Fermentation takes off in Charlotte-area home kitchens
In homes all across North Carolina, home-brewed beer is bubbling in garages, homemade vinegar is aging in closets, and Mason jars packed with salted vegetables are gurgling away on kitchen countertops.
More and more, people are experimenting with fermentation, making sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, kombucha, even hot sauce.
One of them is Angela Hortman, 35, of Charlotte, who first discovered fermentation three years ago after tasting Pickleville products sold at the Atherton Mill and Market. Shortly after that, Hortman bought a copy of “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Katz, the country’s foremost fermentation evangelist. Like others, Hortman had been taught to fear bacteria and that no prepared food should be left out at room temperature – two keys to the fermentation process.
“This book was telling me to do this. It turns out it was really tasty. It was really easy and healthy too,” said Hortman, who graduated from sauerkraut to kimchi, pickled carrots and beverages, including beet kvass and water kefir.
Many home cooks are having to rediscover the knowledge that fermentation is a safe way to preserve foods, a fact that was common knowledge among previous generations. Bill Averbach, a jazz trumpet player who has been making Pickleville pickles, krauts, salsas and more for four years, said, “I grew up with everybody having festering vegetables sitting on the counter.”
Shanna Carlan of Gastonia grew up on a farm with her grandparents, who routinely made sauerkraut and salt-brined pickles. Carlan, who teaches food preservation and fermentation classes at the Whispering Hope Farm in Gastonia, said, “It’s just not a part of our food culture anymore, which is sad.”
Katz has written several books, including “The Art of Fermentation,” which responded to and helped boost the popularity of fermenting foods at home. He sees the resurgence as part of broader food trend.
“I think people are getting interested in larger questions: Where does my food come from? And how is my food produced?” Katz said.
An ancient process
In response, many people are making a point of buying North Carolina produce. By extension, they want to preserve that food and control what goes into those jars. First, we saw canning come back in favor with Jarden, the company that makes Ball canning supplies, reporting increased sales since 2008.
Now, home cooks are venturing into fermentation. Microbiologist Fred Breidt, who studies pickled and fermented foods for a federal agricultural research lab at N.C. State University, says the process is safe and dates back more than 10,000 years.
Fermentation creates an environment in which the good bacteria beat out the bad. Breidt is quoted in Katz’s book, “Art of Fermentation,” as saying, “Risky is not a word I would use to describe fermenting vegetables. It is one of the oldest and safest technologies we have.”
Breidt (pronounced “bright”) sees other reasons for the interest in fermented foods: amazing flavors and recent research about the need to eat good bacteria to improve the health of our guts.
Another sign of the growing popularity of fermented foods is the transformation of Hillsborough’s Two Chicks Farm. Audrey Lin and Debbie Donnald started the farm in 2009 to grow produce for Triangle-area farmers markets. Unwilling to let unsold vegetables end up in the compost, they started making pepper jelly. Then Lin took a fermentation class with Katz in Tennessee and now sells a complete line of sauerkraut, kimchi and pickles.
Last summer, the women decided to stop selling produce and now sell only their “farm-to-jar” goods at the four farmers markets they serve. Their production has grown so much that this year they had to move into a new kitchen and upgrade from a closet-size fermentation room to one that is 2,000 square feet.
More recently, Lin said she gets more customers asking how to ferment their own vegetables. It’s the same for Averbach of Pickleville: “People come up to me and pick my brain constantly. They basically want my recipes.”