38
Do NOT eat this. You figured out right that the stuff on top is mold. The thing that makes mold dangerous is the mycotoxins produced by it and these will likely remain in the sauce even if you scrape off the furry stuff. So eating this comes with high risk of affecting your health. Move it to the trash bin right away.
I would recommend to try again with a ...
37
Dry powders are easier to mix if you make a slurry first with a small amount of liquid and then mix the slurry in.
If you skip this step you will have clumps of dry powder floating on top of the milk and it will take a lot more effort to mix in.
When you are using yoghurt as a starter for a new batch this step is not necessary and the starter can just be ...
36
The initial heating of the milk, besides denaturing proteins to improve the texture, also pasteurizes the milk.
The culture needs to be added in a high enough concentration to crowd out harmful bacteria that might exist.
That said, if your tools or containers are dirty or if your starter is dead, or you don't add enough starter, your yogurt can grow ...
21
Yes, those spots are normal, they form as the nattou ages. They are amino acid crystals, and they are perfectly safe. Here's a picture.
They're a bit crunchy, which you may or may not like. If you don't like the dots, get young nattou and consume it before the crystals form. If you do like them, get more mature nattou. With younger nattou, you should be ...
21
It sounds like it's fermented, and more harmful bacteria or mold could definitely have grown without being visible.
So it's not safe, in that there's definitely some risk. It's hard to evaluate exactly how risky it is. It sounds like you're already routinely taking risks by eating iffy food that's not obviously rotten or moldy, so you certainly could choose ...
21
Small air bubbles are normal and make no difference to kimchi fermentation, nor do larger bubbles that form during fermentation. As long as the kimchi remains more or less submerged in the liquid, there’s no need to remove the trapped gas. Kimchi is an extremely difficult thing to mess up - once established, the lactic acid bacterial culture will murder any ...
18
Ok, first you had me wondering "How did he get the small jar inside?", but having kids I quickly realized this is a futile question. (For those w/o children, read Douglas Adams...)
The standard procedure for detaching two jars / glasses that are stuck, would be putting ice cubes in the inner one and then placing the outer one in hot water. But you said you ...
18
Note that the milk you take out of the fridge has been sterilised (UHT or pasteurisation) - it doesn't have any bacteria (etc.)[1]. It also isn't very acidic or salty. This makes it a wonderful breeding ground for anything that can get in - there's no competition. Yoghurt (and cheese, and varieties of ham and salami, and...) is full of a bacterial cultures ...
16
Your question is missing the word 'bacteria'.
All bacteria have a growth curve. These will vary quite a lot by species.
This is the growth curve for salmonella
As you can see the growth peaks around 40C, and there is no growth at 47C.
Salmonella is a pathogen, and we store food at low temperature to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria.
'No growth' is not ...
15
Well, having grown up near "the" Sauerkraut region in Germany - I'd say don't.
Honstly, I hadn't ever thought about why until today (can't have been only lazyness that my ancestors left the kraut in peace until done.), but:
Why making really sure to create a water-seal when you are breaking it with stirring? The kraut is supposed to ferment under the ...
14
Vodka by definition is a flavorless distilled alcohol, retaining any of the organoleptic properties of the grain or potato could be considered as ruining the end product.
Potatoes are a good source of starch, but brewers yeast has a limited ability to break down starch into usable fuel; its preferred fuel sources are relatively simple sugars like mono and ...
14
SUMMARY: Glass containers are perfectly fine for fermentation. It's usually other design aspects of the container that create fermentation problems.
Do you have any sources that actually say glass isn't a good container for fermentation? I've never heard or read that anywhere. The only negative thing I can say about glass is that it's usually transparent,...
13
2% (20g per 1000g) would be my default recommendation based on sources local to me, but with care less salt may work if sanitation is extremely good (to minimize introduction of undesirable bacteria which the salt helps to supress.)
On the high end, I can say that 4% seems to slow things down, but work, and 8% seems to be simply too much. The pictured jars ...
13
I believe the instructions are about trying to remove any major air gaps, initially.
As the process goes on, and your kimchee is fermenting, it will be impossible to remove bubbles, since the fermentation process that kimchi goes through produces carbon dioxide as a by-product.
Remember, the original, traditional kimchee isn't made in a glass jar and ...
12
Do.
Not.
Eat.
The assumption that it fermented enough to be safe because it fermented some is likely incorrect. Lacto fermented food recipes are specifically formulated to encourage the rapid and significant growth of lactic acid producing bacteria which lowers the ph so quickly that it overwhelms pathogens which are also trying to grow. Even then, ...
10
So, fermentation is complicated, and the answer to this question really depends on multiple factors. You're particularly interested in the role of sugar vs. salt, not lactobacillus vs. yeast. The simple answer to that question is that lactobacilli are salt-tolerant, while yeast is much less so. So adding salt gives the lactobacilli a headstart in converting ...
10
Vitamin C is destroyed by heat and light. If you use a preservation method that relies on heating the sauerkraut at any stage (hot pickling liquid, water bath or pressure canning the jars) then some vitamin C is destroyed. Exactly how much depends on the process: not all vitamin C is lost immediately so different processes will have different amounts of ...
9
Per NC State's Extension's article on pickles and sauerkraut (some emphasis added):
Pickles or sauerkraut mold during fermentation.
Answer:
Unsafe—microorganisms are growing improperly.
Possible reasons
Fermentation temperature was above 75°F.
Too much salt was used,
not allowing adequate lactic acid production.
The ...
9
If your jars aren't in the refrigerator already, I highly recommend unscrewing the lids as soon as possible...unless you want to be able to share stories about how you found glass shards and the smell of kimchi everywhere in your kitchen one day.
Depending on when you mean to eat them, I'd recommend a mix of room temperature ripening and fridge storage. ...
9
After dumping out a couple of jars of failed not-quite-fermented fennel I wondered, "Could fennel have antimicrobial properties?"
<< facepalm >>
Why, yes. Yes it could:
An article on PubMed
Another on PubMed
One on Science Direct
One on Research Gate
Granted, these are about the essential oil and not the whole plant. So I can't be sure this is the ...
9
Yes. The cooking sterilizes the sauce, but adding uncooked basil afterwards has contaminated the sauce again with germs.
9
Throw it away, it's spoiled and probably contains several colonies of foodborne illnesses. Sealing food isn't sufficient to stop it going off, you need to refrigerate it or freeze it.
8
Lactic acid is produced by 'probiotic' bacteria breaking lactose into lactic acid. Over time, more lactose is converted, producing more byproducts, thus more sourness.
The byproducts of this reaction are responsible for the distinctive flavor of yogurt.
See a more complete description here: Lactic Acid Fermentation
8
Fermenting vegetables is a pretty safe procedure, in fact, if done properly, fermented veggies are probably safer than raw. Really, little can go wrong if handled properly. The process is literally thousands of years old. In fact, your biggest concern is contamination after the process is complete. Of course you need to use safe food handling procedures ...
8
Exposing the sauerkraut to air is undesirable: we want an oxygen-free environment for the bacteria to do their work, and air exposure also brings increased (though small) likelihood of surface contamination (by mold for example).
I don't have a reference but I'm pretty sure that historically opening a crock to stir was not a thing.
And regarding your ...
8
The short answer is yes, salumi produced in the US is a fermented product. The process is different from salumi produced in Europe, but it is still a fermented product. In the US, producers rely on rapidly lowering the pH by using fast acting starter cultures and higher curing temperatures (as high as 104 F). Whereas in Europe, a lower temperature, and ...
8
To avoid clumping. It is much easier to disperse a solid into a small volume of liquid first by whisking or stirring to reach an even consistency and then pouring it into a larger volume of liquid where it will disperse readily, than it is to manage the solids being dumped directly into a larger volume of liquid.
8
What makes you think they are not lacto-fermented cherries? The Noma guide is, of course, a reliable resource. I assume you followed the procedure for plums (or the general instructions for lacto-fermented fruits and vegetables), as the book does not have a specific recipe for cherries. It could be that you just allowed them to go too far for your liking. ...
8
You can eat kimchi at any point. More fermentation/time simply means more funk. It is more likely that things are floating, your only risk is mold forming on the surface. You can add a weight of some sort to keep the exposed ingredients under the liquid, but if you are going to keep them sealed like that, mold formation is less likely, unless you remove ...
8
That looks like mould (mold). Kimchi typically only goes mouldy when the vegetables are not submerged, which looks like is happening here, probably because of your choice of container. Use a deeper container like a jar so that all the solids are submerged in the liquid, and continually pack them down so they do not dry out. Alternatively, use a pickling ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
