Two weeks ago on Wednesday the 24th, we met out on the farm for class to harvest any last hard vegetables we wanted to use to make pickles. Some students also brought their own hard veggies, including a mason jar which we fermented them in. The recipe for pickling requires a salt water brine and a half cap of vinegar which both encourage fermentation, and in addition we had extra add-ons for flavor such as a variety of spices and even sriracha sauce which I added to mine. We also learned that the more sugar you add to your mix, the more spicy it becomes as it ferments, because it turns glucose into lactic acid, and the more glucose there is the more lactic acid will be produced. The pickling process happens fermentation which is actually called Lactic Acid Fermentation. It takes the sugars in a vegetable that might make it taste sweet at first, into lactic acid which produces a whole new taste for the vegetable. This process can vary in time from around a week to even years, depending on how you want it to taste. The amazing thing about fermentation is that it can give food a much longer life and also make food a lot more beneficial to eat because it creates vitamins and minerals. This makes it such a valuable process which is used all around the globe, having both economic and health benefits.
-Alex Aguero
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