Hot Fermented Carrots
I’ve been enjoying my hot fermented carrots for a couple weeks now and will soon be making another batch. Well, actually the next batch will be different, as I’m going to try different flavors than this batch because it ended up being a bit hot for Madame and way too hot for my Young Assistants. However, I’ve enjoyed adding the spicy tangy carrots to different meals so maybe the next round should feature one jar of super-hot ones, and jar of not-hot ones. The options are pretty endless in terms of the herbs and spices you can add to a simple jar of fermenting carrots.
Okay, so those carrots were photographed last summer… these days carrots don’t look quite so lively, but it’s nice to remember what summer looks like….
The process is fairly straight forward: Peel and cut up carrots, place them in a wide-mouth pint jar, filled to about 1 inch from the top. Make a salt water brine with 2 cups hot water and 1 ½ teaspoons salt. Add desired spices, herbs, seasonings. Allow the brine to cool close to room temperature, dump it around the carrots. Cover the carrots with a cabbage leaf and weigh everything in the jar down with a small canning jar filled with water. Cover with a towel or plastic bag and let ferment for 1-2 weeks.
You can see the clove of garlic and the cabbage leaf floating amongst the carrots. Eventually you can remove the cabbage leaf, it just helps get the fermentation going and can also act as something to help hold the fermenting vegetables down.
Notice that the brine is a bit too close to the top; leave a bit more space as fermentation can cause the brine to overflow a bit.
Read my original, more thorough post at Bailey’s Local Foods. Guidance for making these fermented carrots came from Food Renegade and Well Preserved.