How fermenting garlic got me through quarantine
My 500 square-foot garage-turned one bedroom apartment began to seem a bit smaller around early May.
My birthday had just passed and I started talking to my plants more frequently.
I became bored of waking up at 3 in the afternoon. I had already knitted all the scarves & hats I could ever need, I re-organized my medicine cabinet, closet and pantry and made risotto at 3:30 in the morning — more than once.
So in order to gain some semblance of direction, control and chemistry I decided to ferment garlic. I figured, that might help me find stability.
It’s as if I casually walked into fermenting garlic. I began like anyone else would, with pickling. I have considered myself a pickler for years — your usual suspects of baby cukes, carrots and beans, but once we were forbidden from leaving our homes things got interesting. I began exploring new ways to preserve my favorite things like lemons, garlic scapes and ginger.
That got old and fermentation was on my mind. I knew the basics so during one of my friend’s bi-weekly lock down Costco trips I asked him to grab me 2 lbs each of garlic and ginger. He’s a professional chef, so no questions were asked.
I let it sit for a few days on my counter, staring at me. I knew I had to dive in. I couldn’t sleep one night so I made fermented mustard (I’ll probably post that recipe another day). It was magical. It gave me the assurance I needed — it was time.
So of course, I did my research because fermenting isn’t a guessing game, you need to know what you’re doing a little bit so that you won’t become ill. I was going to lacto-ferment my garlic, that is the process in which good (lactobacillus) bacteria breaks down sugars in food to form a lactic acid. Lacto-fermentation makes the good minerals, such as manganese and vitamin C, in garlic more accessible to the body (yay)! It also supports a healthy gut and it takes time, which luckily, I had loads of.
I spent 45-minutes standing in my tiny kitchen peeling cloves of garlic (I used hard neck but use whatever you can find) and nubs of ginger. My ratio of garlic to ginger was 50/50. For lacto-fermentation it’s good to know the total weight so that you can figure out how much salt (approximately 1.5 to 2 per cent) to use. I had 1.5 cups total.
Once everything was peeled I gave it all a rough chop and smash to get the juices flowing. In a bowl I combined the salt and my smashed fragrant friends. They were ready for the jar.
I found an air-tight jar, shoved the mixture inside and sat it on the counter for approximately 10 to 12 days. This was a challenge to keep track of because what is time during a pandemic? I sometimes ate my (many) snacks while sitting next to the jar just to watch it bubble away. The equivalent I’m sure to “A watched pot never boils.”
Lacto-fermenting garlic and ginger is thrilling for a nerd like me because I was able to watch the stages of fermentation as I went about my day. Bacteria breaking down the cloves and nubs, the milky liquid being released in the jar and the gases building pressure creating a bubble under the lid and oh ya, (burp your ferment!) Every other day I had to open the jar slightly so to let the pressure release. Warning, if you live in a very small, poorly ventilated space (such as a garage turned one-bedroom apartment), you WILL be over powered by rotting garlic smell. You’ve been warned. It’s important to not skip this step however or you run the risk of your jar exploding and you then need to start all over.
On the last day I woke up with so much eagerness and excited energy to see my garlic-ginger’s final form. It was beautiful. It had shrunk down completely. It was barely recognizable. The cloves were no longer cloves, the nubs no longer nubs. They had reached peak fermentation. It was once again, magical.
I buzzed my fermented gold in my food processor to create a paste. I did this because a) it was fun and b) the paste is much easier to incorporate into dishes. I then scraped every last smelly bit into an old, washed pesto jar and stuck it in the fridge.
Patience and garlic go very well together. I used every little bit of the contents of that jar (which lasted me months, by the way) in anything I could, from sauces and dressings to shrimp and soups. I had a few people ask if my new side gig was slingin’ fermented garlic. In hindsight, it should have been.
It was a long 4 months of solitude with its very dramatic ups and downs, but fermenting my favorite foods gave me something to look forward to and made everything seem a little less awful. Now, a year into a global pandemic I am planning my next ferment.
