Beef brisket in a vacuum bag with whole spices and Morton Tender Quick.
Corned beef braising with a bag of whole spices and an extra rib bone.
Corned beef, cooked and sliced on a wood cutting board dappled by sunlight from the window.
Corned beef is a day late but honestly St Patrick's day is just an excuse to corn some beef. I should make it more often.
Happy world fermentation day to all who celebrate!
A history of civilization is a history of pickles, and fermentation! Or how the lactobacillales domesticated humankind...
Without fermentation we wouldn't have beer, wine, cheese, miso, kimchi etc.
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In 2020 it was sourdough and empty flour shelves, this year everyone will be making kimchi I assume.
Breakfast sandwich made of steamed egg, cheese, bacon, and sauce on an English muffin sitting open-faced next to home fried potatoes.
All Sundays should begin with this:
Sliced beets and chilies in a vacuum bag.
Are beets any good in hot sauce? We'll find out!
Sounds like something I need to try, thanks!
This banger about pickled beets never took off on Instagram but I'm very proud of it. It's one of the last short videos I made before the hiatus.
#preservation
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Bottle of hot sauce labelled "Sampson's" in front of larger full containers. A green chili and an origami dog sit in front.
An old Chihuahua looks up from behind a raised bed full of freshly planted chili seedlings. A bigger blond dog looks on from behind the garden fence.
This sauce is dedicated to Sampson, who always helped me start my seeds and plant the seedlings, including the ones used for this sauce. I miss my little helper.
Bottle of hot sauce labelled "Sampson's" in front of larger full containers. A green chili and an origami dog sit in front.
An old Chihuahua looks up from behind a raised bed full of freshly planted chili seedlings. A bigger blond dog looks on from behind the garden fence.
This sauce is dedicated to Sampson, who always helped me start my seeds and plant the seedlings, including the ones used for this sauce. I miss my little helper.
A drop of sauce held up on a small white plate to check it's viscosity.
The combined consistency is perfect. I do add a bit of xanthan gum to keep things homogenized, but not enough to really affect the texture. Also since xanthan gum is hard to blend smooth in water but mixes easily with oil, I use this opportunity to use very flavorful black truffle oil.
Various bowls with sauce and solids.
The combined sauce almost fills my largest bowl up to the 4 quart line.
Each part has a different consistency. Fermented and smoked chili sauce is thick and luscious, fresh sauce is thin.
Altogether I made 4 quarts of hot sauce. This is about double my previous record of 2L. I do have a dedicated chili garden bed now, so...
I have reserved the solids for another use.
Food mill has very little solids left after passing the deseeded smoked chilies through.
With these I removed as many of the seeds as I could and the difference was striking. Almost no solids remained after milling. The seeds leave space for the good stuff to hide within.
Dried chilies simmering in a pot.
The smokey chilies blended into a lovely orange color.
The smoked and dried chilies were rehydrated in an amount of barely simmering water based on the weight they lost. Left this longer than I meant to and had to add more water before blending. Salt and vinegar were also added.
Fermented chili mash in a blender.
After bending it looks deceptively smooth.
Pushing through a strainer. There is still a ton of wet solids.
Introducing yet another variable, I decided to go straight to the blender this year. Previously I've used (and almost broken) a food mill attachment for my stand mixer. I do think starting in the blender is the way to go, but straining was difficult and I ended up using my hand mill.
It was a long day and posting progress updates would have made it longer, so I'll summarize after the fact.
First batch in August was fermented, September smoked/dried, and October added fresh.
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A large basket of variously shaped ripe chilies next to a bowl of dried chilies and a long sealed bag, slightly puffy, filled with chili mash and labelled "hot sauce".
Got enough ripe chilies plus some stored in the freezer to finish the main #HotSauce this year, along with smoked and dried chilies from September and vacuum bag #fermented mash from August. Just need to put it all together.
Cory selfie in a white dress shit with a tiny grey mushroom pattern, black tie, and two pins: moyashimon and stars in a mason jar.
Jeremy Umansky's mushroom koji tempeh dish.
The Koji Dinner was amazing! Didn't take many photos, too busy eating. Wore my mushroom shirt!
Pan about 25% full of smooth tomato sauce.
Same pan after dehydrating, the paste has been scraped into a big lump in the center.
Yesterday I spent the day near the kitchen with my laptop while I slowly dehydrated the sauce at 225°F (convection). Managed to reduce the weight by about half in a little over 4 hours. It's in the freezer while I figure out next steps.
Same pot, now half full of what looks like tomato sauce with a lot of skins in it.
Cooked for 7 hours until significantly reduced, probably by about 1/3. Just milled it to remove skin and seeds and ended up with a bit less than 2 quarts of puree. I'm tuckered out so I put it in the fridge for the night, I'll need to reduce this further, probably in a sheet pan in the oven all day.
A 4 quart pot full to the brim with tomatoes, orange cherries on top.
Managed to fit them all in the pot, it was pretty close. 😅
An array of tomatoes spread onto a countertop, many still on the vine. There are a few beefsteaks in the top left and a bowl of orange cherries center left, the rest are paste tomatoes.
I once again have more tomatoes than I can eat, so this is all getting cooked down and milled today. Since I recently did ketchup with fermented tomatoes I might dry this into paste and ferment that as a comparison.
There was no 2024 hot sauce 😥 but I've been thinking about it until I finally got some in the garden this year. I've simplified the process: ferment a batch, smoke and dry a batch, and when I'm ready, I'll combine the 3. This simplifies the timeline and means I can do the smoking in cooler weather.
That year was also when I realized I could add fresh chilies, more out of necessity than anything because it was *too smoky*. I have a draft for 2023's Firefruit Elixir I never finished writing, but the gist is that I fermented 1pt with 1pt reconstituted smoked, then blended with 1pt fresh+vinegar.
In 2022 I experimented with different concentrations of smoked chilies in the sauce. This was the first time I reconstituted them before fermenting, and I did a ferment of only smoked chilies. That batch was super acrid, I don't recommend it.
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I first experimented with smoking chilies in 2021 for hot sauce by adding them directly to the the bulk ferment. I knew I still had some tweaking to do but I haven't skipped smoking chilies since.
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Photo of a bottle of deep red hot sauce. The hand-written label reads "Firefruit Embers, 2022–2023".
Last of my 2022 (Ash & Ember) and 2023 (Firefruit Elixir) hot sauce reserves from before the move. This summer I've been working on the next batch since the hiatus, feels good.
#fermentation
Koji Dinner happening in Chicago at Charlie Trotter's on Sept 28! Jeremy Umansky himself will be participating.
I convinced my boss to do a double date and expense it! 😆
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On this #MisoDay, I am remembering a chocolate wedding cake miso I made for the lucky couple and gifted to them on their first anniversary.
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Summer honey sun
Trapped in amber on the vine
Burst with fleeting joy
📒Fermented Cherry Tomato Ketchup
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Ordered some fries because I couldn't wait to try it, did a side-by-side with a standard ketchup. Very bright and flavorful by comparison.