Baba Yaga's kitchen has been experiencing some fermentation wins of late! The new batch of soda is far more active than any I've ever made. While the culture is the same ginger bug that I always use, I experimented with sassafras for the flavoring of the soda. Sassafras seems to grow wild all over the place in this part of the country. Since I have some growing right along my driveway, it was a no brainer to use it at some point. Historically, the root had been used in root beer (until the FDA gave a concentrate consisting primarily of safrole to rats and it gave them liver cancer). The dried leaves are used in gumbo. I'm not really afraid of getting liver cancer from sassafras in a dilute form in my soda (any more than I would be afraid to drink some comfrey leaf tea), so...I experimented!
In a quart of water I boiled about a three quarters of a cup of chopped up sassafras root for 15 minutes. In my casual survey of friends and what I gleaned from Google searches, the coating on the root (the root bark) was either used alone, or discarded...it seemed to go half and half. But the more academic sites indicated that the root bark is where the flavoring oils are. I decided to use the whole shebang and it worked out fine. I also added a small cinnamon stick. After boiling I let the pot set for 15 minutes and then strained the liquid into a crock, adding about a cup and a half of sugar. I stirred to dissolve and then added another couple quarts of water (my measurements weren't exact and I was tasking as I went). A squeeze of lemon perked the whole thing up, before cooling to body temp at which time the ginger bug was strained in.
Typically I see a bit of fermentation bubbles by the next morning, but this batch was already getting active after a couple hours. I let the crock set overnight and the soda was downright foamy (that sounds bad, but I mean it in a very good way) by this morning. Not wanting to be too anxious to bottle it up, I waited a few hours, scalded my toggle top bottles and let them cool. After filling and stopping, the bottles will set for a week or so (if I can wait that long). It tastes pretty good right now, but it's fun to let that fermentation get the product nice and bubbly by waiting to drink!
In addition to the fermented soda, I finally got a batch of kraut going. Sauerkraut is so easy to make it's ridiculous. Chop up cabbage, sprinkle with salt, pound until the juices release, pack in a crock pressing down to let the vegetable get covered with brine...and let set! The cabbage should be weighed down with a plate and something heavy so that it doesn't float (and potentially mold). Really, after the manual labor it's just about paying attention. This batch seemed to only take a few days until it was getting a lovely tang. I scooped out a little bowl for the pictures, but didn't return to the crock and instead had a lovely pre-lunch snack.
I've been making yogurt for years and that's a really good probiotic food. However, there's only so much yogurt I eat in a day and I wanted to incorporate more good bacteria into my body (without paying lots of money for a supplement). The sodas and krauts and pickles are a great way to get this kind of nutrition. It's fun and it tastes good too!
