Fennel Sauerkraut

[gfweb]

I just saw a recipe for a dish that includes "fennel sauerkraut" and got excited at the prospect. Unfortunately it was sliced sauteed fennel, not fermented fennel. What do you think...could one treat fennel like cabbage and get sauerfennel?

[heidih]

Koreans kimchi (if that is a verb) a huge variety of things so makes sense to me. Give it a try and let us know.

[Chris Hennes]

I think you can do just about anything with enough sugar, right? Modernist Cuisine has a rutabaga sauerkraut in it, and maybe a couple others that I can't remember.

[vice]

I keep looking at all the beautiful fennel at the farmer's market here and wonder about new ways to use it. Lacto-fermenting it is definitely worth a try.

[G-rat]

So I have a one gallon batch of this hopefully fermenting right now. I work with a catering company and we make really creative food from scratch. It was the exec's idea. It is fermenting next to my 2 gallon batch of red kraut. One thing I have noticed is that two days in it has given off less moisture than the cabbage does. I went 3 tbl spoon salt to 5 lbs of fennel. I'll let you know what we end up with

[gfweb]

I got a micro-version going. 1 big bulb and 1 tbsp salt... a higher ratio than 3 tbsp to 5 lbs, and it hasn't given off much liquid either.

[G-rat]

I'm going to brine it if at the end of today it still hasn't exuded enough liquid.

[gfweb]

Some liquid came out of mine, but not quite enough so I brined it at about 24 hrs in.

[gfweb]

A week into the fermentation there is mold on the top of the fennel. Is this OK? Does it mean that there was too much oxygen in there?

[djyee100]

Sorry I can't answer your question. But this topic reminded me of another EGullet topic, about lacto fermentation and equipment.

[runwestierun]

I remember my grandmother's sauer kraut having mold on the top of the crock. That doesn't mean it was right, though, I guess.

[gfweb]

So I made a batch of fermented fennel in a pickl-it jar; a vented mason jar that excludes oxygen by means of a little water trap.

Sliced the veg on a mandolin and layered it with salt in the jar; packed it tight and sealed it. A day later there wasn't enough liquid to cover the slices so I added brine. After a day or two there was more fluid exuded and a good deal of shrinkage...to the point where I feared that the volume of the headspace would be too great for the CO2 produced to push out all the O2 that remained.

Six weeks later it looked about the same except for a brown cast to the uppermost fennel and a bit of scummy microbial-looking stuff on the surface.

The taste? Salty fennel with most of the sweetness removed and a bitter note substituted. Soaking it didn't help much.

Anyone ever have any success with pickling fennel?

[andiesenji]

The only way I have pickled fennel is in a sweet-sour pickling solution - the same that I use for bread and butter pickles.

I also add it to a gardinere mix that includes celery, carrots, peppers, onion, garlic &etc., in the same type of pickling liquid.

I put them in a lime-water solution overnight, after slicing, to keep them crisp, otherwise it is just boil the pickling liquid and pour it over the raw (treated) vegetables and let them "work" in the fridge.

I've made sauerkraut but not with fennel.