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The thing about salt in lacto-ferments really caught me off guard
I've been messing around with fermentation for maybe 6 months now, just doing hot sauces and pickles. But I read this article on a food science blog last week that said most people use way too little salt for safe fermentation, especially in warmer climates. They had a chart showing that below 2% salt by weight, bad bacteria can actually outcompete the good lactobacillus. I live in Florida where it's hot year round, so I always just eyeballed it with a tablespoon or so. Turns out my last batch of pepper mash was only at 1.8% because I didn't account for the water weight in the veggies. I checked it with a scale after reading that and felt dumb. Anyone else ever mess up their brine ratios because they were guessing instead of weighing?
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jordan3057h ago
Okay but hold on, I gotta push back on this a little. I've been fermenting in my kitchen here in Miami for like three years now and I barely ever break out the scale. I just do the old school tablespoon per quart of water and my stuff comes out fine. You're telling me that for hundreds of years people in hot countries were weighing their salt with precision scales? No chance. They were just eyeballing it and tasting it. I think that 2% rule is more of a modern food safety guideline than some kind of natural law. My grandma's pepper mash recipe from Cuba uses a specific palmful of salt and nobody ever died or got sick. Plus the whole point of fermentation is that the good bacteria are already everywhere in your kitchen and on the peppers, so they're gonna win most of the time unless you're doing something really crazy like no salt at all.
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