Last summer, I tried my hand at storing green beans the old-fashioned way. It involves a process that few have heard of before, but everyone’s benefited from at one point or another. That process is called lactic fermentation. Basically, you put clean, raw vegetables into a pot and cover them with lightly salted water and weight them down so that they are completely submerged. You let them sit like this for a month, skimming any mold that forms off the top of the water.
The most common vegetable preserved this way is cabbage in the form of sauerkraut. Well, last time I was at the grocery store, cabbage was on sale for only 25 cents a pound, and it seemed like a sign that I should try again. With my green beans, I was making them in quart sized jars, and it was a pain to scrape all the mold off. Eventually, I just got too disgusted, and couldn’t bring myself to eat them. But I love sauerkraut, and this is the way that it is made. Everywhere online assures me that even if a little bit of the mold sinks into the cabbage, that the brine renders it harmless.
So here I go, taking deep breaths, and hoping that this time I can bring myself to eat it, instead of wasting it.
Here’s more on my failed green bean experiment:
You’re a brave gal. I keep toying with Saurkraut and can’t seem to do it.
I tried brining my own olives and four months of work got ruined when I had to soak the salt out of them with clear water (a two day process) and then I had to leave home for three weeks and forgot to deal with them. Like your green beans, I got scared of the results!
Mimi- I’m so glad that I’m not the only one!