Ideally, we would like something we want to eat a lot of

November 10, 2015 12:05 PM

Purchased a five gallon fermentation crock. What should we ferment? Microbial snowflakes within!

Yes, we went and bought a giant-ass fermentation crock (but didn't pay extra for the lid). Now we gotta use it. We have a smaller one already in use.

Please don't recommend kimchi (already got some on the go) or sauerkraut (made that last year). We have both of Sandor Ellix Katz's books but there doesn't seem to be much we can scale to this behemoth. All we ask is that the recipes be vegan-friendly. We don't mind if your suggestion plays the long game as long as we get something good out of it.

Suggestions? What have you made an assload of and found a lot of various ways to cook with?

posted by Kitteh to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

If you're looking for A Project, you can use it as a nuka crock, which you can then pickle all sorts of odds and ends in. (Basically, you fill it with rice bran, get a nice colony of fermentation microbes growing in the bran, and then any time you have a few veggies you want to pickle you can bury them in the bran for a little while and let the microbes have their way with them before fishing them back out and eating them.) It takes ongoing attention — like a sourdough starter, you have to spend a few minutes tending to it at least every couple of days — but I had one going for a while and thought it was worth it.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:24 PM on November 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Honestly though most veggies-in-salt-brine ferments will work fine in large batches, so if you want to do something along those lines it's just a question of what you won't get tired of eating.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:30 PM on November 10, 2015

My kids and I love pickled carrot sticks. We could easily eat gallons of those. We tend to ferment in our giant crock, then move everything to smaller jars and into the fridge when it's about perfect - the veggies last practically forever that way.
posted by linettasky at 1:03 PM on November 10, 2015

You could do continuous-brew Kombucha. As vegans, you might appreciate the side products also.
posted by lizbunny at 1:15 PM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Since you are already a kimchi fan, how about gochujang?
posted by Julnyes at 1:37 PM on November 10, 2015