides. I understand why the government wants to control alcohol sales. I'm sure it's a big moneymaker for them. but there as a consumer downsides to it, the selection isn't great. we do technically have blue laws, not officially on the books.
Evan:Texas still has official ones.
Alison:Oh. If the government owns the alcohol stores and the none of the alcohol stores are open on Sundays, even if It's not on the books, like
Evan:It's a blue law. It's a blue law. Have I told you the story of, when I tried to buy ginger beer before noon on a Sunday in Texas.
Alison:Ginger Beer. Doesn't have alcohol in it.
Evan:Correct with the, cashier insisted it was a beer and wine product. I had to wait two minutes till it was noon,
Alison:Are you serious?
Evan:dead serious. I wasn't even 21 at the time.
Alison:Oh my God. It's not an alcohol product. What is she going to tell you to wait on root beer too?
Evan:I don't know, but they made me wait two minutes until I could check out because it was 1158.
Alison:That is hilarious. And like feels very Texas. Also the fact that they apparently didn't ID you for this.
Evan:They didn't ID me because not an alcoholic. It was soda.
Alison:I don't understand a lot of
Evan:It was my self who's 20. And my sister
Alison:oh man, Texas.
Evan:Yeah. There are a lot of weird liquor laws around the country. I don't think we'll do an episode on that, but we might.
Alison:Yeah. there is some things that I've noticed in the different states I've lived in. I remember just getting alcohol from like the corner grocery store in Illinois. New York has wines and spirits stores. So they specifically sell wines and spirits in the specialty stores. And then beer, you can get.
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:At any store and then in Florida, and I guess, well, Florida, you can buy wine and beer in a regular store and then anything stronger than that, spirits have to be in a separate store. But basically if you go to a Costco or whatever, they'll sell the beer and wine in the main Costco, and then you go outside and you go into another door. Target does this to everyone just does it this way. Publix does this. You go into that. A separate room. That's still in the same building. It's still attached to the same store, but it'll be like Publix liquors or Costco liquors. And it's right there. I mean, you've walked 10 feet.
Evan:Yeah, no, exactly. Michigan has, is sort of was similar kind of in between. You had to get spirits from a separate store, but wine and beer to be at the grocery, Minnesota actually is the last state with three, two. So you can only buy beer up to 3.2% in grocery stores. Everything else has to be at a liquor store, a Utah state controlled liquor, but you can buy, I think up 3.2% by weights, which is about 4% by volume in grocery stores. Texas has blue laws. So they either have a separate room or metal shutters on the alcohol that they can close for before noon on a Sunday.
Alison:Huh. Weird. It's weird.
Evan:Yeah, but you can buy, if I remember you can buy vodka in the grocery store.
Alison:Very weird.
Evan:It's very, very Texan.
Alison:I guess we should go back to, list of favorite brews things we want to do again. You've got a couple of interesting things on this list. Blegen blue gain cider.
Evan:My misspelling of Belgian.
Alison:Oh, okay. Makes more sense. I thought this was some kind of mashup that I hadn't heard of before.
Evan:No. So this is a cider I made, two years ago now, most cider you don't boil or simmer concentrate your juice at all, unless you're doing an ice cider. In which case you freeze it to concentrate it. So what I did instead was I. My first batch was six gallon, so I took sits out or three down, so it just sits gallons of cider and simmered it down to three gallons of cider doubling my sugar content and making my apartment's smell. Incredible.
Alison:Sounds delicious.
Evan:This was fresh from the farmer's market cider, so it was good. And then I used a Belgian, triple yeasyso Belgian ales frequently can be very strong. You've got to, doubals which I have twice as much grain as normal triples and quads, which have three and four times as much, grain as a normal beer. And so I just used one of the, yeasts from them, Belgium beers frequently have a lot of fruity character from the. So adding like some banana notes and cherry from the yeast into the cider was delicious.
Alison:Sounds like a fun thing to make.
Evan:I tried to make it again last year. It stalled. And so it's very sweet. It still has some of those characters, but the first year was dry, incredibly flavorful and very carbonated last year was sweet and flats, but it's still very tasty.
Alison:Well, you got another year.
Evan:Got another year. It's something I'm gonna to probably make every year during apple season.
Alison:Yeah. Skip ahead a little bit to, you mentioned a apple season. something else that's coming up. I mentioned earlier that I live in North Carolina, and in North Carolina we have a state fruit, which I may or may not be pronouncing it wrong, but it's called a scupper. Nong. which is a type of Muscatine,
Evan:Yeah, I would, I don't know how else you would pronounce it. That sounds about right.
Alison:seems right. to me, but a scupper Nong is a type of Muscatine and a Muscatine is a type of grape that is native to the Carolina area. So given I live in the land of Muscatine's and Scuppernogs something that I intend to do in the fall is make scupper non wine. You have wine out of, I don't know, all sorts of different grapes.
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:have wine? All sorts of different names and grapes, but I've never heard of Muscatine wine. I've never heard of scupper. I don't know what they taste like. I know they're mostly eating grapes, but I feel like it could be really tasty.
Evan:it could be stubborn on they're quite large or they're not.
Alison:Yeah. Or like the large variety of Muscatine.
Evan:So, this is me going into my limited amount of stuff. That's kind of trivia knowledge kind of useful fermentation. There's a lot of that on this show. If people haven't noticed, both of us do competitive trivia. But most wine grapes are smaller because their juice is more concentrated. So eating grapes are larger because it's more convenient to eat a larger fruit.
Alison:Yeah, it's possible. I may end up with something. Evan would define more as a grape cider.
Evan:Well, because it's coming from a grape, I would call it a wine regardless. So you may have a low alcohol wine, but you'll just have to smush them and measure.
Alison:Yeah. I don't know if I mentioned this previously, but while making this batch of apple cider, the one that I'm drinking right now, I broke my hydrometer.
Evan:You've told me you've not told the podcast.
Alison:Well, hello podcast. I broke my hydrometer. But I just got a new toy that I'm very excited to try out. It is a refractometer. So once I get the next brew going and I get to try it out, I will give some reviews on how that goes. But. basically another way of just measuring the same thing. so TBD.
Evan:it uses light and prisms if I remember using something very similar in high school chemistry for that was more than a decade ago though. So. We're coming up on a decade. Since SciTech it's this month?
Alison:Yeah. That's wild. That's super, super wild
Evan:that's yeah, we met at SciTech
Alison:for Sci-Tech is a program for late high school and some early college, depending on what country you're from, teenagers, at the Technion Institute in Israel. And Yeah, Evan and I met there. We were both doing engineering related, projects. So I was working on industrial robotics and with a side note for educational methods in technology.
Evan:my project there was on, Artificial leg replication. So movement, how building robotic legs that walks like humans, which is kind of funny, but I've worked with Legos to build a leg that work walks like a person. And it's kind of funny because one of the research labs I applied to for PhDs funding didn't happen this year. But one of the research labs I applied to works in that field. Hadn't thought about it for nine years before it's in the field.
Alison:Comes full circle.
Evan:Well circle and that's actually at the university of Utah, so
Alison:Well,
Evan:yeah, yeah, exactly. We've worked down there in the day, ski in the afternoon.
Alison:Yup. My project was on, basically training industrial robot X training, industrial robots to build assembly lines. And also, part of that was we were, we were making these little cubes that had to be oriented properly. And it was all about, the side project into education was about training, remote robotic operators about, the spatial abilities, how to orient yourself properly in space and how to properly deal with robotic controls, using appropriate orientation.
Evan:I will say that I believe SciTechs still join. I have not looked to see if it is, but if you are, I'll say if you're a parent of a high school or interested in stem look into it, it was a very fun for both of us. If you were a high schooler interested in stem, what are you doing? Listening to this podcast?
Alison:I mean, I guess there are technically some 18 year olds who could live in Quebec
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:could be in high school, but that's a stretch.
Evan:Th that is, one of our many tangents, of course though.
Alison:Reminder, please drink responsibly.
Evan:of course police drink responsibly. And that should be at the end of every episode, included, in the.outro. But please drink responsibly.
Alison:this is just a regular mantra of ours on this podcast. It's just going to keep showing up.
Evan:Yeah, it always bears repeating.
Alison:Follow your local laws and please drinkresponsably
Evan:Sort of related to a Skeppernog wine. One thing I unfortunately, was not able to make towards the end of my time in Minnesota, but I'm trying to convince some friends to make. And if they're listening, Adam and Danielle, I'm still going to say you should make this. But just they're the ones who told me these were properly edible fruit is Mulberry wine. So mulberries are a tree, actually a proper tree.
Alison:So I did hear about Mulberry. Like I was at the local farmer's market a couple of weeks ago, and somebody had like, Some sort of like Mulberry elixir type thing. And I looked at it thinking, oh, this could, if this is Mulberry could be interesting to ferment. And then I found out that it's some sort of herbal remedy. It was not something that I could ferment,
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:but I did come across it recently.
Evan:That is interesting, but so at least in Minnesota, especially the neighborhoods I was in and where my friends live there, tons of Mulberry trees, and a lot of people just let the fruit fall. So occasionally, like the last few weeks as a Minnesota, I would just walk around the neighborhood, see these blue splatters on the sidewalk and look up and know there was a Mulberry tree right there and just reach up and grab a bunch of the fruit and snacks.
Alison:Adam and Danielle, I don't know you, but you should make some sort of liquor out of this. Please, please. If you want a taste test or hi, I'm available. I don't know you, but I'm available.
Evan:Absolutely. I will, we made sure that, they know that, but they also introduced me a service barriers, which are also in this June, berries are or saskatchuan bear. and they are, tarter, but also to make it very interesting, products, but I was not able to ferment either of those in my time in Minnesota,
Alison:Adam and Danielle get on it.
Evan:if they, they definitely need to, I gifted them, some of my extra home brewing equipment that it didn't make sense for me to pack. So they have, some basic stuff.
Alison:That's awesome. Yeah. So something that I've learned about homebrewing, I think this is generally true of people who are. Crafters or just have some sort of hobbies, similar to homebrewing, where it's you end up with a final product? That pomegranate me and I made, a couple months ago. I am swapping a bottle of that with a local hobbyist woodworker who manage to acquire some Walnut wood, like good. Walnut that some way it was just getting rid of. So I am swapping him a bottle of my pomegranate Mead for some nice Walnut cutting boards.
Evan:Oh, yeah, you're winning that deal in my opinion.
Alison:You have not seen the quantity. He got this like very strangely cut up wood for free from some lady who is just trying to get rid of it. Good quality of Walnut. She have gotten less. 20 grand for that tree, but she just said on Facebook marketplace, Hey, I want to get rid of this. Somebody pick it up, she cut it up into these like kind of funky shapes into like firewood he shapes. So there's a limit to just how much he can do with it.
Evan:Yeah.
Alison:But Yeah.
Evan:Yeah. So walnuts, I don't know if walnuts are fermentable the wood. Definitely isn't. But there is a huge history, as we've talked about a little before of fermentation worldwide, and you found this, found this incredible article.
Alison:Yeah. you hear Evan and I talking about our local fruits about things that we want to ferment here, but like I've mentioned my yogurts and cheeses. We've talked about breads. We've mentioned that we are at some point going to talk about meats and pickling other veggies, but fermentation is truly call it a global phenomenon. Historically. Every culture has their own types of fermented food products. It's really a staple in so many ways of So, many different cultural foods and in ways that we don't often think about, I think I've mentioned this before. I don't really meet, if you are a vegetarian or you've just had this before, Tempe, which is originally Indonesian it's a staple in Indonesian food and, that's a fermented bean curd or a fermented tofu. You've got soy sauce, which I know they make fast versions now, but good soy sauce from Japan or Korea or China is a fermented product. Miso.
Evan:yeah, absolutely. And the reason many, soy sauces are not gluten free is that they use a starter that has some grain in it. That's why, so I saw a lot of food. Soy sauces are not gluten free for anyone who happens to have celiacs.
Alison:Yeah. It's also common, in a lot of cultures. Priya Krishna has talked about this in a bunch of videos of hers that I've seen, but it's kind of a common thing worldwide that, you know, a starter gets passed down. And here in the states, you hear about people getting some of the sourdough starter, especially recently. And yes, that is one thing that you can pass down, but you can pass down your cultures. You can pass down, All sorts of different starters. I've heard of soy sauces used as starters, all sorts of different things, vinegars, which is, I mean, but everybody's got a different type of vinegar. Vinegar has got a mother.
Evan:there are some incredible stories in my, at least incredible in my opinion about how vinegar gets made in Italy and what gets passed down, things that are included as the entirety of a dowery for a vinegar aging barrel sets can be an entire dowery in traditional parts of italy.
Alison:Those things can be expensive, but in a culture, in a world pre refrigeration, fermentation is your best way of getting any food to last. If you've heard of say hundred year eggs, it's, you know, it's not everybody's thing. I've actually never had one, but they look fascinating. It's a way of preserving something that you don't have all year. We live in a place where we were lucky enough to have milk and eggs year round. But the fact of the matter is that most of the time in a natural environment or in a less forced environment, cows and chickens will only be producing eggs and milk during the springtime and into the summertime. It's not something that happens year round. So you preserve. And as a result, people find ways of preserving things. You don't have vegetables all year round, so you make pickles. You don't have dairy all year round. You make cheeses, you make, kimchi, super, super common. If you've ever had Korean food, you are familiar with kimchi.
Evan:And then of course, sauerkraut, which does have a much more closer related history to Judaism, or to Jewish culture because they're Eastern Europe and Germany. But kimchi is delicious. I love it.
Alison:Yeah, but there's so many things that we don't think about in our everyday lives going, oh, this is a fermented product. And again, when Evan and I were talking about. Making, an episode about fermented products. We love, I wouldn't, well, I feel like I should, you mentioned the soy sauce and being like, I shouldn't mention tempe and I personally hate olives. Yeah. Love olive oil, hate olives. But the olives that you get here in the states, most commonly are going to be pickled. Like you may not think of them that way, but they are, or I love pickled artichokes. I love, love, love of pickled artichoke. And I
Evan:I'm also not a huge fan of olives. The best olives I've had were fried. It was a restaurant near me in Minneapolis, that did fried chickpeas and olives.
Alison:Ooh, fried chickpeas, these are delicious. I do love those.
Evan:Yeah, so they just tossed a olives in. When we were originally thinking of starting the podcast, I was thinking of, well, the seven traditional species aren't they all ferment. There's no olives. Aren't this? Wait, no olives are pickles. They're definitely fermented. They're normally fermented. Most people eat olives fermented
Alison:Yeah. I, I mean, again, I love olive oil. I hate olives. I don't think I've ever tried to eat an olive fresh. I don't even know if that's a thing people really do.
Evan:Yeah, I'm honestly not sure. And also you talked about Walnut wood earlier. All of what is incredibly beautiful as well. But another thing kind of related to, soy sauce. That's fermented that a lot of people may not be as oh, your width, but if you've done a lot of, Asian cooking, especially south east Asia, or you might be familiar with fish sauce, which is well, fermented foods.
Alison:Yeah.
Evan:Interestingly, there's a huge history that has kind of fallen by the wayside, but there's a history of what was referred to as garum not related at all to Garam Marsala, the Indian spice blend, but garum was a ancient Roman, fermented fish. It's basically fish sauce.
Alison:Oh, I've heard of this where they basically just dumped it on all of their food ever.
Evan:yeah, so it was used like many Americans use. And interestingly, but
Alison:as somebody who doesn't eat
Evan:interestingly, like catch up to, catch up effectively developed from katsup, which is another east Asian food that includes fish sauce is a sauce with fish sauce in it, developed
Alison:goes around and around.
Evan:goes around and around, but, so garum was a very common fermented food in ancient Rome. And of course the Roman empire, played a little part, just a little part in Jewish history.
Alison:I don't know if I've said this before on this podcast, but it's definitely something that I've said to my family, to my friends on about a lot of things, but food history is world history
Evan:Oh yeah.
Alison:and fermentation history is I feel like. Something that really needs to get like a big, big gold star on the side of that. When you talk about like, again, the invention of the refrigerator changed the world beyond recognition like that, it was a massive turning point in human history. And we don't talk about that often enough.
Evan:No, not at
Alison:don't.
Evan:you can predated a little bit by talking about the commercial icebox, but that's mostly north America, and re and commercial refrigeration is a huge thing, and really needs to be talked about more. And we'd love to have a food historian on, to discuss all of these things. But the, I mean the two ways to save things where to ferment them or dry them.that was itYeah, until refrigeration.
Alison:which I don't know if that's something we want to do an episode about. I have made jerky before I have discovered that I don't particularly like jerky. again, this was mostly before I slowed on the meat. I have also made tofu jerkey, but that didn't work as well.
Evan:My dad makes it, but so you've got jerkies you've dried spices.
Alison:Yeah.
Evan:Have been huge
Alison:Also a good way to one of the good things about spices historically, was it covered? Bed tastes salt. Salt as a method of preservation. So many wars have been fought over spices and over a salt. And again, this all wraps up into the history of food. Food. History is world history. When you talk about, The east India company invading place. They really, they were invaders and they came up to places and they said, Hey, we want all your spices. This is how the Western world expanded. And it was all on the basis of food additives. What can we do to preserve our food?
Evan:Absolutely. Which is a huge, our history. And even the term salary comes from ancient Rome with the, term for the Roman militaries, salt ration, which was a major part of your pay.
Alison:One other thing that I feel like is just really important to add. This is definitely something that people rarely think of as a fermented product, but a part of the chocolate making process is fermentation.
Evan:Absolutely.
Alison:of the stages before it gets to becoming chocolate, it is considered the biggest part of flavor development. there's a lot that you can read up. I have an article, to go in the show notes about flavor development and fermentation in chocolate, but chocolate is a fermented product. Chocolate is a product that was. Casually, taken from central America. I think was that, was that
Evan:it's no, I don't. I think it was after Cortez, but it was, Spanish.
Alison:Yes, it was, the Spanish.
Evan:it was the Spanish, from. Mostly what is now Mexico. But just that it's where it's native to though chocolate course is now grown all over the tropics in the world. Although fermentation is a big part of it. One of my favorite meads, if I can get my hands on the yeast again, I will be making was actually a yeast derived from chocolate. So they cultured the yeast from the chocolate fermentation and sold it. And I made a mead with it.
Alison:wild.
Evan:And it has this incredible flavors. You can't really put a name to any of them, but it's got these incredible complex flavors for what is just honey water and yeast and some use nutrient, the only bottle. It seems so far that I've lost in moving. Unfortunately it was one of my few bottles of that.
Alison:Sorry.
Evan:Yeah. No, it, it expanded in a cork blue out
Alison:Oh,
Evan:It happened. a risk of home brewing, but it Was surrounded a bunch of towels. So some towels got wet. That was that.
Alison:that's good. I don't know if I have to move again soon. I do not. I would not be fun to figure out you've got a lot more than I do.
Evan:I'll tell you what to do if you need to
Alison:I might, I might get some advice on that
Evan:moving's horrible moving is, the worst.
Alison:Yeah, we'll get there when we get
Evan:Yeah. Were there other fermented products we wanted to discuss?
Alison:There are thousands upon thousands of different fermented products that we could talk about. We are going to drop that article that I found in the show notes, and it really breaks down different types of fermentation into different categories. It talks about dairies, meats, vegetables, grains, all of them broken down. Really interesting read would strongly recommend, but we're going to get into those topics. More in future podcasts. And also there are some cool lists of fermented products from around the world that most of which I've never had or heard of, but really fascinated by it and, things that I am definitely gonna look into checking out in the future.
Evan:There are a few things I've had on here and I've heard of others I've heard of, and haven't had plenty. I haven't heard of you sent it basically right before we started recording. So I really want to
Alison:I was reading it.
Evan:No, I understand that. I want to read the rest of this article. I haven't had the chance. It is really interesting.
Alison:So strong recommendation. There's any particular item that you're an expert in, or again, we're not experts, if there's any particular item that you have any sort of familiarity with or would like us to do more research about and talk about in the future, let us know. That would be really cool.
Evan:we definitely want to know. And if you have any questions about anything we've talked about or general fermentation, we'd love to do Q and a, you can reach us, for us on Instagram. Or if, you know, either of us personally, let us know what your questions are
Alison:Yeah.
Evan:there. We've had 13 people download the last episode. This is fun. We're going to keep doing it for
Alison:Yeah, we're doing this for fun. If people listen to it. Great. If not, I'm having a great time having a chat with my friend.
Evan:exactly. But of course, if you've enjoyed, if
Alison:Okay.
Evan:I know you're enjoying this, if you're the listener enjoying this, please share it. But with that said, I don't think we have anything else for today. So I hope everyone enjoys. And, please again, please drink responsibly. And we will hope we hope you all will listen again in two weeks we still need a sign off.
Alison:We still need a sign off.
Evan:Happy fermenting, cheers.