Raw, but fermented veggies = raw or cooked?

I'm talking about raw fermented cabbage, onions, carrots and the like. Prepared just crushed with salt and fermented 2-3 days in their own juices :-)

 

Yes, I know, it's raw so this should be straightforward, but since a lot of the fibers and cells walls are broken down partially when preparing these and since the fermentation process may do things I am not aware of, I wanted to check :-)

 

I'm eating some regularly at breakfast/lunch/dinner and wanted to see if I could count them as cooked veggie for dinner or not as part of Thrive!

 

Thanks!

Julien

Julien,

 

Very good question, hard to say exactly if they should count as cooked or raw. As you pointed out they are in fact not cooked via direct heat but fermented. 

 

Lets say they count as both raw and cooked. 

 

Cheers,

Jeff

Hi Jeff, many thanks.

 

What I can say is that in my case fermented veggies feel very much more like cooked than raw: I can eat a big bowl of fermented cabbage in 5 mins, but to eat the same quantity raw I need to spend 20 mins chewing it all ;-)

I just tried to make Kimchee in my fridge and epic failure. 

 

Do you make the cabbage yourself? 

Hey, you're more ambitious than me with the Kimchi ;-)

 

I both buy some ready-made because some of the spices used are more exotic but I also make cabbage (green and red) as well as carrots myself. I basically just shred them in a big salad bowl, put some coarse sea salt on them, mix and crush them by hand for 5-10 mins until the salt and mechanic crushing has extracted a lot of their own juice, pack in a jar as much as possible and let the juice cover everything, cover the jar with a light cover and let sit for anywhere between 3 days to 3 weeks depending on the taste I want and temperature.

 

Really not complex but the result is no kimchi either! Spices I use regularly are cumin seeds (carrots) or caraway seeds (cabbage).

 

I got this book which covers basics to more complex stuff like Kimchi: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fermentation--Depth-Exploration-Essential/dp/160358286X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454586646&sr=8-1&keywords=art+fermentationI can recommend it but there are also lots of tutorials online for the basic sauerkraut stuff!

Thanks

Though if you really want to go down the kimchi rabbit hole, this book is great one, with recipes both for the long-fermented funktastic kind, and for the more quick, easy instant-gratification options.

Thanks! Yea, we have had some science experiments gone wrong with our attempt at kimchi. 

Ha! The problem with kimchi is that sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between kimchi gone wrong, and kimchi gone magnificently, gloriously right. Godspeed to you, sir!

While we're writing about fermented produce, I love homemade preserved lemons. Cut them (as if you were going to cut them into quarters, but leave them attached at one end), pack them with salt, stuff them in a jar, and fill to the top with fresh lemon juice. 

After a couple weeks, the skin is soft and nearly buttery in texture. They are incredibly sour and salty--creating a fantastic pop of flavor in rice, meat dishes, salads, etc. Sometimes I just eat it on its own though :-)