yumpittsburgh

Experimenting with lactofermentation and making greek style yogurt

Yum learned a little about lacto-fermenting last week, perhaps just enough to be dangerous. Armed with a quart of Seven Stars Farm yogurt from Pheonixville, PA, a work at home day due to the storm, and curiosity, an experiment seems to be in order.

What is lactofermentation? It is the process used to make sauerkraut and yogurt. According to wikipedia, Lactic acid fermentation is a biological process by the little lactobacilli converts sugars such as glucose, fructose, and sucrose, into cellular energy and the metabolic byproduct lactate.

Why would you want to subject your food and body to this? Once again, yum is no expert but the final product is categorized by some as a ‘living food’, helping the gut to digest and assimilate nutrients. There must be some truth to it or why would there be all kinds of commercials for food like activia yogurt? Hmm, that is purely a personal and anecdotal observation.

So what is yum cooking up today? After an excellent meal 2 weeks ago with friends at Abay, an Ethiopian restaurant in East Liberty, yum wants to recreate a yellow split pea dish. The yum family also really loves the quinoa grain as a nutritious convenience food. After reading that whole grains (especially those with lots of gluten) contain phytic acid, which can bind micronutrients and stop your body from absorbing them. This leaves your efforts at healthy eating partially neutralized, with the biggest benefit being dietary fiber. To preserve the micronutrients, lactofermentation fans suggest partially fermenting whole grains.

Where do you find your lactobacilli? In whey, that yellowish liquid at the top of your yogurt. It is also the leftover liquid from cheesemaking if you get funky like that in your kitchen. The picture above shows harvesting the whey by dumping a container of yogurt into a fine mesh strainer nestled in a bowl. This results in a nice quantity of whey to experiment with as well as a fab by product: Greek style yogurt! Yum cannot express how delicious this kind of yogurt is, but it is really expensive and hard to find an organic variety.

The next step in preparing the grains is to add warm soaking water and stir in a couple of tablespoons of whey, then let it sit until cooking time. The split peas will sit until we get hungry enough to cook a late lunch or early dinner, the quinoa needs up to 12 hours, so that will get cooked tomorrow. This feels a bit daring as yum is a food safety freak. The experts promise that the good lactobacilli will colonize the food to our benefit, keeping bad bacteria at bay. The last pic is of the inoculated grains soaking next to the dried grains.

Yum is curious how this will affect taste, texture and intestinal health (I know, TMI). With the amount of whey harvested from the yogurt, we may try to ferment some garlic radishes and ginger carrots this evening.

Stay tuned for verdict on the final result!