Sandor Katz on the Art of Fermentation

Hey, guys. Cribben Galvan from the Gut Health Gurus podcast. I'm a food scientist. My background. My sidekick, James Shadrick is unfortunately busy today on another appointment. He's double booked himself. So I'm flying solo and kind of winging it with my audio and video. But I have an absolutely amazing guest for you today. His name is Sandor Katz. I'm pretty sure if you're in the gut health and fermentation world, you would have come across Sandor, his work, his books, his inspiration, because I would say he's been one of the guys that's been flying the fermentation flag for quite some time. Sandor, firstly, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on. It's my pleasure to be with you, Sandor.

What I typically like to do, set the scene for my audience is to ask the question, really, and to get it from the horse's mouth, for want of a better word. Who is Sandor Katz?

Well, I think what brings me here is that I am a fermentation revivalist, and I got interested in obsessed with fermentation about 25 years ago, 26 years ago now, and went down the rabbit hole and learned about fermenting lots of different things, started noticing how good fermented foods made me feel, shared the products of fermentation that I was making with people in my life. Ended up getting invol to teach workshops in fermentation that led me to writing a book about fermentation. And I've been full time, I'd say, for the last 16 years as a fermentation educator, you know, traveling, you know, all around, I mean, all around the US And North America and, you know, increasingly other parts of the world, just sharing with people easy techniques for fermenting in home kitchens, restaurant kitchens, and of course, learning about fermentation, because fermentation is practiced in, you know, infinite, infinitely varied permutations in culinary traditions in every part of the world. So, you know, always learning more about fermentation, always experimenting in my home kitchen, meeting lots of other people who are interested in, in this phenomenon and just always, you know, curious to broaden the context for thinking about it and, you know, learning new, different kinds of ferments. So that's not necessarily the totality of who I am, but I think that, you know, that gives us enough to work with.

Absolutely. That's a wonderful intro. And what I'd like to do is just let's jump in a time machine and take a step back. I think you mentioned 14 years ago that first moment when you, I guess, was there a particular health concern or something that led you to discover fermented foods?

Well, I mean, like most people, I grew up with some fermented foods. So, you know, it's not that they, you know, that they suddenly became part of my life where they hadn't been part of my life before. I mean, I. I guess I would say that there are, you know, kind of three main, you know, sort of periods of my deepening interest in fermentation. So, you know, as a kid, I wasn't thinking about fermentation at all. But, you know, my grandparents who were in my life were immigrants from Eastern Europe. And, you know, we always ate pickles. I mean, my grandmother wasn't making them. We were buying them at a corner delicatessen. But, you know, that that was just part of the, like, the flavor palette that I grew up with. And I loved pickles. Pickles were one of my favorite foods. So, you know, something predisposed me to, you know, really, really enjoying this particular flavor of fermentation, which I think. I think sour flavors are very accessible to kids. And as a kid, like, I love, loved, loved the sour fermented pickles that we would eat. When I was in my mid-20s, which would be in the late 80s, I spent a couple of years experimenting with a macrobiotic diet. And I mean, not really for any particular reason. Like, I was just, you know, in a phase of life where I was, you know, interested in trying different things. And one of the things that macrobiotics really emphasizes is the digestive benefit of pickles and other live ferments, ferments that are not cooked and after their fermentation. And during this period, I started noticing that these pickles that I had loved my entire life, that I had been eating my entire life, that when I would eat them and even, like, looking at them, thinking about them right now, talking about them, like, I could feel my little salivary glands under my tongue squirting out saliva. And in a very tangible way, I started associating these foods with getting my digestive juices flowing. But I still really wasn't making any ferments myself. Like, up to there were, you know, sort of lots of high quality options easily available. But in 1993, I moved from New York City, which was my hometown, to rural Tennessee, where I still live. And one of the things I got involved with in this change of life, moving to a rural area, was keeping a guard. And this was nothing I had ever done before. And, you know, I was such A naive city kid that I had never really thought about the idea that in a garden, all of the cabbages would be ready at around the same time. All of the radishes would be ready at around the same time. So when I was faced for the first time with this reality of food production and, you know, agricultural cycles, I decided I should learn how to make sauerkraut. We had a bunch of cabbage. I knew that I loved sauerkraut. I knew they couldn't be that horrible to make. I knew that it was considered a, you know, a practical way of preserving cabbage and other vegetables. So, you know, I looked in the Joy of Cooking, which is your sort of most, you know, basic kitchen reference cookbook in the US And I learned how to make sauerkraut from the Joy of Cooking. And, you know, that first batch of sauerkraut was. It was just so delicious and made me feel so good. And I just couldn't believe how straightforward the process was. Like, literally, you. You chop cabbage, you salt the cabbage lightly to taste, add caraway seeds or whatever other seasoning you like. Now, I would say any other vegetables that you like. You know, you get the veggies juicy by squeezing them while they're salted. And once they're juicy, you just pack them into a jar or a crock or, you know, whatever your vessel is, and leave them for a few days, a few weeks, a few months. The flavor will intensify. But, you know, once I just saw how easy, straightforward it was, how delicious it was, I just got kind of got hooked and started, like, learning how to ferment other things, how to do other kinds of fermented vegetables, like kimchi, like the sour pickles that I grew up eating. I started playing around with sourdough baking, like leavening with, like, a natural starter from the organisms that, you know, are found on grains. I started playing around with country wines like, you know, very simple, you know, elderberry or blueberry or different kinds of fruit wines. I learned how to make miso. I learned how to make tempeh. And, you know, I just started, you know, exploring the world of fermentation. And I found it to be, you know, fascinating as well as delicious and very satisfying. And then that first time when I got invited to teach a workshop, see, I had sort of fallen into this interest without any particular fear about it. But the first time I tried to teach people how to make sauerkraut is when I encountered the fear. All of these people who've been told all of their lives how dangerous bacteria are. When confronted with the idea of cultivating bacteria on vegetables in a jar, just panicked. And, you know, the big question on people's minds was, you know, how can I be sure I have good bacteria growing, you know, on the cabbage in this jar and not, you know, some dangerous bacteria that might make me sick that might kill somebody? So, you know, people, you know, people can easily project all of the anxiety they've ever had about bacteria, you know, onto a jar of sauerkraut. And, you know, what's. What's funny and amusing about that is that there really are hardly any foods that are as safe as sauerkraut. I mean, the statistics are stark. There's no case history of illness or food poisoning from any kind of fermented vegetables. So the reason, you know, that your jar of sauerkraut isn't going to make you or someone else sick is that it never makes anybody sick. There's just no case history of illness from it. Even if you were to take vegetables that had been exposed to some sort of incidental contamination in the field or in handling, the reality is that the indigenous bacteria of the cabbage would easily dominate over any introduced contaminants. And as they begin to acidify the cabbage, they would knock out the contaminants. They would no longer be found. And, you know, one of the very sort of elegant facts about fermentation and other means of acidifying food is that acidifying food preserves food so safely because the organisms, we hear the names of the organisms that have the potential to make us sick can't survive in a sufficiently acidic environment. So once you reach a certain level of acidity, the generally agreed upon ph would be 4.6, you know, for most government regulators. But once you reach that level of acidity, there's just no even theoretical danger to it. So, you know, like most fermentation processes, you know, sauerkraut really is a strategy for food safety as much as anything else. But, you know, once I started, you know, facing these issues and seeing, you know, how scary it was for people, this, you know, method of producing food that we all eat every day, but that has just largely disappeared from our immediate experience. I don't know, I got very drawn to the idea of just demystifying this process for people and helping people, you know, understand how they can do it, you know, safely, effectively, creatively, you know, in home kitchens. And there's been, you know, there's just been a huge amount of interest. I mean, you know, fermented foods and beverages have really enjoyed enduring popularity around the world. It's not like, you know, bread and cheese and wine and beer and sauerkraut are just sort of suddenly out of nowhere becoming popular. But, you know, certainly there is, you know, heightened awareness and interest in the phenomenon of fermentation, I think because of awareness of the microbiome and people recognizing for the first time ever, like how important bacteria are to overall health and well being and that eating bacteria rich foods are a great way of restoring biodiversity in the gut.

Yeah, totally. So if I could just summarize that beautiful eloquent monologue. And it was just so free flowing and I didn't want to interrupt the flow. It was just so beautifully put together. But it sounds like you're maybe your roots back in, is it Hungary where you're originally from?

Well, it's funny, my name, Sandor, Sandor is a Hungarian name. But my mother's parents, who I grew up with were from what's now Belarus and my father's family that came over a generation earlier that was from Lithuania.

Right.

So Eastern European Jewish roots.

Okay, so the Eastern European, I guess the culture does have a lot of fermented foods in there. So it sounds like from a very early age you've had exposure to, I guess, these beautiful sour taste. And I can think back when I was a kid as well, and I've got my own kids as well and they love that they sour lollies. So it's almost innately built into us. I'm just purely anecdotal, but it's built into us to have a preference for these sour type tasting foods.

Well, I mean, I would agree, but I would say that like it's important to expose kids early to the sour flavors of pickles and sauerkraut. Like, you know, if a kid is exposing like a teething age to that, they will love it forever. But you know, if a kid's first introduction to it is when they're nine years old, they're generally not going to embrace it in a enthusiastic way at that point in their life.

I hear you. I think our supermarkets and our food supply is so laden with sweet type flavors. So potentially, if a kid's exposed to a lot of sweet tasting things, maybe sweet will trump sour. So I'm with you on that one. Getting these sour fermented foods in as early as feasible is probably a good strategy to get children a customer.

And of course, you know, certain fermented foods and beverages have, you know, very strong flavors. I mean, I would say many of the Strongest flavored foods that there are are products of fermentation. You know, I'm thinking of, you know, certain really ripe, strong cheeses or like in the Chinese context, some of the fermented tofu that I have encountered. In the Japanese context, maybe natto. But, you know, there are certain fermented foods and beverages that have very strong flavors that are really acquired tastes that, you know, if you're. If you're just not growing up, you know, in a context of tasting things like that, you might find them very, very off putting.

Yeah.

When you encounter them later in life. Oh, the Swedish fermented fish source strumming. That's a great, great example of.

I'd imagine. I've never actually tried fermented fish before, but I'm thinking something really strong with amines. Ammonia comes to mind when a protein kind of ferments down. So I'd actually love to try it. I'm planning to go to Europe soon, so maybe if I come across a Scandinavian restaurant, I'll give it a go and report back.

So. Well, there's lots of styles of fermented fish, probably some of which you have tried. I mean, you know, the fish sauces that are found in contemporary Southeast Asian cuisines, that's fermentation of fish. That's a fermentation that breaks down the fish. You know, there are also fermentations that really preserve the fish. I mean, if you think about sushi, like, and try to imagine what sushi was before refrigeration, like, you would only eat raw sushi out of a powerful refrigerator. But the tradition of sushi is really more about using rice as the bed for fermenting fish. And the acidity from the fermentation of the rice is what preserves the fish. And, you know, elsewhere in Asia, I have encountered traditions of fermenting rice.

With.

I'm sorry, fermenting fish with rice or sometimes also meat with rice. It doesn't always have a strong flavor. It depends a lot on how long it's allowed to ferment. You know, any ferment can be done in a. In a sort of milder, less strong flavored version. Or if you give it more time, there's more time for fermentation byproducts to accumulate. It could have a stronger flavor.

That's a fantastic point that you raised. There's all these different types of products that probably we don't realize that are fermented like something like a fish sauce or I think even coffee or chocolate. So these are all types of fermented foods. And then to your point on not having refrigeration. So fermentation being the salting process as a preservative, means a very natural, healthy way of preserving foods. And then you talked about rice, which is, you know, I'm not sure whether you want to go into it, but to talk about koji. So that's something really interesting to me. So do you think that was there some element of the yeast and molds in rice that were helping to preserve the fish?

Well, okay, so one of the limitations in the. In preserving meat or fish through fermentation is that the fermentation byproducts that preserve the acids and the alcohol ferment from carbohydrates. And, you know, meat and fish have lots of protein. Depending on the type, they can have lots of fat. But what they never have a lot of is carbohydrates. So when you ferment them with rice or other grains or starchy tubers, you're providing a very rich carbohydrate base. And then the carboh. Carbohydrates really ferment, and the acids produced from the fermentation of the carbohydrates are able to effectively preserve the meat. But you need to introduce some kind of a carbohydrate, like in contemporary salami making, they just add a little bit of sugar, like a very, you know, like a couple of percentages of sugar is totally enough carbohydrates to get the acidification that they need to happen quickly.

Speaking of salami, salami was an interesting one because when I was in probably very early high school, one of my local guys in the neighborhood was Hungarian. And so I used to just go around playing. And then he first introduced me to Hungarian salami. And that was probably one of my earliest experiences with a fermented. A proper fermented food.

And did you like it from the. From the get go?

Yeah, I loved it. And so every time I would go over, I would ask his mom, do you have any of that salami? And you know what, these guys were pretty traditional, so they were making it themselves. So it was like a fan recipe, and it was amazing. And it's still one of my favorite foods. And, you know, I try and find things like salami or small goods have become so processed these days. So I try and find something that's as natural and artisan as possible so that I know it doesn't have all these chemicals and preservatives. It's done using the old techniques. But I Love it. I love it. So, Sandor, what is your favorite fermented food? Oh.

Oh, you're really gonna have to make me think about that. You know, it's so funny because, I mean, I do get asked this question pretty regularly, and it's such an impossible question for me because, I mean, I got interested in fermentation because I love food. Like, I just like, I love lots of different kinds of foods. And I mean, certainly I'm very devoted to fermenting vegetables like pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi. Love them all. But I mean, do I love them more than I love cheese? That's hard. I mean, do I love them more than I love beer? I don't know.

So.

I don't know. I mean, I'm so glad I don't have to decide. I'm so glad that the world is full of, you know, such an incredible diversity of different fermentation processes. And, you know, that's. That's part of what I love about fermentation is just how diverse it is, how sort of infinitely varied people have made it. How you can take something that's sort of so traditional and codified in a certain part of the world, and then you can take the basic process and you can just totally play with it. You can take a process that's been applied to soybeans in Japan for thousands of years. Thousands of years. And then try it with black eyed peas, try it with pistachios, try it with bacon. And people are just making miso out of the most outrageous protein substrates these days that are so far from the original application of it. And I just find that super, super exciting and inspirational. And nobody's invented any new fermented foods or beverages for hundreds, arguably thousands of. But there's a lot of kind of cross pollination happening right now and people taking very traditional processes from one part of the world and applying them to very different kinds of ingredients. And I found that exciting. And I wish I had an easy answer for my favorite fermented food, but I love so many of them. Really?

Yeah. That's such a cool answer because I kind of approach fermented foods or my journey as being pretty much from a health perspective. So I tend to favor certain fermented foods from a scientific perspective based on the types of bacteria. And then you've got someone like yourself that comes from a totally different space, more artisan, more kind of for the love of food and love of flavors. So I love that I answer that, you know, why limit yourself to just one when you.

And I think even if you're thinking of it primarily in terms of, you know, probiotics and, you know, sort of optimizing the probiotic benefit of fermentation, and people often pose the question, you know, you know, what's the best fermented food to eat for probiotic benefit? And, you know, I really, I mean, in. In my, you know, sort of synthesis of the, you know, various bits of information that I've, you know, sort of collected regarding probiotics in general, you know, I would say that the objective of probiotic therapy is biodiversity. It's, you know, encouraging, restoring, rebuilding biodiversity. And for that simple reason, there's no singular food that is the be all and end all, because, you know, each different kind of fermented food, arguably each manifestation from a different producer in a different place will have, you know, different microbial communities. And sure, some of them will have, you know, sort of more. More, you know, higher bacterial count, greater biodiversity. But eating and drinking a diversity of live fermented products, you know, definitely gets more different kinds of organisms, you know, into our bodies than, you know, just picking one as, you know, the answer to our problems. And, you know, which, you know, you can get a flow of bacteria from eating the same food every day, but you just get a more varied flow of bacteria if you mix it up a little bit and, you know, have. Have some yogurt, have some sauerkraut, have some kimchi, have some kombucha, have some ginger beer, you know, no, no, one of these is the ultimate source of probiotics. And, you know, the benefits, I would say, are magnified by diversity.

I'm 100% with you. If you look at all the science coming out on the microbiome, there is a lot of debate on many topics, but when it comes to biodiversity in the gut, I think everybody is in agreement that just like any ecological system, the gut is the same like a rainforest. The more different types of organisms that are in there, it's typically reflected in a healthier state in the body. So I'm 100% with you, and this is what I sort of recommend to my members and my tribe, that you introduced as many different types of fermented foods as possible, whether it be kimchi, kombucha, kefir, they're all different. So thank you for highlighting that so beautifully. What's your thoughts on kefir?

Well, I love kefir. I love the flavor of kefir. I love how kefir makes me feel. Kefir is also A big responsibility, you know. You know, once you have some kefir grains, you know, you've got to keep feeding them. Like they do not, they do not take very well to long periods of neglect. So, I mean, my life at this point involves so much traveling that I don't even try to maintain kefir grains. You know, they require more, you know, kind of steadiness and consistency than I am able to give them. But I've seen some very impressive kefir grains in my travels. Oh, my God. This guy, this guy in California who I met, he had like a single, you know, blob of kefir that was all connected and it took two hands to hold it. And so only time I've ever seen anything like that. But, but, but I love kefir. You know, sadly, there's. There's very little commercially available true kefir. And you know, in the US it's virtually impossible because, I mean, there's products you could buy called kefir, and they basically are made from, you know, a powdered starter culture that perhaps was originally derived from kefir, but where they left out some of the organisms that were viewed as problematic. And, you know, kefir, among the, you know, 30 something different organisms that are part of kefir, one of them is the fungus popular known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae. So that will transform lactose into alcohol. And so in parts of the world where the legal threshold for alcoholic beverages is 0.5%, like the U.S. it's just not practical to sell true kefir unless you were just trying to sell it as an alcoholic beverage. Whereas in some parts of the world, like in the uk, I'm not sure what the situation is in Australia, but where the threshold is 1% alcohol, people are marketing true kef. So, you know, if you're in a place where you can't buy true kefir, it's a wonderful thing to make. You just have to find someone with grains and because everybody who does it for any length of time ends up with way more grains than they know what to do with. They're not that hard. They're not that hard to find. You know, you just have to, you know, do some networking with other local fermentation enthusiasts and you probably can find some kefir grains. But I mean, I love kefir. It's incredibly delicious. I also love yogurt. I make yogurt. You know, every couple of months I make a batch of yogurt and, you know, yogurt doesn't need the kind of, you know, daily attention that kefir does.

Yeah, I hear you. I mean, our community and nourishment organics community are deeply, deeply entrenched in the benefits of kefir. Milk kefir certainly has tons of research and good solid research behind the efficacy, if I say it properly, and you highlighted it brilliantly, that the yeast. The yeast are absolutely vital. Something like saccharomyces here, vicii, and there's lots of other different types of yeast. We've done a full genomic study on kefir grains as well, and there is a host of different types of organisms and the yeasts are equally as important. They all work symbiotically together. So hence, and that's an excellent point on the alcohol. The alcohol threshold here is similar to the US which is 0.5%. So in reality, you're never going to find a true. Certainly in Australia, you're not going to find a true kefir or milk kefir anytime soon. And even water kefir, I think, because they're so strict on the alcohol regulations, if it's tested above 0.5%, you need a liquor license. And I can understand. There's mums, there's children, and I agree with you, Sendor. The best thing to do is to make it yourself, you know. Exactly. If you've got the patience to kind of maintain it, it's like a child. You've got to keep feeding it. It's like a sourdough culture. It's the same sort of situation where it requires a lot of attention, but it's maybe not.

Maybe not as much attention as having a child, but maybe more like a small pet.

A small pet. That's probably more apt. Apt analogy. Sometimes I think of my kefir greens as, you know, as tedious as my children's. And I like how you highlighted the point and I'll just come back to it, how it makes you feel. So you mentioned that you could feel the difference when you have kefir.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, these foods can be really, you know, these foods are energizing. You know, the nutrients in these foods are, you know, very highly bioavailable. And, you know, in general, I find that these, you know, live fermented foods make me feel really good. And, you know, I certainly don't follow any, you know, diet like where I only eat fermented foods or anything like that. I don't think that that's necessary or desirable or Appropriate, But I definitely eat them regularly. You know, I'm not saying a day has never gone by where I. Where I haven't eaten some, but I, you know, pretty much every day I'm eating fermented foods. My days are better if I'm eating some fermented foods. I think of a lot of fermented foods as condiments, so I think of them as, you know, embellishments. You know, something I'll put on a sandwich, you know, something I'll eat with my eggs, you know, something I'll mix in with my, you know, rice and vegetables and meat that I'm eating for dinner. So, you know, I just always like to put a little bit on the plate.

Cool. We're coming at the time pretty soon. I've just got a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind sticking around just for something that, you know, someone like yourself that's such a guru in this space, so inspiring to others. There's a couple of things that's a bit selfish of me to ask, but what do you think is the origin of something like a kefir or kombucha? Because it's so conflicting when you look at the law and the stories behind it.

Well, I mean, we don't know the origins of any of these things. You know, we don't know the origins of anything that we eat. You know, I mean, you know, we have our old joke, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg. But, you know, the reality is, like, nobody knows. So, you know, we have rough ideas of the, you know, sort of geographical origins of these foods. So kefir comes from the Caucasus Mountains. And anyone from the Caucasus Mountains could tell you where kefir grains came from, which is that they were a gift for the people from Allah that Muhammad brought to the people. You know, myself, I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit more of a skeptic, and I don't necessarily like, you know, accept the origin stories at face value. So, you know, I'm picturing that in a region where lots of families had goats and. And goat's milk, and, you know, people typically stored the goat's milk in, you know, some sort of animal lining, whether it's a skin or a bladder or something like that. But, you know, something that they would hang above the door and people would. Part of the sort of ritual of the place was people agitating that fermenting milk above the doorway. And some families started, you know, finding these little blobs, these little rubbery blobs, the kefir grains in their milk. And their milk had a delicious flavor and texture. And people started associating that delicious flavor and texture with those little globules that formed in the milk. And there were more and more of them. So they started sharing them with their neighbors and their family and their. And, you know, eventually it became, you know, a regional specialty. But, I mean, where did the first yogurt come? Like? So, you know, we could say, like, oh, it was the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. It was a very hot day because it involved thermophilic bacteria. But, I mean, these spontaneous events happen. You know, it doesn't mean that you can replicate them, you know, in any environment. Like they happened in some specific place under some specific set of conditions. You know, people figured out methods by which they could replicate them and expand them, but it doesn't mean that, like, anybody can have the spontaneous experience of having it occur in the first place. And, I mean, that's really what fermentation is. It's like, you know, this sort of set of techniques that people, you know, figured out really, in the absence of scientific information for how to, you know, sort of perpetuate the results of some, you know, accidental thing that was pleasing in some way because it made the food more stable, more delicious, it produced alcohol, it removed some toxic or foul compound. But people recognize some benefit and therefore sort of sought to replicate the process.

How about warakkeffiya? What's your thoughts on?

Well, so water kefir, as far as I can tell, bears no specific relationship whatsoever to the milk cultural that we culture that we call kefir. Water kefir, as best I can tell, has its origins in Mexico, where it is known as tibicos. And the story is that the first crystalline structures of tibicos were found in the subcutaneous layer of prickly pears. Now, I have explored some prickly pears, looking for them. I have never found them. So, you know, maybe they only developed under a very specific condition. Maybe that story is not true. Maybe it's only some very particular variety. I mean, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to say. But water kefir, I believe, comes from the opposite side of the world as kefir. Kefir is from the Caucasus Mountains. Water kefir, tibicos, I believe, is from Mexico.

And how about kombucha? Kombucha.

My general idea is it's from somewhere in the north of China, but somewhere in China. Yeah, sure.

There's a couple more questions. So everybody knows the. I guess, the fermented vegetables they know kefir, kombucha. What's some really, like, interesting ones that maybe people have never heard about that they might like to explore?

Well, I mean, you know, of course, what you've heard about depends entirely on where you come from. So, you know, I mean, I would just really encourage people to not assume that they know everything about sauerkraut and kimchi. And there's a vast amount of regional variation. And you can ferment any vegetables for different lengths of time, cut up differently big pieces, beverages, relishes. You know, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of different possibilities within the realm of. Of fermenting vegetables. So please don't write that off as just like, beginner stuff. But you can ferment anything. I mean, what, like, a particular interest of mine is the fermentation of grains. And like, you know, we were just talking about the fermentation of meat with grains. You can ferment everything else with grains, and people do ferment everything else with grains. And, you know, in contrast with fermenting vegetables, we're really. Preservation is, you know, is your primary objective because vegetables, you know, are highly perishable. And in temperate climates, you can only grow vegetables in certain parts of the year. And so that preservation of vegetables has been, you know, really made sustaining healthy life possible through the winter in places with. With long, harsh winters. And it's been really, really important. But when you ferment grains, it's never about preservation, because grains in their mature state, when they're dry, preserve perfectly just all you have to keep them dry. But that same. Some of the same qualities that enable grains to store for so long make them difficult for us to digest. And so the fermentation of grains makes them much, much more digestible. It makes minerals in them more accessible to us. It gives something that's got very plain flavor, more pronounced flavor, and it makes something that can be really dense into something that's light and more pleasant to eat. But, you know, I love the South Indian method of fermenting rice and lentils. Dosa and Italy, incredibly simple processes where you soak the rice, you soak the lentils, then you put them together in a grinder or a blender with a little bit of the soaking water and grind them into a paste and. And ferment that in a very hot tropical place for probably just about eight hours in a warm temperate place, maybe 24 hours in a cool temperate place, maybe 48 hours. Once it's rising, then dosas are crepes of this and so delicious. And then idlis are these steamed breads of this. I love this Afro Brazilian similar ferment called akaraje, where you take black eyed peas and you soak them overnight and then you blend them into a batter and then you do these fry breads of the black eyed peas, which are incredibly delicious. I've been making a friend of mine who is just diagnosed with celiac disease, I've been making her buckwheat bread where I take whole buckwheat, raw buckwheat, and I soak it, blend it into a batter, add a little bit of salt, rise it for 24 hours, then put it into a well greased loaf pan with lots of seeds lining it and bake bread out of that. Or you can make pancakes out of that. But I mean, I just think we can make grains so much more delicious, so much more easily digestible with really simple fermentation techniques that are really found, you know, all around the world, like in, you know, culinary traditions virtually everywhere. So that's something that excites me that I would encourage people to play around with.

Absolutely. And it's such a good way to encourage more vegetable consumption as well, because we can make it really interesting by fermenting it in terms of the flavors, textures, we'll get elliptic qualities of the food. So anything that can get us away from overconsumption of meat into more plant food diversity, I'm 100% supportive of. So that, that's absolutely brilliant. And those recipes that you mentioned, do you have them on a blog somewhere or access them?

The easiest place is my book Wild Fermentation. So all those things that I just mentioned are in my book Wild Fermentation. And you know, the Internet is a wonderful place to look for recipes piece too. Like, you know, if you hear about something like, you know, dosas and you know, you don't have, you don't have the right book in front of you. If you just search on the Internet, you're gonna find hundreds, probably thousands of food bloggers from the diaspora who are like sharing, you know, their family methods of doing it.

And YouTube's a huge one as well, a huge database of recipes. And what we will do is we will definitely link to your book in the show notes. So if people want to deep dive with Sandor and his recipes, absolute genius in terms of fermented foods, brilliant. So we'll link to those in the show notes. Just to wrap everything up. I know your time is very precious and just a parting question I like to ask my guests is if there was one thing that someone could do to improve their gut health, what would it be? Sandal.

Well, I mean, I will say fermented foods, but I'll also say as important, some would argue more important than the probiotics are the prebiotics and just, you know, eating lots of high fiber food, a lot of like, you know, tubers and leafy green vegetables and, you know, like, you can have all the probiotics in the world and if you're not eating the kinds of, of nutrients that can nourish them along the entire length of the intestine, they're not going to flourish as well as they can. So, you know, so just, you know, eating, you know, the right kinds of, you know, complex carbohydrates, polysaccharides, the kinds of things that, you know, really length system to break down are the ones that are going to really like, nourish all those probiotics that we're eating.

I'm 100% with you. You know, you can put the good guys in there, but you've got to put the food for the good guys as well to help them to flourish in the gut. Sandal, thank you so much for giving me your time. I think it's in the afternoon for you, it's in the morning for me. I highly appreciate it.

All right, well.

And looking forward, absolutely. I'm looking forward to your next adventures and I'll be following, following along very closely and I'm sure the, the audience here will be following on your journey as well. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.

See you later.