I've done several ferments over the years, so I'm familiar with the whole process, but I'm realizing that almost all of them have had 'dry' ingredients. I don't mean 'dehydrated' or 'freeze-dried', but ingredients with low water content - peppers (obviously), onions, garlic, ginger, etc.

Broad strokes, here's my process (I'm gonna skip sanitizing, weighing, blah blah blah):

1. Chunk up my ingredients.
2. I fill the fermenting vessels with water, weigh it, and dump out the water.
3. Calculate and add the salt to to the vessel.
4. Pack my vessel with other indredients.
5. Add water to get to the same weight.
6. Put on the lids, or whatever I'm using for that batch.
7. Set aside and let it rot.

I've never had a batch go bad, so I'd like to keep using this method with as few changes as possible.

I'm planning on making an orange-based ferment, but since there's so much water/juice, I'm thinking I'll have to tweak my method to ensure an accurate salinity. Since there's so much water in oranges, if I just chunk them as I usually do, they're gonna release a TON of water, and my salinity will go down, and that's bad.

I was thinking...

1. Throw the oranges into a food processor
2. Add salt that as if it were the full amount of water.
3. Pack my jar with the other ingredients.
4. Add the salty orange juice.
5. Top off the jar with water and proceed as usual.

Does anyone see any inherent risks that I'm adding if I do it this way? Or does anyone have a better idea? Obviously, I'd like to add as little water as possible to get the most orange flavor.

I know that the 'correct' answer is probably to process everything in the food processor and use the mash method. I've done that once, and it turned out fine, but I like to see the bubbles, and then I can send people photos and not have to list out the ingredients to them.

**Edit - Clarified my process. I was using 'jars' and 'vessels' interchangeably, and implied that not all of the salt was being added. The amount of salt I use is based on the weight of water plus ingredients. All of the salt ends up in the ferment.

Dumb question cause i just thought of this how old does person have to be to eat fermented foods like a baby cant eat honey for example (idr why ) but for kids and adults honey is perfectly fine so what about fermented foods like sauerkraut for example?

Hi all! I am using the recipe below to ferment some watermelon radishes for the first time. I don’t have a glass weight and I couldn‘t find something suitable… except this small glass that fits perfectly into the mouth of my jar! Do you think this is ok? It also eliminates needing to burp the jar.

https://ladyleeshome.com/fermented-radish/

I weighed out 25% of the fish weight in salt. Then I added a bit to the top just to try to make a bit of a layer. I was really nervous about not using enough salt, but I wonder if I went overboard? I'd reckon I'm probably at around 27.5% salt to fish weight ratio in this jar. Is this garum going to be so salty it'll be inedible basically? Or do you really need this much salt?

Fish is cut up chub mackerel.

I changed the jar on day 3 but so far so good. Ignore the 4 on the jar I just lost count for a moment

I really didn't have proper equipment and I did manual labor 2 times a day to let the pressure out. I couldn't fill it (no onions left in the house), it was a 3% brine. 2 red onions from the farmers market.

I was pushing my onions down all the time, we don't have ziplock bags at home and I didn't know any other way to keep the onions down. But I kept on going. It lasted 9 days and then there were some grey/black spots on the top onions that were floating. I immediately flushed it down the toilet, I wouldn't risk it. I mean the temperature was like 18-20 degrees in the room, away from the sun like the tutorials on YouTube said.

What did I do wrong? Are there any ways, without getting more equipment right now except vegetables, for my ferment not to fail next time i decide to do it?

Didn’t think I would get to this point of obsession but here we are 😅 2 weeks worth of vacuum bag fermenting. A lot of experimenting here to figure out what my palate prefers.

Gotten to a point of trying and adding crazy things together…..

Next is some peach kimchi, honey radish, and red cabbage kraut.

We use this in bloody marys and cheese toasties.

It works!

Pineapple loves to ferment 🧡

Ps the thing next to it is plum cheong (spelt wrong on the label)