Fermenting your food helps to infuse them with beneficial probiotics, so important for health and well-being! This one is another great recipe from Scott of Zukay Foods that I hope to try soon with the fresh beans from our garden this summer. Honestly I’ve never had them before, but knowing about Scott and tasting his other cultured foods, this one has to be pretty good too.
Cultured Italian Green Beans
Ingredients
- ¾ – 1 lb fresh green beans or wax beans
- 1-2 cloves garlic
- ½ tsp dry oregano
- ½ tsp dry basil
- ½ tsp dry thyme
- 2 tsp sea salt
- culture*
- Luke warm water as needed, preferably non-chlorinated
- 1 qt. mason jar
Instructions
- Chop up green beans into 1 inch long pieces and place in bowl. Mince garlic cloves and add minced garlic and spices with green beans in bowl. Mix well.
- Place vegetable mixture into 1 qt. mason jar, pushing down on veggies to get as much in as possible. Add salt and culture. Add enough lukewarm water to jar to bring level about ½ – 1 in below top of jar. Put lid on jar, and shake jar to evenly disperse culture and salt. Place in a warm (70 – 80F) place out of direct sunlight, and allow to sit for at least 3 days, and up to 14 days. Once fully fermented, refrigerate.
Notes
1. You should place jar in a dish to catch leaking water, as the pressure in the jar can make the jar leak
2. Make sure the contents get fizzy. If they do not get fizzy, discard the contents, as that is a sign that the lactobacilli did not properly ferment the vegetables and pathogens may have been able to take hold
*I (Scott) put 1 packet of yo’Kefir culture into 1 quart of non-chlorinated water. Add 1 cup of this mixture in place of dry culture and water.
2. Make sure the contents get fizzy. If they do not get fizzy, discard the contents, as that is a sign that the lactobacilli did not properly ferment the vegetables and pathogens may have been able to take hold
*I (Scott) put 1 packet of yo’Kefir culture into 1 quart of non-chlorinated water. Add 1 cup of this mixture in place of dry culture and water.
Donielle Baker
owner and editor of Natural Fertility and Wellness at Natural Fertility and Wellness
I believe women can learn how to heal their bodies & balance their hormones through natural methods. An advocate for natural health, I have a passion for nourishing/real food nutrition and natural living. My personal background includes both infertility and miscarriage and I started Natural Fertility and Wellness in 2008 in order to share all of the information I found helpful in my journey to heal from PCOS and overcome infertility.
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Fermented Root Slaw
sounds easy enough..gonna have to try this when the green beans from the garden grow 🙂 wonder if it’s possible to use dairy kefier instead of the powdered stuff?
@Heather, Heather, I’ve been wondering the same thing! Scott……???
Hey there! Scott from Zukay here. The culture I speak of (Yo’Kefir) is just a culture – it has only a tiny, tiny bit of dairy in it. If you use actual kefir, the milk solids can very easily give the ferment an off-flavor.The same would go for the whey you take off of store-bought yogurt (unless you drain well using a cheesecloth). If I’m mistaken on your question and you mean the kefir grains, they may work, but I have never done a vegetable fermentation with kefir grains. I believe there’s more to a kefir grian than just bacteria (there may also be yeasts and such, like a kombucha mother, though I’m not sure), so honestly, I have no idea. If you have extra kefir grains, it couldn’t hurt to try –
Hope that helps!
@Scott, Thanks Scott!
This sounds really good. i’ve heard you can ferment salsa etc with water kefir grains, so I will probably give that a shot!