>> 
STANLEY: Hello. I'm Benjamen T. Stanley. I
am a local chef from Chicago. My day job--I'm
a research development chef for a small flavoring
company called Bell Flavors and Fragrances.
It's based on the Northbrook. But when I come
home at night, I like to experiment. I like
to do a lot of fun things. I like to kind
of teach myself a lot of different things.
So I'm basically going to do a run down on
fermentation and my personal experiences with
it, working with a--kind of learning how to
do things myself and think different fermented
products. And fermented food is just--it's
one of those products that a lot of people
don't really understand the process for, but
they loved them. Over, I think it's 1/3 of
the food consumers is fermented like anything
from soy sauce, tea, chocolate, coffee, sauerkraut,
kimchi, any kind of cheese. We consume over
15 million tons of cheese annually as a culture.
Over 22 million gallons of beer and other
fermented liquors like, you know, wine, any
kind of bacchus, stuff like that. And the
basic understanding of why these things happen
is generally unknown to the public. By definition,
fermentation is an anaerobic process. So basically,
it's the conversion of sugar or some kind
of carbohydrate plus some kind of bacteria
and it converts it into alcohol or combine
with energy along with other enzymes, other,
you know, various chemicals. In a food sense,
it doesn't have to be anaerobic. It can also
be aerobic. So large processing situations,
we'll add air, we'll add different temperatures,
we'll kind of control the conditions of the
way things ferment help, kind of facilitate
that fermentation to help the growth of organisms,
to help them thrive, to help them feed. So
this is the chemical reaction. It looks pretty
difficult. It looks kind of weird. Basically,
sugar--any kind of sugar, glucose, fructose,
sucrose. You add it to your microbial agent
like yeasts, molds, other kind of bacteria
and they release alcohol, just basic ethanol,
carbon dioxide and some kind of energy unit
whether it be heat, whether at the--some kind
of different bi-product, CO2 and stuff like
that. Why this is an important process? Fermentation
is probably one of the oldest methods of preservation.
There's quite a few different methods that
are tried and true. First one is salting.
What salt does is it basically draws moisture
out of your products and also inhibits microbial
growth. So it helps inhibit, you know, different
organisms from growing and stuff like that.
But it's usually the fungicidal, spores, stuff
like that, that it helps to prevent. So what
you're doing is the salt will pull the moisture
out. It'll pull out the water which is, you
know, breeding ground for a lot of different
organisms, stuff like that. And then it will
create this boundary between the products
and the air. So the different organisms can't
penetrate to that salt solution. Another one
is smoking--same idea. The smoke is antimicrobial.
You're basically enveloping a product in smoke,
you're creating this kind of crust that goes
over your product and it's helping keep the
air in getting into your product, it's helping
keep those organisms from fermenting the product.
And then the other one is drying or dehydrating.
Again, you're pulling the moisture out and
moisture is what helps facilitate this growth.
Fermentation is involved in a lot of other
processes, kind of like ethanol preservation
where the use of alcohol is used to inhibit
growth. The high levels of alcohol would kill
organisms, as well as lactic acid preservation
which is what you see in cheese, the high
acid levels, the same with vinegar, pickling.
The high acid levels will only permit certain
organisms to grow but not others. Fermenting
a product--there's two different kinds of
techniques we used to get the process going
to get it kind of started, facilitated, inoculated,
you might say. The first one is wild fermentation
which basically just leaving a product out,
exposing it to air, exposing it to anything
that's flying around the room. A lot of yeasts
are present in everyday flowers, on the outside
are fruits and vegetables, an outer peel.
Anything that's really high in sugar, it will
attract some kind of organism to come and
feed on. The other way is to have human input.
Basically, human input provides a more controlled
environment that we can change and affect
the final outcome of our product. So, what
they'll do is they'll actually develop a certain
product, let's say, yogurt. You know, they
have this yogurt that they tried it through.
They like the way it taste. What they can
do is take their original base, [INDISTINCT]
heat it to kill all the organisms that are
in there and then re-introduced that the yogurt
had passed the flavor and the consistency
that they want to that heated base that basically
starts out with a clean pallet and only incorporates
the organisms that they wanted. And they do
the same method for making the yogurt that
will come out, for the most part, the exact
same way as the original one as they do follow
the same process. Wild fermentation is a little
bit more unreliable. There's a lot of different
things in the area that contribute to it,
but that also will develop the most interesting
flavors. Stuff like sourdough breads. You
can make a sourdough bread in San Francisco
and it'll taste completely different than
the sourdough bread in Chicago because of
the temperature or the environment, different
yeast that are on the air, stuff like that.
Other factors in the end-product, we have
temperature, environment, season, humidity,
your experimentation basically. What your
type of processes and the flow at how things
get done. Ms. Jo over here just kind of builds
closer a little bit, to each one in wine making
clarification. If you take out some of the
salads in your product, it will affect the
final fermentation of the product and then
you'll have less [INDISTINCT], less yeast
because the yeast kind of stay on the sides
on the grapes till you pull the skins out,
you're actually pulling out some of the actual
organisms that are doing the fermentation.
Temperature shock, whether that organism has
the right temperature to grow, usually about
bio-temperature, the perfect temperature for
the organisms to dry. If you make it go really
cold, they won't kill them, but they'll kind
of go asleep. They kind of won't do anything
or get lazy. They won't actually ferment anything.
You raise it up too high, you'll kill them
and then they can't do anything. Other minerals,
other things that can help facilitate the
growth whether the oxygen, different minerals,
different kinds of salt, some kind of phosphate
or nitrate, and as well as, you know, the
microbiological environment whether they're
yeasts and molds and everything are in the
surrounding area whether what you're trying
to inoculate with is able to compete with
what's already in the air. Traces and history,
I guess that is one of the oldest processes
where preserving foods and it starts almost
as old as 12 to 20--12,000 years ago. Mead
was one of the first products that originated
and it's basically just a fermented honey
drink. Honey collecting as early as 12,000
years ago, in areas like Egypt and Samarian
areas and for most part, a lot of these things
were discovered by accident. Honey, for example,
is high in sugar so, you know, it is an attractant
for these yeasts and molds and other things.
They will collect the honey. They mix it with
water and make a drink and they didn't have
refrigeration so they just let it sit out.
While as it sit out, they started to notice,
you know, little things, changes going on
to it, they started to notice bubbles come
out, they started to see discoloration, different
things growing out. And this visual queue
is originally how fermentation happened. Just
seeing a bout of change and tasting it as
it changed, to kind of, you know, see the
differences and see whether they liked it
or not. Soy sauce dates back to over 2,500
years ago. Until the 17th century, with the
creation of the microscope, it was generally
unknown why these things happened. People
just started doing it in their homes, in their
basements and they found that it tasted good
and they just went off with that and started
making chesses and started making alcohols.
They don't really understand why. And when
the microscope was created, they started to
notice these little organisms, different things
inside of the foods. Well, it's science and
at the time, it was such a new concept that
it was generally disregarded. A lot of scientists
kind of refused the fact that this could even
happen, that there were some kind of small
living organisms and the things that they're
eating and they just--they didn't even believe
it and they completely rejected it outright.
It wasn't even until about the 19th to 20th
century when Louis Pasteur actually decided
to make this connection between what was growing
and the changes that were done. The way that
he came upon this process was that a company
that was a making a beet juice alcohol was
having a lot of variations in his product.
And he didn't understand why. He'd been making
it the same way for a number of years and
it was just coming out different every single
time he was making it, it was very unreliable,
it was affecting his business. So he gave
it to the chemist, Louis Pasteur to test stuff.
Well, upon looking at the microscope, he noticed
that from older samples of the alcohol versus
newer ones, there were different things, different
organisms, different small bacteria that were
present. So he actually came up with a method
of pasteurization which we all know is just
heating a product to kill that microflora
and then you reintroduced it with the specific
starter that you wanted. Some benefits of
fermentation; preservation, it preserves not
only the product itself but it also preserves
nutrients. It will actually increase the way
that the body--the body can kind of use some
of the nutrients especially like vitamin B,
vitamin C, calcium. It prevents them from
being destroyed by sitting in for a long period
of time. It kind of prevents the degradation
of the product itself. The digestive aide,
a lot of the products if they are not heated,
they still have these live cultures and it
still has its microflora and because this
microflora can survive very acidic environments,
it still is highly active in your intestinal
tract, in your body system. So as you go through
your system and often kind of make a small
home in your intestinal tract, it will actually
help you digest foods, it will help you absorb
nutrients better, it will help you absorb
different nutrients that your body normally
can't breakdown, a lot of proteins, a lot
of amino acids that your body has a really
hard time breaking down. The organisms will
do the work for you. Flavor development, there's
a specific chemical reaction that happens
when, you know, you're doing this fermentation
and you're developing a lot of different flavors
through the use of enzymes, through the use
of creating acids and alcohols. It has antioxidant
properties that actually opens up that antioxidants
that your body can use them a little bit better.
It's a fortifier. Like I said, it creates
vitamin B. It removes toxins. The process
of fermentation is used for ingredients like
coffee. When coffee is grown, it has a cherry
on the outside of it, you pick the cherry
and let it sit out so that fruit can ripen,
kind of fall off and then you take the beans
from it. And that helps removes some of the
toxins that are associated with the cherry.
Same is true with like certain types of cassava.
In Africa, they have to take cassava and soak
it in water to help pull that cyanide that
is present in the vegetable out. Once they're
soaked in the water, these toxins come out
and they can actually cook the cassava and
eat it. Again, you know, there's a processing
aide, tea is another example, when they pull
the leaves, they let them sit out to dry and
ferment. This allows the tea to develop more
flavor, to have less moisture in it, lasts
longer. And now I'm going to go over some
specific examples. Vegetable ferments. They're
basically usually using a salt brine to help
protect the vegetables from rotting. The salt
will pull the moisture out of the vegetable
and actually create its own shell for the
vegetable. Multiple changes occur in one thing.
I use the example of sauerkraut. When you
first start sauerkraut, you add salt to your
cabbage, the salt will pull the moisture out,
it will create this barrier for your sauerkraut
and then it will only allow certain organisms
to grow. You're using just straight water
and salt, only the coliform can grow and once
the coliform grows, it proliferates, it feeds,
it will start taking the carbohydrates from
the cabbage, you know, it will output a certain
level of acid. Once the acid starts to get
too high, it actually diminishes, you know,
the coliform that's in the system and then
it will leave the kind of stuff will come
in and started feeding on that acid. Again,
it goes up, it proliferates, and it starts
to die down and then finally, lactobacillus
which is one of the most common, comes in
and it will start to create lactic acid which
is that sharp--kind of cheesy sensation that
you get from a lot of products like cheese,
sauerkraut, kimchi. This is a basic, a very
traditional prop for making sauerkraut. Basically,
what you do is you take your salted cabbage
which can be--sauerkraut can be anything.
Any kind of vegetable can be made into sauerkraut.
You take your vegetable and you mix it with
salt, spices, you know, you use onions, apples,
bay leaves, peppercorns, stuff like that.
You mixed it with the salt and now what you're
going to do is you're going to take a very,
very heavy weight, push it on top of those
vegetables. What the weight does is it helps
to push the moisture out of the vegetables
and leave it at the bottom. If you want this
to be an anaerobic environment so that air
doesn't affect how you think to mix as you
want the molds, you want the actual sauerkraut
to develop anaerobic environment. So once
you weigh it, all you got to do is put a little
bit of salt water around the room of the kraut.
And what the salt water does is, again, helps
keep the microbes into entering into your
kraut and [INDISTINCT]. And you let it sit
for anywhere from one week to up to a year
when that sit, unrefrigerated, you want to
leave it at the ideal temperature for growth
which is anywhere between 85 and 100 degrees.
It's kind of dark, you can't really see it,
but this is an example of sauerkraut that
I made today that you guys are going to be
trying. It's basically just white cabbage,
it's got some onions and apples, some different
spices and stuff like that. And this is–-I
put in the bowl added salt to it, you generally
add about 5% to 10% solution of salt to your
sauerkraut. And the salt will determine how
long it sits for. If you get more salt, then
you will take your sauerkraut and age it for
a longer amount of time at a lower temperature.
If you get less salt, then you're going to
age it for a shorter amount of time at a higher
temperature. Kimchi, it's one of the most
popular condiments of Korea. It said that,
every Korean on an individual basis consumes
about a quarter pound of kimchi a day which
really adds up by the end of the year. It's
a very, very artisanal product. It's made
by almost every family, for the family. It's
not really something that you go out and buy
as often, that is traditionally nowadays with
conveniences and stuff like that, you can
get it mass produced. But, usually it was
something that was a very home orientated
part of the culture. They come home, they
harvest their own vegetables, they make the
kimchi out of whatever vegetables they had
available. They mixed it with salt and spices
and generally, chili pepper is used, they
use seafood, they use anything. The big difference
between kimchi and sauerkraut is that when
you make kimchi, you soaked your vegetables
ahead of time in salt water. What this does
is it pulls the moisture out, fuse the salt
into the vegetables and it also kind of helps
keep the crisp texture of that kimchi. So
this is soaking some cabbage to make it for
the kimchi. Again, this is about a 5% salt
solution. Once you're done soaking it, you
pull out, chopped it, mix it with various
vegetables. I use radish, carrot, a couple
of different kinds of greens, you generally
used ginger, garlic, red pepper. Then you're
going to take it and put it in--I use--this
is very similar to the sauerkraut prop. So
you can do it at home and just put it in any
kind of container. Usually you want to use
a kind of hard plastic. You don't want to
use metal because the metal will actually
react to the acids and kind of create a teeny
taste your food. So any kind of plastic, any
kind of food crate--usually the big white
buckets that you find as long as it's never
been used is a good option. Now what you're
going to do is you're going to put a weight
on top to bring that moisture level to help
protect your vegetables. This is an example
of a fruit kimchi. They are made the exact
same style. Again, you take your fruit, cut
them off and salt them. If you can't soak
them, brine them if you want, but it's not
necessary. And you got to take them--weigh
them down. Bean ferments, a lot of people
are familiar with soy sauce and miso, tempeh
[INDISTINCT] nattos which is a Japanese [INDISTINCT]
fermented with whole soy beans. Because of
the protein content, they are very difficult
for the human body to digest. So we use the
process of fermentation to help beak down
these proteins so that they're are easily
digested by the body. This is kind of a simple
diagram of how soy sauce is made. Basically,
you take your ingredients, the soybean, wheat,
and some kind of mold that's already been
established from a different process. Usually,
the same molds that they use for making rice
wine, sake is also as present in soy sauce.
What we'll do is put in an open air container
and let proliferate, kind of grow and then
after they do that, take it, put it in a container,
let it sit for a specific time temperature
for about six months. After it sits for a
couple of months, they'll take it, they'll
press it to get all the liquid out, strain
it, that's how you have soy sauce. That's
a nationally fermented soy sauce. They also
have a method which is chemically induced
but much quicker. It usually takes about a
couple of hours, but they'll take soy beans
and they'll add hydrochloric acid to it. This
hydrolyses the vegetables and then it creates
that kind of meaty taste to it. You'll notice
that taste is very chemically, it doesn't
taste sweet. There's a lot of flavors in that--kind
of just don't exist when you have this chemically
made soy sauce. Tempeh is one of the more
interesting products. Yes?
>> Do you have any idea about the Kikkoman
fermented soy sauce, everybody has the stories
about Kikkoman?
>> STANLEY: Kikkoman is actually one of the
few that are anturally fermented.
>> Okay.
>> STANLEY: A lot of the--a lot of the stuff
you buy in the store naturally brewed. A lot
of the stuff that's in more industrious scale,
the stuff that you buy, you're processing
stuff like that, is not.
>> Okay.
>> STANLEY: Tempeh is another [INDISTINCT]
ferment which is basically cooked soy beans
that are allowed to cool. They have starter
added to it and they sit in an open air environment.
What happens is that the starter will proliferate
with the addition of air, warmth and it will
start to spread, you know, create this kind
of mold. What the mold will do is it will
actually take all the soy beans and connect
them. Mold will grow across the entire Tempeh
and actually pull it together to be this firm
brick. And actually, it will develop very
earthy and kind of mushroom taste to it that
are often desirable for vegetarian community
because it has that texture to it and it can
absorb a lot of flavor, and it has that kind
of meaty texture to it. Dairy ferments, lactobacilli
which is the common bacteria that are in dairy
ferments. They eat the lactose present in
the dairy and they turn into lactic acid.
Lactose is basically an ingredient that's
in most dairy that a lot of humans have a
hard time digesting because we do not have
the enzyme that breaks down this lactose.
So, that's why if you're lactose intolerant,
a lot of people that are lactose intolerant
will find that if they eat an aged cheese
or if they eat a yogurt that's heavily fermented,
it doesn't bother them as much that's because
the fermentation--the lactobacilli are actually
taking those enzymes that you can't process
and do it for you. Some examples; buttermilk,
yogurt, butter, all sorts of cheeses, kefir
which is another fermented yogurt product.
Yogurt, more so now than previously, starting
to be promoted with having probiotics; as
having these organisms in it that are helping
your digestive tract or helping you process
your food, they're helping you speed up your
metabolism. This is not a new concept; this
has been around for thousands of years. It
actually went away with the invention of pasteurization
because people were afraid of these things
that were in their food, they're afraid that
they're going to make them sick. If you take
yogurt and you just make it normally, you
actually have these probiotics, so they have
these digestive enzymes. As you pasteurize
it, you're killing all those things; or, what
that'll do is add the starters to it while
turning the yogurt, heat it after it's turned
the yogurt to kill everything to make it safer
human consumption as you know, safe as in--meaning
not exactly safer but more well received by
the public. When you're making yogurt, you
only need to add a little bit of the starter
to get started. If you add too much or actually
crowd everything, you know, it will cause
less of the bacteria to grow but more of the
acid remains. You have a very, very sour astringent
yogurt. It's a relatively quick product to
make; it only takes about eight to 12 hours
depending on how long you sit at the temperature
where the bacteria proliferate at, it will
affect how sour the product is. So, generally
what you do is you heat your yogurt up, this
is me heating the yogurt up. Heat up to about
180 degrees first, heat them out, sorry, start
out with the milk base. You can choose how
much fat is in your milk base you're getting.
A thinner yogurt will have less fat, very
thick yogurt will be high in fat; will go
up to 40% fat. Still have correct fermentation
of yogurt. Add again by heating up the product
to 180 degrees. This isn't necessary, what
this does is it helps create a thicker yogurt;
helps kind of loosen up the structure of the
proteins so that when bacteria come, it will
help tie them a little bit better. This is
the yogurt after it's finished; so after you
heat up to 180 degrees, you're going to cool
it down to about a 100 to a 110 which is the
ideal temperature to make yogurt at. You're
going to add your starter and then you just
kind of try to leave it at that temperature
for a long period of time. I guess, at eight
to 12 hours up to 24. The longer you leave
it, the more sour your product will be. So,
if you want to less sour product, you leave
it for eight hours. You want a more sour product,
you leave it for 20 hours. Well, what happened
is, the enzymes will breakdown and will start
to sour the product and it will make lactic
acid, and it will actually thicken the yogurt
up. Cheese is a little bit different because
you don't actually need the fermentation product
to make the cheese initially. You need the
fermentation product to help ripen the cheese
afterwards. So, what we're doing is we're
adding acid to some kind of milk base and
heating it to a certain temperature that will
actually cause the milk to separate into curds
and whey; the whey is a liquid and curd is
the solids. You can also use rennet which
is an enzyme as apparent, a lot of animal
stomachs--a lot linings of different animals.
And then what you'll do is you'll strain the
whey off, you'll leave the solids and then
you'll just let them sit. And that's how you'll
get the fermentation product of your cheese.
You can add different strains of bacteria
to get different kinds of cheeses and that's
why there's so many different cheeses on the
market because depending on the area they're
from, depending on what's in the environment,
that's where the flavors are coming from.
Blue cheese is one of the most notorious.
It's a very, very, rapidly growing organism
that spreads very quickly. So, if you're in
an environment that made blue cheese, you
most likely will have everything else in the
environment turn into blue cheese or have
that same mold on it within a couple of days
because it's that rapid, it takes over with
that any other bacteria. Grain ferments; also
very popular, we're going to talk about sourdough
breads. What happens is, when you add the
addition of water to grains, you're helping
activate the yeast that are already naturally
on the grains, and you're helping to break
down those grains to help your body process
them a little bit better. The addition of
water will cause the yeast to activate; they
will actually start to eat the carbohydrates
of the grain themselves and help loosen them,
like they're converted into a more digestible
product. This yeast are found pretty much
everywhere, may be kind of sugar, if you've
ever looked at some kind of plum or grape?
That white film on the outside of your fruit
is actually yeast; they're feeding on the
sugars of the fruit itself. So this is how
you start a basic sourdough bread. All you
really do is just take flour and water and
put them together, put a cover over it and
let it sit. What I did for mine is I actually
used potato water. I cooked some potatoes,
after I cooked the potatoes, I saved the water
and I turned that into a sourdough bread.
That extra starch from the potatoes just give
something extra for the yeast to heat on.
So what you'll do is, you mix those two products
together, let it sit at the ideal temperature
again from 80 to 110 degrees in an open air
container. You want to leave it open air at
the beginning because this is where the yeast
are going to come from, they're going to come
from the air. You can add baker's yeast if
you want but that kind of defeats the purpose
of having this sourdough that's made with
things that are naturally occurring in the
environment. You have that sit overnight with
the temperature–-the ideal temperature,
the next day you come back to it, you remove
half of it, and then add the same amount of
flour and water that you removed. It's introduced
again, newer yeast helps add some more carbohydrates
so that the yeast can feed up and proliferate
more. You do this for about three to four
days until you start to see a bubble. Once
it bubbles, then you have a solid starter.
That bubbling means that the yeast are active,
they're creating lactic acid which is where
that sourness is going to come from, and it
means that, they're going to continue to be
active as long as they keep being fed, as
long as you keep the phytonutrients of heat
and sugar for them, they'll keep going. So
these starters can pretty much be kept indefinitely.
Some of the sourdoughs from the San Francisco
are over a hundred years old because they
started sourdough a hundred years ago. They
take out half of it, make bread, add more
flour and water, and they just keep making
it everyday using that same starter. And then
over time, it evolves a lot of different flavors
from a lot of different organisms. This is
another fermentation practice which, if you
watch my Twitter, this is one of the first
things that I have kind of experiments with,
is fermented oatmeal. You take any kind of
oats, soak it in water overnight, and the
yeast present in the oatmeal will actually
kind of breakdown starch and will result in
a very, very kind of creamy gelatins oatmeal.
Fruit Ferments, we see this with wine. We
see this with different kinds of root beers,
we see this with–-I guess it would be grain,
we see this is as normal beer, as well that
the addition of fruit is normal in making
normal beers. What are you doing is basically
again taking those naturally occurring yeast
in the air and they're feeding off the sugar
of the fruit. Specific sugars would kind of
help change for the final fermentation and
add the final flavor. So, if you're using
honey, if you're using molasses, if you're
using sorghum, if you're using brown sugar,
each one of these sugars has a different flavor
profile and different types of organisms that
be attracted to, let's say, honey then brown
sugar. That's pretty much it. I have a bunch
of products here that we're all going to taste.
I have a fruit kimchi that's made with pineapple,
grapes, cilantro, ginger, some other spices;
again, let it sit it for a week. I have a
normal kimchi that's made in a very traditional
style, this has radish, some greens, chili
pepper, garlic, ginger. I have homemade sauerkraut
that has the addition of apples and onions
to it. I have some yogurts. I have a full
fat yogurt that's made of 40% fat. Kind of
comes out to the consistency of sour cream.
I also have a normal fat, with a 5% fat yogurt.
I also have some butter that was made with
the yogurt; let me talk about that process
if you like. And I also have some--it's a
ginger beer recipe but I made it with galangal.
Basically, took ginger, shred it up, mixed
it with sugar and water to have the environment
so that the yeast can grow. Once they started
to grow, you add that to a base ginger and
sugar. Once you put on that base, you add
the starter that you made with the active
cultures then you put it in an anaerobic environment
by putting into a bottle and letting it sit.
This will start to create--they will eat the
sugars and create alcohol and CO2, and that's
when the carbonation comes from because they're
concentrating that CO2 into the bottle; so,
it can't escape, so, it's infusing itself
into the water to create carbonation. So,
yeah, if you guys want to come up and have
a taste some stuff. That's pretty much it
for the fermentation talk. In case you have
any questions you guys [INDISTINCT].
