[Music] let me address some of the ways that fermentation transforms food um I'm just going to start with flavor because it's the flavor of fermentation that first caught my attention and you know fermentation creates compelling flavors you walk into a gourmet food store anywhere and what you're going to find primarily are products of fermentation you know many foods that maybe you haven't even thought of as fermented or products of fermentation you know almost every individual in almost every part of the world eats and drinks products of fermentation every day you know bread is fermented cheese's
fermented cured meats are fermented all the condiments that we might put on our sandwiches involve fermentation in that relay rely upon a vinegar to stabilize them coffee is fermented chocolate is fermented vanilla is fermented certain styles of tea are fermented alcoholic beverages are all fermented sauerkraut kimchi and pickles are fermented so you know fermentation is is is is really everywhere creates these compelling flavors not everybody loves every flavor of fermentation many of them are what could be described as a quired taste and not everybody necessarily acquires every taste of fermentation and you know certain flavors
of fermentation you know are really only accessible to people who have been exposed to them from from early on in in in in their lives but but fermentation creates compelling flavors and once you sort of you know learn to appreciate a flavor of fermentation you know they tend to be flavors that we keep on seeking out you know as you could notice in any I'm cheese store you know the stinkier cheese is you know not everybody loves but the people who love them are very very devoted to them and you know keep on coming back
and and and buying more cheese so so flavor I think we just have to start with flavor then beyond flavor on preservation you know for us in the 21st century with our refrigerators and freezers it's hard to appreciate you know just how important fermentation has been to food preservation but most of us can't even imagine you know how we could feed ourselves without a refrigerator you know what do you do with your with your perishable foods but obviously if we were having you know this conversation 100 years ago none of us would have refrigerators you
know then we might think about canning as a method that people use to preserve food an old-time method of preserving food but turns out that canning is a 200 year old technology the patent was issued in 1812 to in in France to Nicolas Appert and in France they still call a canning operettas ation because they remember the name of the person who you know invented this this clever process of sterilizing food inside of a jar so you know if you remove refrigerators freezers and sterilizing food in a jar there are not many methods of food
preservation you can dry food you know drying works not by sterilizing the food like canning does but rather by depriving the microorganisms present on the food of the water that they need in order to function and the other way that people have historically preserved food is using fermentation and specifically the acidification that results from many fermentation processes in order to preserve the food so examples of this would include the fermentation of s vegetables like we'll be doing today and that's a you know through the fermentation lactic acid develops and it's the lactic acid that stabilizes
the vegetables and you know in our contemporary society most of us might store the sauerkraut in the refrigerator because we have one you know but whenever you hear the people that the stories of you know agrarian people in temperate places you know trying to survive through a long winter without refrigeration you know sauerkraut is a survival food you know cheese and yogurt and kefir and all the other forms of fermented milk are all strategies for preserving milk salami z' and other kinds of cured meats or strategies for preserving meat so I'm so fermentation has been
very important throughout history you know to our ability to you know preserve you know the the over abundance that happens at certain times of the year to feed us through the periods of a relative scarcity [Music]
