A red seal chef and high school teacher suggests the use of fermentation to preserve and enhance the teste, texture and nutrition value of foods is not only easy but safe.A webinar hosted last week by Canadian Food Focus and the Canadian Fermented Foods Initiative examined the "Benefits, Uses and Recipes for Fermented Foods."
Connor Flynn, “The Preserving Chef,” a Red Seal Chef, Certified Master Food Preserver and high school teacher explains fermentation was born as a method of food preservation when farmers learned to safely preserve produce, not realising that it would also be so delicious in terms of taste and texture.
Quote-Connor Flynn-The Preserving Chef:
We're going to talk about myths. The first myth, fermentation is dangerous. I'll just speak from my own experience. In the last eight years, out of all the things I've fermented, I've had two ferments go mouldy on me.When we talk about safety, what's really awesome about fermentation is you can visually see that the top of your ferment has mould on it.
If we ever see mould, we want to get rid of that ferment.If ever, down the road you're fermenting something and you see mould growth on the top, that's game over. There are lots of people on line saying you can just scoop it up off the top and you're going to be all good.You can take that risk if you want but I'm telling you, best case scenario is when in doubt throw it out.
Another myth that's common is you need to have a starter culture.We were mentioning yogurt.Often when you make yogurt you use a starter culture to inoculate or to start the yogurt making process.For vegetable fermentation all of the lactic acid bacteria or microbes necessary for successful fermentations are already currently on the vegetable so we don't need to buy a special culture to have fermentation occur.
Chef Flynn says food fermentation is an age-old practice that is reclaiming popularity and its easy.To access the webinar, visit canadianfoodfocus.org or fermentedfoods.ca or for food fermentation tips and recipes visit foodfocus.ca
Source : Farmscape.ca