First, before sharing my recipe for homemade lacto-fermented salsa, I am going to share the why of such.
What Is Lacto-Fermented Salsa and Why Should I Care?
To quote Nourishing Traditions,
“Lacto-fermentation is a process whereby special bacteria transform sugars and starches into beneficial acids. These … are valued for medicinal qualities including the ability to relieve intestinal problems and constipation.
The proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and increases vitamin levels. These beneficial organisms product numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic and anticarcinogenic substances. Their main by-product, lactic acid… promotes the growth of healthy flora throughout the intestine.”
To put it simply, lacto-fermented foods are whey good for you. Heh heh.
Especially if you have any kind of issues with yeast, you need to be eating lots of lacto-fermented foods daily. They’re highly nutritive. Also great for anyone with any kind of tummy troubles. You can skip the expensive enzyme or probiotic supplements if you eat lacto-fermented veggies regularly.
Throughout the world, traditional diets include lacto-fermented foods.
They’re your kefir, your buttermilk, your yogurt. Your sauerkraut, your kim chi, your salsa, your chow chow, your relish, your pickles. They’re your umeboshi and your chutney, folks. Every culture has ’em and they are eaten with most every meal in small portions as a condiment.
Making them at home the old fashioned way means they’re more nutritive and much cheaper. A jar of Bubbie’s sauerkraut will set you back $5-$7. A quart of homemade? $2 and that’s if you’re buying organic cabbage.
Lacto-fermented foods are the ultimate in “food as medicine and medicine as food”.
If you’re unconvinced, get your hands on a copy of Wild Fermentation.
Now for my recipe:
Homemade Lacto-Fermented Salsa
- 6 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
- 1 large onion, diced
- 3 or 4 diced jalapenos (optional)
- 1 small bunch cilantro, chopped
- 1 tsp. dried oregano
- juice of 2 lemons
- 1 T sea salt
- 4 T whey
- 1/4 cup water
Note: This is an adaptation of the recipe, again, from Nourishing Traditions. After some experimentation, I like my version better.
Now, if you’re new to the whole Weston A Price/Traditional diets way of thinking, I’ll have to explain how to make whey. It’s easy and cheap.
How To Make Your Whey
Buy a tub of organic, plain (unsweetened, unflavored) whole milk yogurt. Place it into a colander or sieve that is lined with a thin tea towel and place that on top of a large bowl. If you don’t have a thin tea towel, coffee filters or cheesecloth will work too.
Let that sit overnight in the fridge. The stuff in the bottom of the bowl? There’s your whey. You can use the “yogurt cheese” several ways. Sweeten it with some honey and add nuts and you have a yummy topping for toast. Google yogurt cheese for lots more ideas.
Wasn’t that easy?
Back to Lacto Fermented Salsa – It’s Whey Cool!
Salsa making is easy. Just mix all the ingredients listed above and place them into clean glass jars. Wide mouth Mason jars are great, but if you don’t have any, use any clean glass jars. I like old Bubbies sauerkraut jars or any other that I have saved.
You probably know this already: you can quickly and easily peel tomatoes by bringing a pan of water to boil on the stove in a saucepan. Dip one tomato at a time in the rapidly boiling water with a slotted spoon. Remove after a few seconds, and the peel slips right off. To seed tomatoes, cut them in half widthwise, hold over a bowl and squeeze gently. The seeds come right out.
Once you have your veggies in the glass jars, press them down a bit with a spoon so they are under the water/whey/lemon juice liquid.
Now, all you have to do is leave them out at room temp for a couple of days on your counter.
After that, stick them in the fridge. Lactofermented salsa is best after it’s a week or two old. It gets fizzy and has a nice kick to it. Guaranteed to knock the socks off of anyone who eats your next taco, burrito, nacho or whatever dinner.
… And your colon and immune system will thank you!
Ohhh, sounds heavenly!
I love my Wild Fermentations book, btw!
How weirdly timely! I just made my first fermented sauerkraut tonight. I just used salt and spices. I was too lazy to also make my chevre to get some whey, as well as the home made kraut.
I’ll have to give this one a try; we eat a few Mexican meals a week.
Salsa is probably my favorite of all the lacto-fermented foods. It’s the best way to eat tomatoes, in my opinion. I love it on scrambled eggs, huevos rancheros, nachos, tacos, or just with chips and guacamole.
I’ve not tried fermented salsa yet. Perhaps if I can get my tomatoes and peppers to actually PRODUCE this year, I’ll make some! It does sound yummy!
Thanks Carrie, I didn’t know I can make whey from yogurt. That’s great news since I’ve been holding some new recipes because I couldn’t find whey.
I’m all into fermented food…so healthy and delicouus!
I love strained yogurt, but had no idea what to do with the whey. I knew it was good for me, but that was the end of it. I also love homemade salsa, and your recipe sounds delightful. Now I have and excuse to make some yogurt cheese, and salsa! Thank you so much.
Oh this is VERY similar to my own adapted recipe, except I add cumin. You can’t have salsa without cumin, can you? 😉
Is there a vegan way to make this?
@Rachel – yep, just skip the whey and add an extra Tablespoon sea salt. 🙂
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If you already have other lactofermented pickles, it’s much simpler to use some of their liquid than to get whey. It’s also vegan (assuming that somewhere down the line you started the first jar without whey). There are some vegetables that very reliably lactoferment without any additional bacterial starters — like cucumbers and cabbage. So make a jar of sauerkraut first, and you can use a few spoonfuls of the juice to get other vegetables started — you shouldn’t be able to taste the cabbage if the amount is that small. Later you can just use juice from old batches to start new batches.