I thought I’d feature a particularly tasty recipe we tried last week for Real Food Wednesday this week. I’ve missed the last several Real Food Wednesdays and I vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to be missing this one!
So here I am, with a really, really good recipe that totally real food!
Now I love my husband very much. And I try to do what I can to make sure he’s as happy as can be (I’m working on the million dollars that’ll let him quit the 9 to 5, though). Many of my kitchen endeavors are for the benefit of his tummy, and this one is no different – my Scott loves salsa.
He has salsa most days of the week, and in case you weren’t aware, salsa in the jar is pretty expensive. It also tends to come with various additives in it. The additive-free salsa are even more expensive. I’ve tried a few home salsa recipes and they were good, but they just didn’t meet my expectations in quality. I also really wanted a lacto-fermented salsa.
Lacto-fermented foods are very good for you. They contain pro-biotics, which are good little critters that help your gut. You know what these are because the “live active cultures” yogurt makers have been pushing for years are probiotic cultures. Many traditional prepared foods were allowed to ferment and host colonies of beneficial bacteria. Traditional dairy products like yogurt and kefir, as well as traditional vegetable condiments like sauerkraut and kimchi, were fermented – a very tasty dose of beneficial bacteria.
I was really wanting a good lacto-fermented salsa but for some reason I was pretty nervous about trying it. Then I found some step-by-step instructions with pictures, and decided I’d just give it a try. So last week I bought the ingredients and the kids and I did a lot of chopping on Wednesday afternoon.
The results were delicious. We did make a couple of changes – the recipe calls for cilantro, which Scott does not care for. So I left that off. It also recommends a food processor. Our food processor bit the dust a few weeks ago. So I ran the vegetables through my Kitchen-aid chopper attachment, then used my little hand-blender to get the vegetables chopped a little bit finer. The kids really liked that step – it’s fun to watch the hand-blender work down in the bowl!
We left the jars on the counter for a few days to ferment, then put them in the fridge. Upon cracking one open to try it, Scott gave his verdict – it was really good salsa! I’m happy, and now I’m just trying to determine how often I should make the salsa (it’s looking like I’ll need to make it pretty often, good thing it was easy!)
Here’s a link to the recipe: Lacto-Fermented Salsa; our batch yielded 3 quarts. Next time I will use bigger tomatoes, and I think that will result in slightly more than 3 quarts!
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