Discover all the ways you can eat your own homegrown garlic year-round in delicious ways. Did you know garlic can be fermented, canned, dried, frozen, or marinated? In this workshop you will learn the ins and outs, the how and why of fermenting your own black garlic, fermenting convenient delicious nutrient-dense garlic pastes, and pickling and marinating the cloves for long term storage and enjoyment. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Kirsten Shockey: Hi there. Welcome to my class on preserving garlic. I'm Kirsten Shockey, and I ferment things, preserve things, live on a small holding in the mountains of southern Oregon. I've written five books on, you guessed it, fermenting things. And I'm a co-founder of an online fermentation school called The Fermentation School. [00:00:42] So you can find us at fermentationschool.com. And I'm here today to talk about garlic and preserving garlic and all the wonderful ways you can preserve garlic. So the first thing that you wanna know is that you [00:01:00] want to be sure to when you harvest your garlic, to cure it. Now, that curing time is simply leaving it out. [00:01:11] I prefer shade. I have found that the little cloves inside, at least where I live, can get too warm and start to cook, get a little sunburned. So I put it on the ground in the shade somewhere to, to cure it. I- everybody's got their own way of curing. But basically, what's happening is these, these green stems of your garlic are sending its, their energy back down into that bulb to hang out and wait till spring when it's time to grow again. [00:01:44] It's just like your daffodils that b- die back and all of that, that energy goes right back into the bulb. So that curing time is allowing for the garlic to dry out, to get everybody back in, and so that it's planning to just [00:02:00] hang out and wait. And so garlic's pretty great. You don't have to do a lot with it to preserve it if you keep it in the right conditions. [00:02:10] That would be a dry, dark preferably space with some airflow. So refrigerator, no good. Your garlic is gonna get moist, it's gonna think it's springtime, and it's going to want to sprout immediately. So keep your garlic out of the refrigerator. That airflow is to be around the garlic. Again, this is to keep it from molding or anything like that because dry is what you're after. [00:02:36] So one wonderful way to preserve garlic for use is to make a beautiful braid and hang that on your wall and use it as you go. Keep it in a spot in the kitchen that isn't in the direct sunlight. Now, I find that there's a huge downside to this way of storing and preserving your garlic to use over the [00:03:00] winter. [00:03:00] It's too darn pretty to use. And so what happens when I make these beautiful braids is that they, just hang there and look beautiful and get dusty. And then when I finally do say, "Okay, you gotta use them," they are somewhat dried out and the garlic is no longer wonderful. I did not make this beautiful braid. [00:03:20] My friend Vicky did. So we're also gonna talk about other ways to preserve your garlic. This class is being sponsored by Roots and Harvest, so we have these wonderful little handmade, made in USA crockery that they have that helps us with our garlic. So just for quick use the garlic you're using, remember we don't wanna keep it in the fridge, so we're gonna keep that in maybe a little garlic store or a bowl on your counter. [00:03:48] Just something to keep that air flow and keep it nice and dark in there. Another thing you can do is you can freeze your garlic, believe it or not. Freezing, you [00:04:00] would make a mash out of it or even freeze the whole cloves. You're gonna wanna get it out of its skin and peel it. In the freezer, you've got about six, six months of it being good. [00:04:11] The nice thing is you can mince it up or have it ready to go and just un- dethaw it. Canning is always an option, but in the case of garlic, you really don't wanna do it because you're gonna have to use a pressure canner. It is not a low-acid food, and s- whoops, it is a low-acid food. The acid isn't high which would make it something that you could water bath. [00:04:37] So it becomes mushy. It's really not worth it. Then we have more short-term ways to preserve your garlic. Something like this, which is to roast your garlic. Ah, smells so good. You're gonna roast it, and these little wonderful thing cloves are gonna just squeeze right out of there. [00:05:00] This will keep in your refrigerator in an airtight container for about two weeks. [00:05:04] So another option when your garlic seems to be wanting to move on to sprouting life or it's starting to dry out, is you can buy yourself some time by just roasting it. So let's talk about those little sprouts for just a second. Those little sprouts for some reason, a lot of people think, oh, you can't eat it when it's sprouted. [00:05:24] It's somehow dangerous or not good for you. It's perfectly fine. The entire garlic plant is edible. What happens is, though, the flavors are changing, right? This plant is, at this point, it st- thinks it's still alive. It thinks it's still gonna go into the ground at some point, or it is in the ground, and that it's going to grow. [00:05:43] But we are getting in the way of that by eating it. So you can peel those little sprouts out, the little green bits out, if you don't like the flavor. Some people don't mind the flavor. It's a little bit... it can be a little bit bitter. It can make the garden- garlic seem a little more pungent. So that's what's going on with the [00:06:00] sprouts. [00:06:01] So moving along with our preservation techniques, we have marinating and pickling. So marinating and pickling are in a similar camp. What you're doing is you are... remember we talked about these don't have a lot of acid in them, so you're adding acid to- extend their life because things that will degrade them cannot grow in that acid. [00:06:28] But a lot of marinades that you see are oil marinades, and unless you have acidified that garlic first, so basically pickled it first, whether that's with fermentation or with vinegar, you can't you can't just put the garlic in, delicious oils and expect it to be okay. This is where you're getting an anaerobic situation with a low-acid vegetable, and you can really get botulism going. [00:06:56] So if you're going to marinade and pickle, be sure to use an approved [00:07:00] pickling recipe. And so let's move on to fermentation. Fermentation is a form of pickling. Pickling is to acidify something, and in this case, you're acidifying it by allowing the microbes that are naturally occurring on this garlic to do that for you. [00:07:17] You don't have to buy vinegar. You don't have to do anything except for set the situation up, which you're gonna learn in this class, and watch it happen. So in the class, you're going to learn how to make whole clove fermented little garlic pickles. You can also make a paste, and that is, again, this is a fermented paste. [00:07:40] It's ready to use as a paste. You're gonna learn how to make a honey-fermented garlic clove, which I do not have an example of, and you're gonna learn to make some black garlic. Now, black garlic is an amazing way to again, prolong the life of [00:08:00] your garlic and get some amazing flavors, and we'll talk about that in the black garlic portion. [00:08:06] And we'll be using the Roots and Harvest fermenter for that. [00:08:13] Welcome back. Right now, I'm gonna show you how to ferment garlic cloves as pickles. This is a very simple ferment and a wonderful way to quickly process a lot of garlic in a fermentation. You can use these in so many ways. You can use them as you would a fresh clove, granted they'll be a little sour, a little bit pickley. [00:08:39] But if you don't put any other herbs in there, it's still gonna be a pretty pure garlic flavor. They also are wonderful little pickles on the side of a cheese board. And so how do we do that? What we're gonna do is we're gonna submerge our cloves in a saltwater brine. The [00:09:00] saltwater brine we're gonna make today is about a 2.5% saltwater brine. [00:09:05] When you're brine pickling generally you are using a brine that's somewhere around 2 to 5%. The garlic has wonderful antimicrobials and it really wants to be preserved anyway, and so it works quite well. So we've got a quart of water here and a quarter cup of salt, and it is 25 grams if you prefer measuring the weight. [00:09:36] And we're just gonna stir that in. So you might notice this salt is pink. I'm using Redmond Real Salt, and if you go to their website, you can use the code ferment and get yourself a little discount. I prefer to use salts that are naturally processed just by drying, or in this case these are [00:10:00] mined out of the earth, out of ancient salt beds in Utah. [00:10:04] And the reason I like that whether we're talking about sea salts or rock salts, is that they still have a lot of trace minerals in them, and they don't have any anti-caking agents or added iodine. So really, the only rule that is really important for fermentation is that you choose a salt that does not have added iodine. [00:10:27] Otherwise, you're really free to use whatever salt you prefer. So I wanna show you guys, these are some fermented little garlic pickles, and these are actually been in my fridge, I hate to admit it, for five years. They got stuck in the back and here's the thing, they're- Still delicious, still fine, They haven't lost any of their flavor, [00:11:00] any of their crisp. [00:11:00] So now that I found these, it's like a little boon because now I have all this pre-peeled garlic ready to go. The other thing I want you to notice is there might feel like there's a little green or blue in there. Sometimes they will turn brown like this fermented garlic paste. Sometimes they will turn a little pinkish. [00:11:22] That's all normal. The green is also normal. It's a chemical reaction that can happen. These can actually turn a wonderful jade or blue color even because of that chemical reaction, and it's the allicin and the acid kind of mixing together. It doesn't always happen. It happens more with older garlic. [00:11:43] The other thing I want you to notice is you can see here that the brine is a little thick at the bottom. Again, it's part of a garlic fermentation. Perfectly normal. Nothing to get worried about. So we've already peeled these cloves. [00:12:00] We're just gonna fill up the jar. [00:12:14] You want to leave enough head space that you can definitely have brine on top. If you have a little weight or something to just wedge that down in there, that works really well. I've done these pickles in a jar like this where I just take a couple of toothpicks and wedge them across and it helps keep the garlic from floating Why you don't want your garlic to float, you're asking? [00:12:40] That's because anything sticking out of the brine is more susceptible to yeast or mold or things like that growing on it. But what we're gonna do today is show you a method where you don't have to worry about that a whole lot because we're gonna, we're gonna exclude the air. We're gonna put our lid on [00:13:00] nice and tight, and we're gonna clamp it down and keep it tight. [00:13:05] Now, right now there's still oxygen in there, but in a day or two, the fermentation is beginning, gonna begin and what you're gonna do is as this lid gets some tightness in it, that means that the CO2 that's being created is building up. So you're gonna give that a little twist and a... Close it up again, and that allows that CO2 to escape. [00:13:29] Now, CO2 is heavier than oxygen, so as soon as you do that a couple of times on any ferment you will quickly have no oxygen in there and it's gonna ferment beautifully and stay quite safe. The other option if you don't feel like you wanna manage it every day, is to get some kind of little lid that releases the air. [00:13:56] So sometimes those are they have [00:14:00] a little air lock on top with a water trap, and that CO2 can escape with no new oxygen coming in. There are also many little tops like this one here where it puts it down, presses it down with pressure and then again allows the CO2 to escape but no new oxygen to move in. [00:14:26] So it really doesn't matter. What's best is what works for you. It doesn't matter. We've gotta remember, people have been fermenting for thousands and thousands of years without any special gear or nice little jars. The fermentation will happen, those microbes will get in there and they'll acidify that garlic and as they do so, they keep it safe for a very long time to get you through the season. [00:14:51] So we'll see you at the next class. [00:14:56] Welcome back. Today we're going to show you [00:15:00] how to ferment garlic in honey. I wish I had some to show you what it looks like when it's done, but we tend to eat this pretty quickly once it's done. It's a bit of a wait. Usually it's about a, a month ferment and the longer you're able to wait, the more caramelized it gets. [00:15:20] So the cloves start looking darker and sort of reddish brown, and they're quite delicious. Now let's talk about why we would ferment honey. It's a wonderful place where culinary and functional foods collide, and you will get this wonderful garlicky honey that's great to use on toast if you like garlic on your toast. [00:15:47] It's great to put drizzle on something to finish it, to put in a salad dressing where you want a little garlicky sweetness. How I like to enjoy it is, [00:16:00] honestly, a big spoonful of honey with a couple of cloves or one clove of garlic in there. When I'm feeling a little tired or down, or I might feel like I'm getting a little bit of a cold, those first signs, I will scoop that up and take that, and usually helps me feel a little better. [00:16:17] So today we're gonna talk about how to make fermented garlic in honey. So it's cool. This is very different than a lacto-fermentation in that you're not relying on salt to get it going. Honey usually is already a fairly low pH. It can be anywhere from 3.9 or so to 5.5. If you remember, 4.6 is that wonderful magic point. [00:16:48] Most honey is under that 4.6, and this fermentation will help move it that way. So it's a very safe ferment. But what's going on [00:17:00] is you are getting all the microbes that are in the raw honey, so be sure to start with raw honey, pure honey, and all those microbes are gonna get going because honey is amazing. [00:17:11] It's preserved as is, and it can stay stable for years and years. Basically, in order to ferment with it, you're unstabilizing it. All right, how do we destabilize honey? This is just going to be a very simple thing. It's by messing with the moisture balance, and in this case, it's gonna be when we re- we crush our little garlic cloves, right? [00:17:36] They're, open them up, they're gonna release some moisture. And so to ferment the garlic, you're gonna just get these kind of crushed. Now some of these were already crushed while we were peeling them but I wanna make sure that I've got that that moisture content ready to release into the [00:18:00] honey because that is what's gonna get it going [00:18:11] Jeez, I really smashed that one. You don't need to smash them, just a light crush like this guy where it's just opened up. That's fine [00:18:31] Okay, now that I have this about that's probably two-thirds of the way full, a quarter of the way full, that's what you're aiming for on whatever vessel you decide to use because you need to leave some room for all this to happen. What you're gonna find is that this is gonna be one of your bubbliest ferments, and so when that honey starts bubbling over, it can get quite messy if you don't give it some [00:19:00] space. [00:19:01] So we've got this put in here, and we're just gonna pour on the honey until it covers the garlic [00:19:18] Well, this honey is nice and dark [00:19:29] All right, it's dribbling down there, through there nicely. You can wait for that to happen or give it some help. This honey is a little thick. If it's, more liquidy it will go faster, but we're not in a hurry here[00:20:00] [00:20:12] Our honey has worked itself down in through there, and everything is covered. And if, it takes a while, you can always check in an hour or two and make sure that your honey's fully covered. Oh, there's a fun bubble Ooh. It's really cool. Now we're just gonna [00:20:41] Tighten that lid and it's ready to go. Now, how you're gonna ferment it is you're gonna leave it on your counter, and for the first day you're gonna have it right side up. On the second day, you're gonna turn it upside down, and you're gonna repeat that [00:21:00] every day. You're gonna just turn it the opposite way. [00:21:04] And what that's gonna do is as this gets going, as that moisture gets going, that garlic is going to want to float and peek out over the top, and your job is to keep everything mixed up, keep everything under the honey. It's also going to get more liquid. You're gonna see that happening. The bubbles are gonna get wild. [00:21:27] If you get some tension in your lid, just give it a burp. You'll probably have to do that starting in a few days. And yeah, after about a month it will be wonderful. It will be just it will have mellowed out. You won't get that really pungent bite. You'll get this, this wonderful sweet garlic deliciousness. [00:21:52] And like I said, the longer you let it go, the more and more interesting this will become. So I hope you [00:22:00] ferment yourself some garlic honey, and we'll see you at the next lesson. [00:22:08] Here is the Roots and Harvest black garlic fermenter. It is called a fermenter but as you have learned or as you will learn, black garlic is actually a process of caramelization. It's the Maillard reaction that's happening over many days. So [00:22:35] This particular fermenter also, I haven't had a chance to experiment with it as a natto maker, but it will make natto. It will make Chinese sweet wines an- with rice. It'll make yogurt. And it has a simmer disinfection mode. So let's look at [00:23:00] what is inside. [00:23:11] Got our garlic back [00:23:21] Or pot, or things like natto, yogurt, or rice wine [00:23:30] There you go. That's it [00:23:36] In this video, I'm gonna show you how to make black garlic and talk to you about it just a little bit. So let's start out with what is black garlic? It's kind of garlic candy. It- if you've never had it, it's this delicious garlicky taffy, little molasses notes. Some people taste some licorice. To me it's a little bit figgy. [00:23:57] But it's [00:24:00] super delicious, and it turns out the antioxidant quality of garlic, which is already high, is increased about by tenfold with black garlic. So not only is it delicious, but it is super healthy. If you wanna get the benefits of eating garlic and don't like garlic breath and all that pungency, black garlic is also a, a wonderful choice for you. [00:24:27] Thing is you often see that it's called fermenting black garlic. Black garlic isn't technically fermented. Fermented would be that the microbes got in there and transformed things. There's an amazing transformation that takes place. It's probably enzymatic at, a little bit, but mostly what's going on is what's called the Maillard reaction. [00:24:51] And what that is it's a slow cook caramelization. And as that garlic caramelizes, it gets deeper and [00:25:00] deeper black. So it is something that is mostly given credit as coming from Korea. And some talk of it being done in clay pots in the summertime, just leaving your garlic after you've harvested out in this clay pot in the sun and getting black garlic, which makes sense to me. [00:25:26] It's only been... It's been much more recent where somebody patented it and, doing it in a modern way, which of course has then, made it widely available throughout the world. But it's quite expensive and you might see why here when we do this little class. So like I said, it's a long slow cooking process. [00:25:50] About three weeks, in fact. If... So what you're doing is you're getting that garlic to stay at a consistent [00:26:00] temperature and a really fairly high humidity rate, so that humidity is like 80, 90% relatively- relative humidity in that space that you're, I almost said fermenting. I just told you it wasn't a fermented product. [00:26:13] It's not a roasted product either. But in that space that you're transforming it in, we're- that's the word we're gonna use. So I read a paper and 60 is the lowest. At 50 it, it really takes so long, but 60 Celsius, which is, I got my little cheat sheet here, which is 140 Fahrenheit it's about three weeks. [00:26:36] The ideal space is somewhere in that 70 to 80 degrees Celsius, which is 58 to 176 degrees in Fahrenheit. At 90 degrees Celsius, which is about 194 Fahrenheit, what's gonna happen is you're gonna get these bitter flavors. What's happening is there's gonna be some burning of those [00:27:00] sugars. And so you wanna keep it under 80, maybe above 60. [00:27:07] Remember, I'm talking Celsius here, but that's a lot of what these gadgets are programmed to. In your notes I have all this written down. And then your other option... So I'm gonna show you a few different options, some with equipment you may have at home. And then the other is using a tool that is made just for the process of creating black garlic. [00:27:31] So let's start by just opening it up and looking at some black garlic, and what we're gonna be looking for, so this is our fermenter. Now, this fermenter will do natto, and yogurt, and will ferment rice and amazake, so it does have a few other uses. This is a little warm here [00:28:00] So let's check in on this. Hasn't been going quite as long as it should, but let's, we can still check in on it [00:28:16] Oh yeah, that's beautiful. And you can see that it's starting to separate from its husk here, its skin. It's nice and warm. Want it to be completely black. So we're gonna put this back in and let it go for a few more days. We're gonna eat this one because it's still gonna be tasty, and put the rest back in and let it go for a few more days [00:28:51] All right. So if you don't have a garlic fermenter, they're- that's what they're called the black garlic fermenter. We should call them, we [00:29:00] should call them a black garlic transformer though, right? And you have ... You are into the sourdough craze, and maybe you have a proofer, a bread proofer. [00:29:11] This is another tool you can use. You can set the temperature. Again, you're gonna wanna set it around 158 or so. And what you're gonna do is put your garlic in a little pot. And again, this is about keeping that humidity in there, so you want them nice and tight in there. So this'll fit four nicely. [00:29:45] I think we can actually get away with five. You want them tight, but you do want some airflow. And [00:29:56] We're gonna put that in there [00:30:00] and you're gonna set that up. Now the thing is your bread proofer will now be out of commission for two and a half, three weeks or so. And the other thing that you wanna know for any system that you use is that you will need to keep it in a place where the airflow can happen, whether this is out on a back porch or someplace. [00:30:27] Maybe you love the smell of garlic and you're fine with three weeks just having that be the essential oil of your home. But especially in the beginning as the allicin is really breaking down, you're going to get a lot of smells. So be sure to, think that through or your family might complain quite a bit. [00:30:50] Another option if you don't have either of these is a rice cooker. What you're gonna do is [00:31:00] you're gonna put your garlic in here. You can put it in there. What I like to do in the rice cooker is I like to wrap it in tinfoil because the rice cooker has a vent and you're trying to keep that moisture in there and that humidity. [00:31:17] You can also use tinfoil-wrapped garlic and put that in a dehydrator. Again, you're gonna choose around 158 degrees Fahrenheit or 60, 70, 80 degrees Celsius. Again, how that works is the longer or the lower the number of temperature, the longer it's gonna take. That higher number will go a little faster. [00:31:41] However don't let it get too hot. You might get some burnt flavors. The other thing, like I said, is a dehydrator. Then you really wanna keep a towel in there. Moisten it, keep it wrapped in some tinfoil so that you're gonna keep that moisture in there. I've read [00:32:00] online that folks do things in their oven. [00:32:03] I can't imagine keeping my oven busy for that long. And having that just be right there smack in my kitchen. So this is why black garlic is so expensive. It does take a lot of time and there is a little bit of equipment involved because basically you're cooking it very slowly. It's slow cooking. [00:32:24] It's like, a, a pit barbecue or something where you're just taking your time to really bring out those flavors. So I'm gonna also show you how to load a black garlic maker. So if you do have a black garlic maker, what you're gonna do is you're gonna load it up. Takes around two to three pounds. [00:32:53] The trick is that you want them nice and tight in there. And you [00:33:00] want them to fit. All right. [00:33:26] You'll notice that I'm trying not to cut them to get them to fit. However, some of them I do have to cut. You don't wanna cut down too low. You don't wanna open any of that up. You're wanting to keep those individual wrappings around each of the cloves intact. So that's why I'm fighting with it a little[00:34:00] [00:34:25] It's just a matter of pushing a button. We've got a few different choices. We're gonna, of course, pick solo garlic. Gonna push the function button. That's it. This garlic maker makes it in nine days, which is pretty cool, pretty amazing. The big thing to remember is just be sure to be aware it's gonna send off a lot of smells and odor, and you wanna keep it someplace with plenty of ventilation. [00:34:54] It's all good smells if you like garlic, but day in and day out, it can be a [00:35:00] lot. So hope you make some garlic, black garlic, and we'll see you at the next video

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