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Low-Waste Fermentation Ideas
During Kirsten Shockey’s Onions: From Humble to Hero session, she shared a lovely idea for using onion skins.
The papery skins can be dried and blitzed into a powder, then used to add flavour to future ferments – as well as soups and stews. Such a simple way to get more from an ingredient that would normally end up in the compost.
It made me realise that many of us probably have little low-waste fermentation habits in our kitchens that others might never have thought of.
For example, if I’m using fresh lemon juice, I’ll often treat the rest of the lemon – the peel and pith shell left over – as a quick preserved lemon and simply pack it in salt. (only works with unwaxed lemons.)
What do you do in your kitchen to get more from your ingredients when fermenting?
R Waugh4 Comments-
This was a great response posted by @celine-lecomte over in our space for Professional Fermenters and Educators. Too good not to share!
celine-lecomte
here’s mine:
– i freeze peels and skins of veggies in a ziplock bag. When the bag is full, I make broth with it (with chicken bones I kept frozen too)
– I freeze – but I might switch to drying – ginger peels to make ginger tea.
– I blitz dry garlic peels to season roasted veggies. It never occured to me that I could do the same with onion peels 😀
– i dry (organic) mandarine peels to make infusions. But it does great too to flavour pickled (fermented) carrot sticks, with ginger (peels) !
– if i have a large amount of vegetable peels, fresh herb stalks etc: I grind everything in the meat grinder, fine grid. It becomes a thick paste, that I ferment with 2% salt. It makes a great base for soups, and broth. You can make dressing with it too, mix it in a bit of yoghurt or milk kefir to make a yoghurt sauce, you can spread it thinly in a wrap sandwich, etc.
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@admin thanks! You can find me on instagram and facebook @ cuisinecelavie
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I have another tip, it uses up the vegetable peels, herbs sprigs, (too) tough leaves (clean! no sand! no moldy spots! no potatoe) and the vegetables that didnt grow too well (for example: bokchoi who decided to flower because the weather suddenly turned warm, or very fibrous kohlrabi). Basically, everything edible but not nice to eat / cook with :-D.
You may add in onions (no need to peel) , carrots (no need to peel), and all the edible herbs from your garden.
You grind everything fine in a meat grinder.
Mix in 2% of its weight in salt, and ferment it like sauerkraut.
Obviously you can add in all the spices you want in it! Ginger, turmeric, chili pepper, …You’ve just made yourself a delicious flavour-all paste! Great as a base for:
– soups: 1 tsp to 1 tbsp in your bowl when serving
– dips. flavour a hummus with it, or mix with yogurt for a yogurt sauce/dip, …
– a lot of recipes ask to fry an onion: well, fry 1 tbsp of this paste instead, for an instant flavour boost!
– some of my customers spread their bread or wrap with it!
Picture left: carrot, onions, random fresh vegetable peels, celery (i dont like celery so much…but fermented like this it is great!)
Picture right: kohlrabi so tough and fibrous I had considered composting it, carrot, onion, ginger, turmeric, parsley sprigs
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@celine-lecomte this is such a genius commercial product. A low waste tasty paste/bouillon. It’s brilliant.
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