Fermented Garlic
Fermented garlic, a convenient way to have garlic ready to use in your refrigerator when you need some. Prepared once, it keeps for a year or more. And it gets better with age. This is a great way to help you stay healthy! "A spoonful a day keeps the doctor away". No need to chop fresh each day, just scoop it out of your jar and get all the benefits of raw garlic plus the probiotics that develop during lacto fermentation.
Equipment
- Two large bowls - For peeling the garlic.
- A food processor or knife - Use a blender or Vitamix for a smooth blend, or a food processor, which is what I like. I used my manual food processor. You can also use a knife, of course.
- A pint size mason jar - A hinged-top Fido jar or similar works great for fermenting.
- Fermentation weight - I prefer a glass fermentation weight to keep your contents submerged under the juices. But use what you have on hand to do the job.
- Fermentation Lid - For a mason jar, a fermentation lid or airlock works best, but a regular mason jar 2-piece lid is fine to use.
- A scale - Optional. Here is a very inexpensive scale if you want to purchase one.
- A pickle packer tamper - Optional but very helpful is this acacia wood pickle packer
- A wide mouth funnel - Optional. A wide mouth funnel for getting your ingredients into the jar.
Ingredients
- 1 pound of garlic cloves
- Sea salt, unrefined I use either Redmond’s Real Salt, Himalayan pink salt , or Celtic sea salt, but any unrefined sea salt or pickling salt will work. Do not use any salt with additives.
Instructions
- Take your garlic heads and break them into cloves, which you'll collect in one of the bowls.
- Cover your bowl that contains the garlic with another bowl that is upside down.
- Hold the bowls together with your hands and shake them vigorously for about 20 seconds, in an up and down motion.
- Separate the garlic cloves out from the skins and peel any that didn't get peeled.
- Put your food processor bowl, with the knives in place, on the scale and tare it on the gram setting, so it reads zero.
- Place the peeled garlic into the bowl of your food processor and record the weight.
- Measure out 2.5% of that weight in salt. (Example: if your garlic weighs 500 grams multiply that by .025 to find out the amount of salt to add. The result is 12.5 grams).
- Zero your scale again (hit tare) and add the amount of salt. If you don't own a scale, you can also just add two teaspoons of salt per pint of garlic, which should be close enough. I like the scale method because it's easy to adjust to all kinds of amounts.
- Process the garlic into small bits. The smaller, the better, so it will make some juice.
- Place the garlic into your pint jar and press down on it with a spoon or a pickle packer. Keep adding garlic till the jar is nearly full. Be sure to pack it tightly as you go. You want to get all the air pockets out and coax some of the juice out of the garlic. Stop adding garlic when you are within an inch max of the top rim.
- Place a fermentation weight on top (or do as I do, I used an upside down food-grade, non-corrosive plastic lid, since I ran out of fermentation weights. I've got to remember to get some more!! Press down on it to get all the ingredients submerged. If you don't have a lot of juice that's ok too. In my experience it will still work fine as long as you fill the jar up pretty full to keep air space at a minimum, but you will need at least an inch of airspace, because your fermentation will expand.
- Seal your jar with a lid. A fermentation lid will almost guarantee success, if you leave it in place for the whole duration of fermenting. If you don't have one and are closing it with a 2-piece canning jar lid, be sure that you burp it once a day and keep an eye on the top to make sure it doesn't start to change color on top or grow mold.
- Now place your jar on a plate or into a bowl and put it in a warm, darkish spot in your kitchen. The best fermentation temperature is between 70 and 80℉. This is most important during the initial 3-4 days of fermenting. A bit of fluctuation is ok, but if it's too cool or too warm consistently, you might run into issues. Check out my post on lacto-fermented vegetables to get more info on the details and the reasons why.
- After about 3-4 days, you should see some active fermentation going on. There will be bubbles and possibly some juices oozing out of the jar. It will also change color a little bit and turn golden.
- I like to let it ferment for about 3 weeks. After that, I open it and taste it. If it's good, it goes into the fridge with a permanent lid. My favorite way to cover any fermented foods is with a flat metal canning jar top and then I screw on one of those plastic canning jar lids that I get from Walmart. I prefer them over the metal band, because they don't rust, it will keep your jar rims clean, and you won't have that rusted metal smell on your fingers when you use it. The flat metal piece usually doesn't cause a problem and it keeps the contents well sealed.
Notes
Be sure to burp your jar once a day if you're using a conventional 2-piece canning jar lid or any sealing lid. Just loosen the rim and quickly re-tighten, to let the pressure escape but keep oxygen out.