The Science of Fermentation [audio] | Hacker News Reader

The Science of Fermentation [audio]

bbc.co.uk

69 pointsfallinditch23 comments

Some anecdotes:

- My wife is Korean, and a lot of Korean food is fermented, preserved, or otherwise kept using a traditional pre-refrigeration method. There are a number of really beautiful traditions that come from the logistics of keeping stuff around for months, or even years. The idea of things being diverted off at various stages of fermentation for different uses was a massive revelation to my American mind.

- That being said, my Korean relatives are completely blown away by some old Western methods of fermentation especially around land mammal meats -- various sausages, smoked meats, salted meats -- and fermented milk products like cheeses.

- The best restaurant in the world, I think in Norway, featured a dedicated fermentation R&D lab as part of their core restaurant menu development process.

- The global trade in alcoholic drinks in based on truly beautiful and sophisticated battles between various micro-organisms.

- My friends in the bio-world recently (in the last few years) have taken an interest in fermentation as part of the thinking on long-term food sources for space habitability. Nothing produces the incredible complexity in microbiology, specifically ones good for food sources for humans, creates anything close to the complexity of fermentation. The thought it using stages of fermentation to produce all of the feed material needed for complete human nutrition. But it's perpetual.

Bonus - you might also divert some parts of the process into fuel, air, and other required processes. It's incredibly compelling, highly technical (informed by modern AI models) research.

The Noma Guide to Fermentation: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/rene-redzepi/the-no...

It's beautiful and useful too!

The fermented food that has always blown my mind has been

Chocolate

I have no idea WHY that should come as a shock to me, but it does

Honorable mentions also go to Tea and Coffee

Oh whew, when I finally learned how Chocolate is made....mind blown.

The Western 19th and 20th centuries's approach to foods have been an incredible disservice to culinary and health history and modernist trends.

My GUESS is that canning really changed Western diets because food could last indefinitely in good condition

Want to have your mind blown again?

Vanilla beans are also fermented before use. They start green, before they are processed and ultimately fermented, giving rise to the delicious aroma and flavor we're all familiar with.

Check Natto and the equivalent Korean bean ferments !

>a lot of Korean food is fermented

Examples, other than kimchi and probably some fish sauces? Don't know much about Korean food, but I liked what I tried, the few times I ate at a Korean restaurant.

Gochujang and doenjang are two fermented pastes that are used a lot.

thanks.

The fermentation traditions around soybeans are particularly interesting. The starting point is called meju [1] which are blocks of open air fermented soybeans in blocks.

From there you can continue to process and ferment them to produce a variety of sauces, pastes, soup bases, and so on - soy sauce is the most famous in the west, but the rest of the products have honestly mind-blowing, highly complex, tastes.

There's also a broad tradition of preserving and fermenting various seafoods, from the corvina to fermented skate (hongeo) [2].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meju

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongeo-hoe

thanks.

About half of all Faroese traditional food is fermented mutton or fish - air dried and boiled/roasted it triggers a lot of savory flavors that simply aren't on the spectrum of food you can buy at a supermarket. All of these methods were developed out of necessity before refrigeration was a thing. You needed the october meat to last till summer of next year in a subarctic climate. Methodical drying and curing did the trick. There is a wonderful spectrum of aged/fermented/dried before actual inedible rot/decay.

The food programme is excellent and wide ranging. It talks, more often than not to subject matter experts. Its what the BBC does best.

If you are not british and want to understand britian's approach to food, then https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01klvhq is your programme.

It occurred to me at some point that what many "fine" foods have in common is fermentation. Tea, coffee, chocolate, cheese, alcohol, cured meats, dry aged meats, others I can't think of right now. Makes sense, as the complex biological processes are of course going to lead to the culinary complexity and variety that is necessary for connoisseurship.

Sourdough bread too?

Makes sense, the process is complex, the mixture of micro organisms is complex, and generates many complex molecules giving fermented foods a depth of flavor, a broadness and finesse. Especially when compared to bland, few-ingredients-taken-from-crude-oil "highly processed" foods.

I experience this with my sourdough bread, the smell of the sourdough and the bread vary and are subtle, deep and nice. The bread is dry and stale in a day though, so the bread is the family's favorite, but only when it's fresh. Although freezing it after it has been properly cooled is not half bad.

It's a good observation, though many of those are also food for poor people. Wealthy food is often a refined version of what everyone else eats, usually requiring a lot of extra effort and time.

Lobster is a famous example (though I am skeptical of the story that prisoners revolted over being forced to eat it too much; I have been unable to find a reliable primary source). A beautiful example is from the film Ratatouille, where the eponymous dish is contrasted between his mother's peasant stew and the $50 a plate Thomas Keller version.

Apparently the prisoners were forced to eat ground up boiled lobster. Shells and all

Also lobster is really only good because they absolutely drown it in butter

If you are looking for a fermented foods guide/cookboard/potted history - I really recommend 'Of Cabbages and Kimchi': https://fermentingchange.substack.com/p/on-my-bookshelf-of-c...

I enjoyed 'The Art of Fermentation' by Sandor Katz, but is wasn't guide/cookery book enough for me - 'Of Cabbages' hit the right note, and I've been working my way thorough it all.

I'm a little obsessed with fermented chilli sauces, and have been using the brine to make an excellent hot ketchup, than friends keep asking for more of.

In northern Greenland they make kiviaq: in the summer go out with a large net and catch about 500 auks (small sea birds). Stuff them whole into a single seal skin, sew it up and bury it under a pile of rocks. After 6 months eat the whole birds. Apparently delicious.

Thought that podcast was very interesting. I bought the book - 'textbook of sake brewing' a while ago. I've brewed beer before, but rather fancy trying making sake.

As someone who bakes about 4 sourdough breads a week I can appreciate this :)

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