Rather than table salt? What is a good length of time to allow fermentation before eating? Ive read anything from 1 to 6 weeks. What is a good average time?

I made sauerkraut without using any type of salt, just cabbage and clean water.
I let the chopped cabbage covered in water in a jar and with a weight on at the room temperature for like 2-3 days, then in the fridge with the lid on for like 6-7 days. It turned out perfect and delicious, salt-free.
I ate it with either tomatoes or dill, for that natural slightly salty taste.

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Raw vegan for life. Vegan for the animals. Raw for my health.

Here is an interesting old Post by Lois who emailed Victoras Kulvinskas about the use of salt where he says there is no need for salt if done in 7 days followed by my notes from an interview between Dr. Mercola and Caroline Barringer where she uses Celery Juice instead of salt:

[www.rawfoodsupport.com]
Re: fermented foods - yumm!
Author: Lois
Date: 04-29-03 03:18

Well, I learned a lot in the last couple days about making Cultured Vegetables (fermenting). I emailed Victoras Kulvinskas and he told me this:
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Fermentation is what bacteria love to do. Most traditional approach had a very long process. They did not understand the fermentation. So salt was needed to prevent pathogen - molds ... If done in 7 days, all is safe. If done in 3 days, it is even safer.
I have fermented over 25 years and never used salt and never had a batch to throw away. If it is bad - it will smell like fecal matter (bad one = healthy fecal, also smells good, since it is made up by over 60% of friendly bacteria by weight).

In my book Lover's Diet" - I have folks cut up the cabbage, so it is in block, size of the opening, a tower. And push them through the juicer hole. Mix pulp and juice, place in glass container, cover with cabbage leaf and keep at temperatures between 60 and 90 deg F. By shredding fine, you will have the ferment ready in 3 days or less. If you want to have it chewier, chop /cut real thin, cabbage - red and green; thin sliced carrots, cranberry (really nice), cauliflower, thin sliver of ginger, green and red pepper ... mix into the pulp/juice.

After done, refrigerate - will keep for months. If not refrigerate (and in the old days - there were no refrigeration, hence they put salt in for prevented it from going bad.)
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Avo, thanks for the info and the links. I just put in an order with the Rejuvenative people for their Kim Chi. The Rejuvenative Foods Article I had read (and BTW, they are one souce that says "UNSALTED" Cultured Vegetables are beneficial, not Salted!) That's my whole point here! The Body Ecology Book is sited in the article specifying Unsalted and Victoras had said it somewhere. I'm going to email him back and ask why Unsalted.

So what I learned is this: You don't have to Ferment the vegetables for weeks and weeks - only about a week. You don't have to 'pound' a lot to get the juice going for fermenting - just juice some of the cabbage in the juicer! I was worried about that, because I was visualizing myself pounding a whole bunch with I-don't-know-what, and trying to get juice, and getting worried I wouldn't be able to make enough juice.

I'm just going to go ahead and slice a bunch of red cabbage, put some through the juicer for the juice, cover it over and leave it for a week, and see what happens. Maybe I'll pound it a little to break it down some first.

But I'll continue to explore the Salt angle, and find out about substituting Dulse or not, because I discovered a long time ago that I can't eat Salt on a daily basis because of the food/mood connection, maybe the blood pressure angle, I don't know. So I try to avoid it whenever possible.

Thanks all for the help!

Lois
[www.rawfoodsupport.com]

[www.youtube.com]
Dr. Mercola Interviews Caroline Barringer
1:47:57 Minute Video

41:42 MM
DM: And then to create this anaerobic environment, you have to fill it with the fluids. Is this by trial or error or something you came up with to actually pour the celery juice from a juicer to fill up the GAPS in the vegetables to create this anaerobic environment?

CB: I’m glad you brought that up, because I like salt. Sea salt is my favorite. But I don’t like it necessarily all the time in my vegetables. But I know that salt can be helpful to the process of fermentation. Some say that it crowds out the pathogenic bacteria that may be in your vegetables. I mean, there are going to be some pathogens there; it’s just natural. There’re beneficial, neutral, and pathogenic. You want the good guys on your veggies to get ahold and win the war in the jar.

Salt can be helpful to keep those more pathogenic strains back, hold them back so that the good guys – the good probiotic bacteria – can take hold and then crowd them out. I call it the quintessential crowd out. It pushes these pathogenic organisms back, so that the real fermentation process can take hold and you have a beneficial product.

I’ve found that I didn’t necessarily like having salt in my cultured vegetables all the time. I wanted the option to flavor them with different oils and maybe add my own salt. Sometimes I find that on the market – there are cultured vegetables that are really salty, and it’s too much for me, my personal liking. I said, “Hmmm…What if we use celery juice?” Because there’s organic sodium naturally occurring in celery that maybe could do the job, too.

I juiced some celery, tossed it into my cabbage with all my little colors of carrots and maybe collard in there. I packed it firmly into the jar, kept it under that celery juice, and it was a perfect ferment. It came out so delicious, and I could choose to add salt and maybe a delicious olive oil, or avocado or not. I had the options.

DM:That was your innovation?

CB:I believe so. I don’t think anybody else is doing it yet. [Laughs]

DM: Well, congratulations. It’s really amazing. And for those of you who are listening who happen to vegetable juice, you’re probably aware that the most abundant vegetable that you can extract juice from is celery. Cucumber might be close, but I think celery is a little more efficient. It’s loaded with the most water. It’s probably – of all the vegetables you can juice – the most ideal.

CB: Yes. Some people ask us, “What do you do with all that leftover pulp?” Well, you can combine it with some nuts and seeds, and you can freeze-dry them – not freeze dry, I’m sorry. Dehydrate them, and they’re crackers for you. They’re like Paleo crackers.

DM: Yeah. Well, I’ve done it. Actually, this is my breakfast. But I would just caution to use the celery, because it’s very fibrous and it’s very difficult to chew. It might make a better mulch in your vegetable garden. But a better alternative, from my personal experience, is the pulp leftover from cucumbers. It doesn’t have as much of the fibers, and that’s actually the base that I break up into essentially cereal-sized bites. And I pour about two tablespoons of melted butter over that in the morning.
[www.youtube.com]

Peace and Love..........John

<<<"Don't start a diet that has an expiration date. Focus on a lifestyle that will last forever.">>>

Hey Ela,

I like that and it reminds me of Dr. Hazel Parcells who lived to be 106 years of age and said that we should design all of our eating around natural foods--foods that are "in season," fresh and alive. I also love what she says about karma: "...what you will for another is done to you, since we all share life and therefore are one. To be healthy, think good thoughts."

Peace and Love..........John

Numenor Wrote:
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> Rather than table salt? What is a good length of
> time to allow fermentation before eating? Ive read
> anything from 1 to 6 weeks. What is a good average
> time?


Of course! Don't use that crap! My Perfect Pickler device came with a little packet of coarse grey Celtic sea salt.

Don't just buy sea salt, thinking it's all that. Get the raw kind. Even Trader Joe's makes a sun-dried sea salt and it cost peanuts.

Pretty much any salt is better than table salt, so yeah himalayan, celtic sea salt etc. These also tend to balanced with other trace elements/minerals.

Are these perfect picklers any good then ?

I see alot of people rating them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2014 08:01PM by powerlifter.

I don't use salt at all. I use probiotics, either liquid or contents of a capsule, to seed the sauerkraut.