Fermenting: How to Ferment Vegetables Paperback – August 13, 2013

I am about 1/3 way through the book and the author has a HUGE BLIND SPOT. He keeps going over how important it is to submerge the vegetables.Yes mold can form on vegetables that float to the surface and become dry on one side.The author blind spot is not understanding that when the ferment bubbles that is carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide weighs 50% MORE than oxygen. And pushes any oxygen up and out of the crock or jarOnce the ferment is bubbling shortly the empty airspace will be replaced with CO2 and the empty airspace will be a fully anaerobic environment.There are several options to prevent moldIf you don’t have weights to hold the fill a plastic bag with water to use as a weight.Remove the lid daily and use a clean spoon or fork to push the vegetables back under the water every day.Also Amazon has some fermentation lids that fit large mouth mason jars and comes with a vacuum pump to get as much air as possible to prevent moldWhen the ferment starts bubbling the oxygen will be pushed out of the fermentation container by the carbon dioxide.

If you are not already familiar with fermenting, or if you just want to have a lot of your information on fermenting in one place, this is a good book for you. The book explains the difference between fermenting and pickling and why fermenting is actually the preferred approach to food preservation.Fermenting is a form of food preservation that works using lacto-bacillus. Two kinds of bacteria are all around us and even inside us. One kind is pathogenic, meaning it will make you sick or even kill you (think botulism). The other kind, however, not only live in our guts, they are actually helpful in digestion and in fending off the pathogens. These bacteria are referred to as pro-biotic. The advantage of lacto-fermentation is that it creates an environment in which it is hard or impossible for pathogens to grow, while at the same time using pro-biotics to preserve the food.I would have given this book five stars had it been better laid out for kindle. Some of the chapters and chapter divisions break at funny places on my phone app. That is not serious enough to lower the rating to three starts, but it does keep it from getting all five stars.The book contains numerous excellent recipes that give you not only a list of ingredients, but also step by step instructions on how to combine the ingredients and ferment the veggies.

I love fermented foods but have not made a lot of them from scratch to date. In spite of being an avid cook and cookbook author, it's something I always thought was too much work and not really worth the effort. But after reading: Fermenting: How to Ferment Vegetables, I'm ready to give it a go!Author Rashelle Johnson has done a great job explaining how to go about the process of home fermenting vegetables in an easy to understand and straightforward way. She has included an extensive (very!) Q and A section that I found most helpful in addition to the many recipes.This is a lot more than just a how to guide for the basics like sauerkraut and pickles. There are recipes for a variety of fermented veggies including some of my favs like: beets, kohlrabi, carrots and zucchini...and all of them sound so yummy!I need to get a good size crock to work with then I'm going to give this collection a good kitchen workout. ;-)Only one question I could not find the answer to, perhaps I missed it. I would still like to know if the actual crock used to hold the foods needs to be sterilized before use, as is the case with making pickles etc, with regular pickling methods? If the author could answer this, that would be great.Geraldine Helen Hartman author of The Groovy Green Kitchen and Not Just for Vegetarians.

This is the perfect book for anyone starting out fermenting vegetables. It has good quality information. That’s easy to understand. I highly recommend this little book.

I am a certified food preserver. When I was taking my classes to become certified we did not cover anything on fermenting even though it is among the oldest method. We did get assigned to try sauerkraut in a quart jar. Mine always failed and turned pink. My books and and instructor never figured out why. Even though this was many years ago I think I now have figured out why. As soon as the garden starts to produce I will be ready to try many of the recipes. I have all winter to start to acquire a fermenting lock or crock and drool over these recipes. I was reading some of the recipes while in the car. My husband and I decided that we have to try ketchup. There are recipes in this book that I did not associate with fermenting. Now I can call them by their proper name. One of the recipes for mushrooms threw me. All of a sudden it is talking about green beans. The proof reading missed this mistake.

this guy...or....gal apparently, is opinionated, as are all fermenting book authors, each book basically leads you to believe others are wrong, but such is the fermenting world, no one agrees on much.this is a" buy more expensive jars and air-lock everything, throw out at first sign of anything uncomfortable at all" type of fermentation book

This book gives detailed instructions for the novice on how to ferment vegetables. It describes the fermentation process, the steps require to get the process going, and why each step is important to the process.There is a bit of redundancy in the different chapters of the book. You will never forget that 1-3 t of salt per quart of water is required to make brine, and that any more salt will cause fermentation to "grind to a halt." This information is repeated at least 5 different times. But redundant info would be helpful for the novice who is skimming or Skipping chapters.The recipes are diverse. I wish there was an attempt to describe the flavors of each fermented recipe to help me decide which ones to try.The recipes don't specify what size container you need to ferment them in.