Ferment This! 5 Easy Homemade Fermentation Recipes

Fermentation sounds fancy, but it’s really just controlled rot with better PR. Here’s how to turn everyday ingredients into tangy, living food without blowing up your kitchen.

Gather round, boys and girls, today we’re going to be talking about fermentation. It’s that wonderful process behind the great taste in your beer, cheese, and sourdough, among other things. But what is fermentation exactly? While it might bear the appearance of mystical alchemy to the uninitiated, it’s essentially just food preservation through microbes, where you let the good bacteria (not the icky kind) and yeasts convert the sugars in your food or drink into acids or alcohol.

It’s one of the oldest culinary techniques in the world, having probably been stumbled upon in prehistoric times. So if a caveman could successfully ferment something, so can you—and in today’s article, I’m going to show you how to do exactly that.

Kimchi

Kimchi is, in many ways, the gateway ferment. It’s easy to start with and almost impossible to mess up. This is because the salt works to control the environment within your jar, letting only the good bacteria (mainly Lactobacillus) thrive and do its thing.

Method:

1. Chop or quarter napa cabbage (or really any firm leafy veg like mustard greens).
2. Toss with about 2 tablespoons of salt per medium cabbage, rubbing it in to draw out moisture. Leave for 1–2 hours until it softens and releases water.
3. Rinse briefly to remove excess salt, then coat with a paste made from garlic, ginger, chilli flakes, maybe sugar, and a splash of fish sauce or soy. Recipes vary, so feel free to look up one you like.
4. Pack tightly into a clean jar, pressing down to remove air pockets. The veg should be submerged in its own brine at this point.
5. Loosely seal and leave at room temperature for 1–3 days (depending on how warm your kitchen is), then refrigerate.

What’s happening here is that the bacteria feed on the vegetable’s sugars and produce lactic acid as a result—and it’s precisely this that gives kimchi that tangy, complex dimension we love so much. As it ferments each day, the flavour starts to deepen. You can do a daily tasting and then, when you feel like it’s just right, take it out and enjoy it as you please. Want to localise your kimchi? Feel free to swap in bird’s eye chillies, add a touch of lemongrass, or even experiment with belacan, should you be so inclined.

Sauerkraut

Now, I know I said kimchi was easy, but what if I told you there was something even easier than that? Enter sauerkraut—kimchi’s staid German cousin. It’s simpler because you literally only need two things: cabbage and salt.

Method:

1. Shred cabbage finely and sprinkle about 2% salt by weight (that’s roughly 1½ teaspoons per 500g cabbage).
2. Massage it with your hands for 5–10 minutes until it releases enough brine to cover itself.
3. Pack it into a jar, pressing down firmly. The cabbage should stay submerged because oxygen encourages mould.
4. Cover loosely and let it sit for 1–2 weeks, tasting along the way.

It works in much the same way kimchi does, where the salt draws the water out and creates a salty brine in which the naughty bacteria can’t survive, but the lactic acid bacteria can. It’s so simple that even I don’t think I could mess this up. Just make sure to keep everything under the brine and you’ll end up with crisp, tangy, naturally preserved cabbage that can sit in your fridge for months.

Kombucha

Kombucha’s great, and while you might think it’s a modern wellness fad, its origins actually date back to China some 2,000 years ago. It’s basically fermented tea, helped along by a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) that takes sweet tea and then coaxes it into the tart, effervescent beverage that our colon loves.

Method:

1. Brew 1 litre of black or green tea and add about 100g sugar (the microbes eat this sugar later).
2. Let it cool to room temperature, then pour it into a clean glass jar.
3. Add your SCOBY plus a bit of starter tea (you can get a SCOBY from some store-bought kombucha or a previous batch).
4. Cover with a cloth and let it sit for 7–10 days.

During the fermentation process, you’ll notice a tangy scent in the air and perhaps a new “baby” SCOBY forming on top—this is actually a good thing, no abortion necessary here (sorry). Once it’s tart enough, you’ll want to bottle and refrigerate it. To add some fizz, you’ll have to do a second fermentation, in which you’ll throw in some chopped fruits and then seal the bottle for two to three days. Feel free to add in whatever fruits your heart desires—mango, lychee, pineapple, or even durian if you have the stones for it.

Sourdough

Sourdough is the oldest bread on Earth and, to the uninitiated, might seem an intimidating prospect to tackle. But in reality, it’s just flour, water, and letting some of the invisible organisms floating around your house do their thing. The starter is where it all, well, starts. It’s just a bubbling little jar of fermented flour and water that acts as your colony of wild yeast and bacteria. Keep this happy and fed, and it’ll keep making you bread for years on end. Some starters even have lineages that stretch back to the 19th century, which is kind of wild when you think about it.

Method:

1. Mix equal parts flour and water in a clean jar until it forms a thick paste.
2. Leave it loosely covered at room temperature and feed it daily with more flour and water, discarding some each time.
3. After about 5–7 days, it should start bubbling and smelling pleasantly tangy.
4. To make a loaf, mix 100g active starter with 500g bread flour, 350ml water, and 10g salt until it forms a shaggy dough. Let it rest for about 30 minutes, then knead or fold it a few times until smooth.
5. Leave it to rise slowly for several hours—or overnight if you want deeper flavour—before baking.

How it works is that the wild yeast produces carbon dioxide, which helps lift the bread, while the lactic acid bacteria are what’s responsible for its signature sour taste. The slow fermentation is also a major contributor to that chewy texture and crackly crust that we all know and love.

Yoghurt

Yoghurt might just be the most common thing that people have been eating without being aware that it’s a product of fermentation. Not only is it, in fact, a product of fermentation, it’s also one of the easiest things to ferment at home. All you have to do is keep the bacteria warm and comfortable while they do all the work. It’s literally just introducing live bacterial cultures into milk and giving them time to convert lactose into lactic acid, and it’s this process that thickens the milk and gives yoghurt that familiar tang.

Method:

1. Heat about 1 litre of milk to around 82°C (180°F), stirring occasionally to keep it from catching at the bottom. This step helps denature the proteins and gets rid of any unwanted bacteria that might interfere with the fermentation process. Once that’s done, let it cool to roughly 43–46°C (110–115°F), so it’s warm but no longer scalding, before stirring in your yoghurt culture.
2. Stir in 2–3 tablespoons of plain yogurt with live active cultures.
3. Pour into a clean container and keep warm for about 6–12 hours. An oven with the light on works surprisingly well.
4. Once thickened and tangy, refrigerate to stop the fermentation.

Make a batch for yourself and you’ll find out why supermarket yoghurt could never compare. Put the two side by side and you’ll find your homemade version to be fresher and tangier than the store-bought kind. An added bonus is that, by making it yourself, you get to tweak the texture to however you like it. Strain it and you’ll get something approaching Greek yoghurt. Start spooning it into some fruit and honey and see how breakfast will never be the same again.

Once you get the hang of things, a whole new world begins to open up to you. You’ll find you can ferment all manner of things; it’ll just be a matter of mastering that brine or sugar environment that the good microbes thrive in. It’s a great kitchen hobby to get into, because it’s mostly about feel. It’s also a hell of a lot more forgiving than, say, baking. And the best part is that you don’t really need any fancy gear or sophisticated implements to get started—all you need is a clean jar, some salt, and a healthy helping of patience.

Opening image: Beatrice B | Pexels