Experiments in cookery

[sholio]

I sampled my homemade sauerkraut today, the initial small batch that I put together about a month ago. It tastes ... okay, actually. It's not squishy, slimy or bad-tasting (the signs of sauerkraut spoilage according to the Internet), and it doesn't leave an unpleasant aftertaste. It's rather vinegary and perhaps a little under-salted -- I put a bigger batch on to ferment this past week, this time measuring everything, and realized that I probably didn't put enough salt on the initial, smaller batch. But if taste is anything to go by, I don't think it's going to kill me.

I'm still a little nervous about eating it because the idea of eating anything that's been sitting on the countertop for a month, having mold regularly scraped off it, is a trifle difficult to get past. But if I don't keel over shortly, I guess I'll eat some more. :D

And if I disappear forever from the Internet, at least you'll know what killed me.

Comments

[thingswithwings]

mmmmmm, now I want sauerkraut!

and yeah, it's amazing how much our ingrained ideas about food cleanliness are wrong, isn't it? I mean, CHEESE.

[sholio]

Heh, yeah, so much of the processing of our food is hidden from us these days, and yet, fermentation/spoilage has been a tool in our foodmaking kit ever since some early human realized that, hey, not everything that is spoiled actually tastes bad! In fact, some of it is quite nice.

But it's hard to turn off the voice in the back of my head that keeps insisting WE DO NOT EAT THE FOOD WITH MOLD ON IT.

[ratcreature]

Just think of the mold as being like the tasty kind that is on cheese and salami, where you want to have mold on your food. (Personally I have odd squicks about green molds, e.g. I'm no fan of gorgonzola, whereas I find eating the white and red kinds okay.)

[sholio]

I'm not too fond of that sort of cheese mold, either -- it tastes too moldy to enjoy. But it does depend on the cheese. And you do have a point.