Adventures in ... Kefir! Part 2 - Coconut Kefir FAIL.

While my milk kefir has been a very easy and successful project, I also have been trying to start a batch of coconut kefir. The process is the same, and from all my research, all I needed to do was take some of my kefir grains, and cover it with coconut milk instead of cow's milk. Apparently it can take a couple of tries before the culture "figures out" what to do with the coconut milk, so for a week I would cover the grains with a cup of coconut milk, let it sit overnight, pour out the failed kefir the next day, and add fresh coconut milk. By the end of the week I would just have sour coconut milk the next day instead of coconut kefir, so I gave up trying. My last batch smelled so bad that I dumped the culture as well, figuring it had probably gone bad.

I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. I guess when I have an abundance of kefir grains again, I will do some more research and try again. I was really looking forward to mixing up my kefir smoothies so that I wasn't always eating cow's milk each time.

Anyone out there have any experience with this?

Adventures in ... Kefir! Part 1 - Cow's Milk Kefir = Success!

Kefir Grains

Kefir "cheese"

I finally scored myself some kefir grains a couple weeks ago, and have since been healing my gut with some probiotic goodness from homemade kefir. 


The process is super simple. Literally, the hardest part of starting to make my own kefir was locating some grains. You see, the kefir culture multiplies over time, so anyone who is culturing kefir will wind up with more culture than they need. So if you know someone who is already making kefir and who has some extra grains, that's a cheap and easy way to get started. Otherwise you will need to order some online, or check your local craigslist to see if someone has some to sell or give away. 


Once you've got the grains it's an easy-peasy process. All I do each morning is put my tablespoon of grains in a glass and cover it with about a cup of milk. Then I put a towel over the glass to keep bugs out, and stick it in a cupboard for the next 24 hours. The next morning, I put the kefir in the blender for my smoothie, and scoop out the grains to repeat the process. 


If I decide that I don't want to drink the kefir right away, I can stick it in the fridge and it will keep for a couple of weeks there. I can also put the grains in the fridge with some milk if I don't want to make any more kefir for a couple of weeks. 


I've also been straining some of it to make the thicker spread and mixing it with a couple of tablespoons of nutritional yeast for a spread. I've also used kefir cheese in place of mayonaisse for deviled eggs (which garnered rave reviews), and I could use it for a veggie dip, too. So many options, so much healthy probiotic goodness!

Amazake Experiment on hold

Okay, so I've been doing more research on making koji rice from spores (if you're having a tough time keeping up, koji rice is the moldy rice that is mixed with cooked rice to make sake and, in my case, amazake. I have koji rice SPORES that I need to innoculate into koji rice, which I will THEN be able to use to mix a cup of koji rice with a couple cups of brown rice to make a fermented rice beverage that is ALSO a handy ingredient for gluten-free baking). I finally found a couple of websites that have instructions on making koji rice, and one that is AMAZINGLY detailed, AND contains the holy grail - instructions on how to convert some of the koji rice into spores that can be used to make MORE koji rice later... which would mean if I get it right next time, I won't have to buy more spores online in order to make more koji rice.

What I figured out from reading his tutorial is that the instructions that came with my spores were sorely lacking, AND lacking in caution. Turns out you need to be really careful with the spores because you don't want to breath them in. Uh, what? So now I've got a graphic image of mold spores covering my esophagus. Let's pray that's not the case. He also has a whole page devoted to how to steam the rice, and what it should look like at the end, which was my biggest issue.

While I do feel much better informed to make my next batch of koji rice, I am also a bit unprepared by way of equipment. While I think I can mainly get by with what I have on hand to create an incubation area, my biggest problem there was that I don't have a food thermometer that falls below 100 degrees... and I need to keep the koji rice incubated in the 90s. I think this all-in-one cooking timer/thermometer would do the trick, but... well, we've put the lock-down on our spending. Starting this month we are on a strict budget and I can't just drop $20 on a thermometer because I think it would be fun to do this koji rice experiment. So I basically need to wait until the end of the month and see if there's anything left in the budget for this little goody. If not, there's always next month... and if we really get in a bind, then there's always my birthday in December!

Also, now that I found that fantastic tutorial, I may not put up an Instructable on koji rice... I'm a big proponent of the "no need to reinvent the wheel" philosophy. But we'll see... maybe I'll still put one up there just so the information is in more than one place, and make sure to reference the original.

Next up, I need to find someone with extra kefir grains so I can get my culture fix that way. Anyone know someone with extras?

On Kefir "cheese," and soaking beans with whey

Although my koji rice adventures didn't go so well this weekend (and neither did my bread making, actually), I did try a couple of new things that I'm pretty happy about.

I had a coupon for kefir about a week ago, so I got a couple bottles of plain kefir at the store the other day, and have been slowly going through it, mostly with fruit. I also decided to try using kefir instead of mayonnaise for deviled eggs, which I thought worked out very well. Then I decided to strain the whey out of my kefir to make a thicker spread that I could put on bread or use as a veggie dip or whatever. So far I have tried the following combinations with my kefir "cheese"

• 3 parts kefir cheese to 1 part nutritional yeast and a sprinkle of dill to make a savory spread = yum!
• Plain kefir cheese in place of sour cream on my tempeh and veggie wrap also = yum!
• Kefir cheese mixed with a bit of honey and a big dash of cinnamon on my (gluten-free chia seed) muffin = yum x 2!

Of course, straining the whey out of my kefir also means I have to figure out what to do with all this whey. When I made greek yogurt over a year ago, I wound up with a lot of whey and no CLUE what to do with it. Well, this time around my dear friend Jen's blog steered me in the direction of using the whey when soaking dried beans to aid in digestion. So tonight I did a bit of google action and learned that if you want to get all the goodness out of your beans, it's almost essential to add an acid such as whey (or lemon juice) to the soaking water. It helps your body absorb all the good nutrients you're eating the beans for in the first place, and cuts down on the pesky gas issue that makes beans the, errr, butt of the joke.

So now I've got my big batch of black beans soaking my some of my leftover whey, and I'm pretty darned excited about it, although I kind of feel like I'm late to the party! But now that I'm at the bean-soaking party, I just wanted to make sure the rest of you join me! To make it less complicated, I found this nifty soaking guide. I plan to format it for my recipe box so I always have the cheat sheet on hand.

This concludes your healthy eating lesson for the day. Class dismissed!

Amazake, Take 1 = FAIL

Okay, so my first attempt at making koji rice resulted in an utter failure. But that's okay! I think I at least know the places where I went wrong, so I plan to try again next week. The starter packet I bought had enough spores to make 2 batches of 6 cups of rice each, and my only real regret is that I actually tried to make one full batch my first try. Next time I will make a batch of 3 cups, so I have enough for one more 3 cup batch if this one goes awry.

My main problem this time around was at the VERY BEGINNING... one of the instructions is to STEAM the rice for 50 minutes, with the explanation that at the end of 50 minutes the rice will be "a hot rubbery lump." Well, at the end of 50 minutes (and 2 hours, and 2 1/2 hours...) the rice was NOT a rubbery lump, so I kept steaming it thinking I wasn't cooking it correctly because it seemed barely cooked. I cooked it until it was, indeed, a hot rubbery lump of rice. BUT then my problem throughout the rest of the 2 days was that instructions kept talking about breaking up any clumps that stick together, and that at the end of 2 days I should be able to crack open a grain of rice to check it... but I had one huge gooey lump of rice. So next time around, I think I'll have an easier time of steaming my rice with half as much in the pot, and then I am going to stick with that 50 minute window and whatever my rice looks like at the end of 50 minutes will be what I am going to assume it should look like, and we'll just move forward from there.

But I also think I learned this time around what works and what doesn't as far as my methods for incubating the rice to keep it at the right temperature, which is really only about 85 degrees... it turns out it was surprisingly difficult for me to keep the rice at just a few degrees above room temperature, but I think I've got it worked out now.

At first I felt pretty crummy about having such a massive failure on my hands after telling "Teh Internets" about my big plans. But then I happened upon this clip from Sesame Street (completely on accident) and now I feel alright about my practice run. :-)

Adventures in... Kombucha.

I got a kombucha culture about a month ago, and so I've been rocking this fermented tea ever since. Once you start making something like kombucha you kind of have to keep it up, because the culture always needs to be sitting in its "food source." So once a big batch of kombucha is ready to be bottled and enjoyed, I only have a short while before I need to brew up a new batch of sweet tea and start over. When I was making kombucha a couple years back, I wasn't having much success in making it taste GOOD. I liked it, but anyone else who was curious to try it didn't drink more than a sip. So this time around, I've been having fun experimenting with different flavors of tea, different quantities of sugar, and different fermenting times, and pulling my batches while they're still sweeter than I normally would. It's kind of like a fun science experiment. And the results have been pretty tasty. One cool thing about the kombucha is that when you bottle it, it starts to get fizzy. So this is the closest I get to having a soda.

And the cost? Well, one 16 oz bottle of kombucha at a health food store will run you between $3 and $4. Remembering that the culture is free (it replicates like CRAZY so people making kombucha have to either throw out scobys or give them away pretty regularly), when I make my own, I get about 64oz worth for the cost of a couple cusp of sugar and tea leaves. Even getting organic tea and sugar, it's still under $2 for the whole batch. DEFINITELY worth the experimenting and the time investment!

Since I've had so much fun with the kombucha, I've decided to try a couple more that have piqued my interest. Specifically, making my own kefir and my own amazake. Those are coming up next!

Adventures in... Amazake!

AMAZAKE! Even the name sounds awesome. I ran across this little gem randomly a couple months ago... some recipe in the blogosphere recommended using amazake in place of milk for gluten-free baking that is fluffier than the typical gluten-free fare. Since I love to hear about new stuff, I immediately started googling it.

As it happens, amazake is a fermented rice beverage, that is fermented for a much shorter time than the sake you think of when you think of fermented rice. With amazake, you use the same starter culture as sake, but only ferment said rice for a day or less. The culture breaks the rice down into simple sugars, which makes it sweet and tasty. Apparently this Japanese drink is a holiday beverage; from what I gathered at the Japanese grocery store, they drink it over the winter holidays, the same way we think of eggnog as a winter treat.

I love anything made with rice because it's one of the few grains I can tolerate, and I just loved the idea of a cultured rice that would make my gluten-free cooking more fun. But it turns out that amazake is still in the "underground" here in the US. I found ONE brand of it at a health food store, and it was super expensive for a 12 oz bottle. And when I went to Japanese grocery stores around town and asked if they had either amazake OR the koji rice starter needed to make it, I was greeted with blank stares. I was a LITTLE surprised by this, because the koji starter is used to ferment miso, too, and my internet searches suggested I could find koji light rice starter at my neighborhood japanese grocer. Alas, the ATL is clueless about amazake.

So, to the internet I went, and I purchased a koji spore starter pack. That was the cheapest option I could find. It came in the mail on Thursday, and I was so excited! It turns out, this is more complicated than I initially expected. All I got was little pack of spores, with instructions on a 48 hour process of combining these spores with rice to create koji rice. THEN I store the koji rice, and I can mix THAT cultured rice with other cooked rice in a 24 hour process to make some amazake. Phew! This is going to be intense. Luckily, I will be home for the next 4 days, three of which make up a long weekend. Perfect timing for an insane culturing project!

Since the internets seem pretty oblivious to culturing koji rice and making amazake, I think I will need to document this process and, if it's successful, post about it so that there's some more info out there for the culture-loving internets. I mean, even Instructables doesn't have a tutorial on making amazake. I guess I'll have to be the first!

Tonight my task is just to rinse 6 cups of white rice VERY WELL, then soak it in water overnight. Tomorrow the more intense process of making koji rice begins. I will probably save it all up until my amazake is made, then put together a good tutorial post or two after all is said and done. Let the adventure begin!

Culture Happy

I've been reading lots of blogs about healthy eating lately, so my thoughts have been on building up a healthy body lately. Basically, the idea is that there are no "neutral" foods. Anything you eat will either heal or harm your body in some small (or not so small) way. I've learned this the hard way, as foods like wheat and potatoes harm my body in a VERY noticeable way. But this has made me mindful of the not so noticeable ways that the food choices we make either heal or harm our bodies, and not just in a "gain weight" versus "lose weight" kind of way.

So while I am still one to grab a bowl of haagen dazs chocolate ice cream when the craving strikes (as it did tonight), I am also trying to consider what other food choices I can make consistently that heal rather than harm.

One of the ways we can do this is with eating foods with probiotics. We get probiotics from a number of fermented foods. The one you hear about on all the TV commercials is yogurt, but there are other types of fermented beverages that are chock full of beneficial active cultures... although most of them are pretty expensive if you buy them prepackaged at the store. Their benefits have often been overhyped, but ultimately they are tasty beverages that can be used for cooking and baking as well as drinking, and that work to heal and build up your body rather than tear it down.

I am not going to go into all the benefits of these things. There are plenty of excellent bloggers who have already done it and that's where I learned it from anyways. Below, I've provided a "recommended reading" list for those of you who want to learn more.

But in the next few days I'm going to tell you about my adventures in culturing. I'm getting pretty excited about it so I wanted you share in my excitement! Also, although this stuff is pretty common in the world of healthy food bloggers (at least, all the ones I read), most people don't know what this stuff is or that you can make it at home. So my goal is to spread the knowledge outside of that realm a little bit.

Recommended Reading:

• Health Benefits of Yogurt from Kitchen Stewardship
• Kombucha-licious from Making Love in the Kitchen
• Kefir from Cultures for Health (scroll down for the details)
• How to make Amazake from Homegrown Evolution