Making your own home-grown Probiotics !!

It is very easy and cheap to make your own probiotic , health boosting foods at home. Apart from eating a good diet with plenty of good quality protein, fats and fibre, adding in probiotic fermented foods just puts the cherry on the top of giving your immune and digestive system the best chance to thrive.

I had a red cabbage and decided I want to feed my gut well for the winter so I keep well. 60-80% of the immune system is located in the gut microbiome. This is strong, pungent stuff so be ready!!

Eating fermented foods feeds your microbiome and keeps it strong. SO Get fermenting!

Red cabbage Kimchi

Ingredients:

1 medium cabbage finely sliced

1 beetroot grated

50g fine table or sea salt

50g ginger, finely grated

4 cloves garlic,diced

8 tbsp filtered tap water, bottled spring water or kefir water

4 tbsp gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder)I used Paprika

2 tbsp fish sauce,

1 bunch scallions diced

2 carrots grated

4 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted

1 tbsp soft brown sugar

1 tsp sea salt

Instructions: Cut a circle out of a spare cabbage leaf to the size of the top of the jar. Leave aside. This will be your lid to keep the kimchi submerged under the brine so it doesn’t go off.

Massage table salt into cabbage, cover with a clean tea towel and let sit for 2 hours for the salt to bring out the fluid from the cabbage.
Rinse the cabbage well and drain any remaining fluid, add all the remaining ingredients and mix well.
Pack into a large cliptop jar .
Insert the cabbage leaf on top of the kimchi, press down making sure there's liquid covering the mixture. Add more liquid if it is too dry.
Close jar tightly, ferment at room temp for 3-7 days. You will start to see bubbling in the liquid and this is the fermentation working! (I fermented mine for 2 weeks).
Taste after 3 days, it gets more sour the longer it ferments.
Once you have started eating it and it is to your required taste, put it in the fridge so it will slow down fermentation.
Eat it as a chutney on the side of salads, sandwiches, eggs, soup.
Be prepared that it is very pungent and others (namely my teenagers..) may be slightly repulsed! but don’t fear!! it definitely smells far worse than it tastes.!!
Caution - if you see any mould developing, it will have to discarded, all the mixture has to be under the water brine to stop it being exposed to oxygen, where it can get mouldy.
If you are new to fermented foods, start slowly - eat 1 tsp a day and build up.
You may notice some digestive changes at the beginning.

Tips:

Use filtered or bottled water for best results.

Gochugaru (Korean chili powder) can be found at Asian markets.

Fish sauce: Salty, fermented fish sauce in Asian markets or large supermarkets.