[music playing] Mandy, welcome back to the Culinary Connections kitchen.

So now we're going to talk about another item that you love to make, which is gingered carrots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a family favorite.

And it's very simple.

It's just carrots and ginger and then the salt water brine to ferment.

Basically, you just wash the carrots, wash your hands, wash the jar.

And then I'm julienning these carrots.

So you can do it this way.

You can also grate the carrot.

You know, you can ferment them this way.

The reason why I don't necessarily do this is because I like-- we like the texture of eating the carrots.

And also, my four-year-old likes to eat them long like this.

Yeah.

And so you were telling me earlier that the longer or the bigger the piece, the less mushy it's going to get.

Yeah.

It's going to hold its shape and its texture longer.

Yeah.

Yeah, it holds its integrity throughout the fermentation process longer.

So because we really like a soured-- we like a fermentation that's on-- something like this, a month.

A month long, at least.

And we just eat it all winter long, you know, and just stick them in-- well, and summer too.

But anytime for ginger carrots.

But yeah, so it's nice that whenever they have a little bit of texture.

We can also cut them into carrot sticks and ferment them.

We can ferment them whole even.

But it just takes longer and it's just not as flavorful with them as-- I found this to be the best texture.

So about the ginger now, you were telling me that you don't take the peel off.

You just go ahead and-- Yeah, I do.

Cut it as is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I do.

I just wash it and then I just grate it up just like this.

And it's-- I mean, I never notice the difference.

I mean, in the sense of noticing that there's skin or not skin.

What I do is I'll just grate it up like that.

And if I needed to do something where it needed to look pretty or something, then of course I'd take the skin off.

What's the ratio of carrot to ginger here?

Oh, OK, so that's a preference.

Personal preference.

OK.

So we eat a lot of ginger in our family.

So we do-- I would say, for a quart of this, maybe an inch of ginger.

But some people would do a half inch of ginger.

So it just depends on how much ginger you like.

I will say that the ginger is not as spicy, the longer it ferments.

So it does change.

It does change from the beginning to the end.

So I'm just going to go ahead and finish up some of these-- Well, and as you're slicing those up, those beautiful ribbons of carrot there, Yeah.

It came to my mind while you were talking, how do you keep track of how long everything has been fermenting?

Do you have a spreadsheet or something?

Yeah, I have a really cool thing in my phone called Notes.

OK. And I put it in there.

OK.

But before that, yeah, it was a notebook.

It used to be a notebook before telephone-- before cell phones, I mean.

OK. Not telephone but cell phones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, I just keep track-- you know, put the date and usually-- and also, but the other thing is keeping track.

You can't underestimate looking at it every day.

You're looking at it every day, you're agitating it, you're keeping an eye on it, you're smelling it, you're opening it up, you're working with it.

So you do have a relationship with it.

And if it smells bad, definitely, something's wrong.

But mold is what you don't want.

So if you see anything fuzzy, anything off-color, toss it.

Yeah.

Compost it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, so now we're going-- So yeah, I'm just going to finish putting these carrots.

And like I said, these are great.

We eat them.

We snack on these in our family a lot.

And if you have an upset stomach, my four-year-old knows now to ask for ginger carrots because it helps.

It just-- it this is-- ginger is a cure all in our family.

Yeah.

Well, I learned that in Jamaica.

I mean, they just-- they use ginger for everything.

And yeah, so that's-- they ferment.

They do a lot of ferments in Jamaica as well.

So this is-- I just have the ginger in here and the carrots.

And now I'm going to weigh it.

OK, I'm going to turn this on and tare the jar.

So now, I'm not weighing the jar in this instance.

And now I'm going to stuff the jar full of the ginger-- I mean, of the gingered carrots.

So now I'm just adding them to it.

Now, you can do this in a bowl versus a-- but in this case.

Now, I'm leaving headspace here so that way-- for off-gassing-- and that way, I don't have spillage.

And there's a lot of oxygen through here.

You can see there's a lot of-- so that will all disappear.

And whatever's left over.

OK, so now I have a correct weight of the ginger carrots themselves and now I'm going to add the water.

So now I'm just going to fill this up now.

Carrots aren't that watery so I am definitely going to make sure that when I push this down and put a weight on it-- so that's going to be under-- OK. Because it's an anaerobic-- Process.

Fermentation-- yes, process.

Exactly.

So it definitely-- you don't want oxygen.

And in fact-- OK, so the next step is to read the amount.

So I have 0.7 to 2kg.

We're doing kilograms, that's what this scale does.

So now I'm going to tare it and I'm looking for 0.72 in the salt.

And I ran out of salt but-- OK so 0.72 of this-- of the salt.

And now I'm going to-- I'm just going to close the lid and shake it.

OK. And so then that way I have-- the salt will dissipate.

The thing is will absorb-- dissolve, I should say.

You want to use a fine grain salt.

And you also want to do it by weight because salts are all different sizes and shapes.

And so if you go by weight, you can't go wrong.

OK.

So I'm going to put the lid on and give it a shake to get that-- so salt was all at the bottom, so now it's going to dissolve into the water and make the brine.

And now it's ready for the wait.

And I'm just going to stick-- this is a glass weight that I put on here.

And I'm just going to-- and you can get these anywhere, but you don't actually have to use this.

You can use plates, like I did in these ginger carrots over here.

And then if you do put the lid back on, you leave it on loosely so it can still off-gas because it is going to breathe, it is going to move, it is going to burp.

It's going to bubble, it's going to have CO2 development there.

So you just want to it-- you can just leave it there.

Or I've also used little pieces of material that you can put with a rubber band around, like it did over there with that ferment.

So yeah, there's just different ways to keep it just from things getting in it and then just so that it can it can breathe.

Right.

So this is gingered carrots.

This is gingered carrots.

You're going to leave them for a month and then they'll be ready to go, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is this is an example of ones that have been at least a month.

And if you want to smell that.

Wow.

Isn't that the best smell in the world?

It is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

So these have been a little over a month.

And you want to try some?

Sure.

OK.

I have a little fork.

A tiny fork.

And then-- yeah, this is-- you'll-- hmm.

Hmm.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

It's our absolute favorite.

And they're still so crunchy and great.

Right.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Something else we can learn about fermentation.

Thank you.