**Fermenting Milk: A Game-Changer for Home Cooks**

As I stepped into my fermentation room, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. This was a space that I had been building out over time, specifically designed to store shelves full of various fermentation projects. The room is dimly lit, with plenty of empty jars scattered about, which is a bit sad, but it's all part of the process. As I begin this video, I want to share with you one of my favorite fermentation techniques: fermenting milk.

I have been experimenting with lacto-fermentation for quite some time now, and I can honestly say that it has been a game-changer in my kitchen. The process is surprisingly easy, and once you understand the basics, you can create a variety of delicious and healthy fermented products at home. In this video, we'll be focusing on fermenting milk, which has become one of my go-to ingredients for smoothies and other recipes.

I started by heating up some water to around 180°F (82°C), then I added a mesophilic cheese culture specifically designed for lacto-fermentation. This culture will help convert the milk sugar into lactic acid, creating an environment that's perfect for fermentation. After about 30 minutes of incubation, I cooled down the mixture to around 70°F (21°C), which is ideal for adding probiotic bacteria. Next, I added a mesophilic bacterial blend, specifically designed for lacto-fermentation, and stirred it in gently.

The resulting milk was transformed into a thick, creamy liquid that looked almost like yogurt. But don't be fooled - this is not just any ordinary yogurt! The lactose has been broken down, leaving behind a deliciously tangy and slightly sweet product that's perfect for drinking on its own or using as an ingredient in recipes. I must say, I was quite impressed with how quickly the milk transformed into this delicious fermented product.

I've been experimenting with various types of fermentation projects, including lacto-fermented veggies like sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles. These projects are not only delicious but also packed with nutrients and probiotics that can help support gut health. One of my favorite projects is fermenting cabbage using the traditional lacto-fermentation method.

To start, I sliced up a bunch of fresh cabbage and added it to a bowl along with some shredded carrots and micro-planed ginger. Next, I mixed in some salt at a ratio of 2.5% (25g per liter) and allowed it to sit for a few hours before adding the mixture to a clean glass jar. The resulting sauerkraut was a beautiful shade of purple and had a tangy, slightly sweet flavor that was perfect for snacking on or using as an ingredient in recipes.

I've been experimenting with various types of fermentation projects, including lacto-fermented veggies like sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles. These projects are not only delicious but also packed with nutrients and probiotics that can help support gut health. One of my favorite projects is fermenting cabbage using the traditional lacto-fermentation method.

To start, I sliced up a bunch of fresh cabbage and added it to a bowl along with some shredded carrots and micro-planed ginger. Next, I mixed in some salt at a ratio of 2.5% (25g per liter) and allowed it to sit for a few hours before adding the mixture to a clean glass jar. The resulting sauerkraut was a beautiful shade of purple and had a tangy, slightly sweet flavor that was perfect for snacking on or using as an ingredient in recipes.

I've been experimenting with various types of fermentation projects, including lacto-fermented veggies like sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles. These projects are not only delicious but also packed with nutrients and probiotics that can help support gut health. One of my favorite projects is fermenting cabbage using the traditional lacto-fermentation method.

To start, I sliced up a bunch of fresh cabbage and added it to a bowl along with some shredded carrots and micro-planed ginger. Next, I mixed in some salt at a ratio of 2.5% (25g per liter) and allowed it to sit for a few hours before adding the mixture to a clean glass jar. The resulting sauerkraut was a beautiful shade of purple and had a tangy, slightly sweet flavor that was perfect for snacking on or using as an ingredient in recipes.

One of my favorite condiments is homemade sauerkraut, which I've been making for years. It's incredibly easy to make and can be stored for months at room temperature. To make it, simply shred some cabbage and add it to a bowl along with some salt and water. Mix everything together until the cabbage is evenly coated, then transfer the mixture to a clean glass jar. Leave about an inch of space at the top of the jar and cover it with a lid or paper towel.

The resulting sauerkraut was a beautiful shade of purple and had a tangy, slightly sweet flavor that was perfect for snacking on or using as an ingredient in recipes. I've been experimenting with various types of fermentation projects, including lacto-fermented veggies like sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles.

I have also experimented with fermenting other types of milk, such as coconut milk and almond milk. These projects are a bit more challenging than traditional lacto-fermentation but can still produce delicious and healthy fermented products.

One of my favorite recipes is a smoothie made with fermented milk, banana, and spinach. The resulting drink was creamy, delicious, and packed with nutrients from the probiotic bacteria in the fermented milk. I've also experimented with using fermented milk as an ingredient in other recipes, such as soups and stews.

Fermenting milk is a game-changer for home cooks, providing a new world of flavors and textures to experiment with. Whether you're looking to make delicious smoothies or explore new recipe ideas, fermenting milk is definitely worth trying. With the right equipment and a little bit of patience, you can create your own probiotic-rich fermented products at home.

I hope this video has inspired you to try fermenting milk for yourself. Remember, it's all about experimentation and having fun in the kitchen!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso if you've been a longer time viewer of pro home Cooks you know that I am pretty obsessed with fermentation but you've also probably noticed that there hasn't been much fermentation content on this channel over the last year or two and the reason for that is because fermentation takes time which I don't have much of these days but if we are trying to maintain a balanced diet it is essential to eat fermented foods as a piece of that puzzle and I just refuse to let them go away forever so my goal was to start bringing back some fermentation projects one by one just very slowly and when you're building any habit it's all about taking baby steps not going from zero to Marathon overnight so today we are going to be covering the four easiest possible fermentation projects that can get me back in the game and hopefully give all of you a little more inspiration to start fermenting more food at home all right first up look at this stuff it's incredible fermented garlic honey right here and on a scale of easy fermenting projects to like delicious results fermented garlic honey is straight off the charts so if you're new to fermentation and you just want a really fun and simple project that's going to flavor blast your home cooking fermented honey garlic for the wi and this recipe is so easy because it only requires two ingredients honey and garlic with a little bit of prep time so the first thing I'm going to do is peel a bunch of garlic and I'm going to be using two full heads of garlic for a 12 oz jar now most people know this peeling trick at this point and I really only call on it for moments like this when I'm peeling a bunch of garlic but if you break up all those clothes pop them in between two metal bowls and just give them a big old shaky shaky garlic skin will release off the clove and then all you have to do is peel it off and you're left with a bunch of peeled fresh garlic now I'll add all of those cloves to a clean 12 oz mason jar and the second ingredient of course is honey which actually came from my neighbor's yard who has a few hives and she sells this incredible fresh honey so I picked up a few jars specifically for this fermentation project and this will work with any honey but if you can find some raw honey you're going to have more of that natural bacteria presence which is going to help in the fermentation process and I'm using just enough honey to fill the jar close to the top leaving just a little bit of head space then I'll pop on the lid and the process of fermentation is pretty simple you're just going to place it in an area that's away from the Sun you don't want to expose it to natural sunlight and in the first few days those G cloves will float to the top so every day you just want to give it a turn over to make sure they get a nice coating of honey and they're not exposed to oxygen for too long and like most lacto fermented foods the best sign of fermentation are those little air bubbles which is the CO2 being released from the fermentation process which after just a few days you should start seeing and I'll just keep turning the honey every day and you'll see after about 4 or five days the Honey's actually going to transform from a super viscous substance to more of a thinned out liquidy substance which is a good sign and when you open the top you should get a little gas pressure release as well from that CO2 buildup and now this has been fermenting for maybe 3 weeks now let's give it a little try wo you're not getting super funky flavors or anything like that it's just a really intensified garlic infusion in your honey so at this point you could let the garlic sit in there but what I'll do is just strain off those cloves I can blend those up for something else and then I'll have this infused garlic honey to use I mean salad dressing stir fry pretty much anything I'm actually going to make a little sauce with this later once I have a few more things fermented which brings me into the next fermentation project all right with the explosion of Korean food over the last decade most people at this point have had least tried kimchi and I bet a lot of you Pro home Cooks have attempted to make it at home I've shown you how to do it on this channel but I will say traditional kimchi made completely from scratch can be a bit of a process when you're dealing with these huge nap of cabbages and you're salting them and you're weighing them down with plates it can be a lot but this right here this magical little jar of daon kimchi in my opinion is a much easier product to actually make but it's just as good not to mention I did have a bunch of daon radish in the garden that I had to preserve and ferment for the winter so the first thing I did was wash off my daon radish and these are much smaller than a traditional radish if you're buying them in the store they're going to be 2 to three times as big or you can use actual Korean radishes which are like five times as big and I'm just going to remove any of the brown spots or any wilting to the exterior but since these organic it's totally fine to leave on any of that healthy skin which will just add some more flavor and nutrients next I'm going to chop them up in the little bite-sized pieces and the Size Doesn't Really Matter so much as far as the fermentation goes it's really just depending on how you want that final condiment to come out but once that water is released they will shrink in size probably 30% and then I'll just pop them in a bowl and a lot of recipes will tell you to Salt them at this point but in my personal opinion since these are coming from my garden I want that water staying in this jar because it is supercharged from the growing process everything is filtered out through the roots in the soil and it's packed with nutrients so I'm just going to Salt the actual kimchi dressing that goes on top of the daon which we're going to make right now so I got out a blender and every kimchi needs some type of sweetness to help with the fermentation in my case I'm going to add a nice chunk of Asian pear I just peeled the skin off of that but you can always just add in extra sugar if you don't have pear then I added some green onion I peeled up some ginger added that to the mix a few cloves of garlic and the most essential ingredient is the GOI jaru which is the traditional Korean chili found in all spicy kimchi but you can always make a white kimchi which is just a non-spicy kimchi if that's your preference and then finally I added a good bit of salt and just Blended that up until it was a paste and I added that to the Dacon and just mix that up until all of those daon pieces were well dressed and then I packed it into a jar the goal specifically with lacto fermentation which is happening with kimchi is to keep everything submerged under the water line because we need that anerobic environment which is without oxygen to promote that healthy bacteria that lactic acid to really start to take over so right at this point you can see there's actually not much water in there at all so I just let that sit for a few hours and after a few hours so much of the daon water was released to the point where I didn't have to add any extra water I could just push that way down and it was completely submerged below the surface now you just need some type of loose lid in there so nothing actually gets into your kimchi and then you'll just find a cool dark spot in your house and you'll let that ferment for a few days and after just one day you can see right here those CO2 bubbles already starting to form which tells me that the fermentation is really starting to activate so I just let that sit for another few days I think I went for around a week totally up to you depending on your funky preference the longer it sits of course the funkier it's going to be but right around 7 days you can see some massive air pockets in there and this thing is fully fermented and just absolutely incredible of course you can store it in your fridge for a while look at this little kimchi Cube my God my God that is good again the diecon is just much easier to prepare it almost seems simpler to actually ferment too cuz they're just cubes rather than like all of these strands of actual cabbage and it's the perfect condiment I've been using these in rice bowls all week which you're going to see later on in this video as all of these things come together into one beautiful dish now I'm not just doing these fermentation projects to preserve food longer honestly one of the biggest reasons I do it is for the health benefits because as human beings we've only had controlled Refrigeration for like 150 years and obviously we've been around a lot longer than that so our bodies have adapted right along with all of these foods that we needed to make to survive say a winter and like I mentioned before I just don't have as much time to make fermented foods and I'm not consuming as much as I would like which brings me to the sponsor of today's video seed which has been an absolute GameChanger for me seed was actually a product that my wife was taking and raving about for over a year and I finally jumped on the bandwagon about 4 months ago and I haven't looked back now I atat a very healthy diet I grow my own food I cook about 90% of the things I eat but I was still just feeling a little bit off it felt like I needed just a little bit more support for my gut and my Digestive Health which is why I decided to start taking seeds ds01 daily symbiotic now I've tried a lot of different probiotics in the past and honestly I just stopped taking them after like a week because I didn't feel much of a difference but seed was a completely different game now I didn't know this but most probiotics don't even survive the trip through your body to make an impact on your gut which is why when I was taking them I didn't feel much of a difference but seeds Prebiotic which is the actual outer capsule and the probiotic which is the inner capsule is engineered for prision entry through the GI track to survive the journey through your body so the 24 broadspectrum probiotic strains can actually make an impact on your gut where it's needed to reap the benefits of the probiotics and one of my favorite Parts about seed as a company is that all of their packaging is completely biodegradable so you get your initial starter kit and then they send you refill kits in a bio degradable packaging so you can compost everything so if you're interested in trying out seed you can click the link below my bio and use code word Pro home cooks for 15% off your first month supply of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic all right so what I have right here is some milk cafir which is something that I personally was holding off on for a bit but my brother just kept talking it up for months I finally hopped on board and it is lifechanging now really this is just like a controlled souring of milk to some degree kind of like a yogurt but unlike yogurt it is so much easier to make because you don't need to heat anything up you don't need to worry about any separation and it's actually loaded with like five times more natural strains of probiotics compared to a yogurt now this is the only fermentation project today that actually requires a specific culture they're called cafir grains they're really easy to find you can get them on Amazon or Etsy and as you can see here these grains have been sitting in some milk in the fridge which is basically a hybrid iation stage for them until you're ready to make the cafir so the first step is to strain off those grains because that milk that was helping them stay alive is now completely over fermented and way too sour so you'll just work those grains around until they're all nice and straightened off and you can see they're like gelatinous little balls which is actually a colony of natural yeast and bacteria that's going to ferment your milk and then I'll add those grains to a clean jar and the ratio you're looking for is around one teaspoon of grains per one cup of milk so I had about 3 tpoon total of grains so I'm going to add 3 cups of milk to ferment and you want to make sure your milk is not ultra pasteurized because that pasteurization process is going to kill off a lot of that natural bacteria that's going to help ignite that fermentation process and I'll give everything a gentle stir and I'll just let that sit with the lid slightly popped in a darker place and cafir can take a range of temperatures if it's cooler in your house it will ferment a little slower and of course if it's super warm it's going to ferment much quicker but room temperature is totally fine so I'm going to let this sit for one day which is technically the first fermentation process for your cfir and you can see after 24 hours you've got a little separation towards the top which is totally fine you've got some air pockets forming some of that CO2 building which is a good sign and it should smell just a little bit sour and at this point those grains have actually done their job if you kept them in there it would get too sour so we're going to strain those off and then to reserve them for another time just pop them in a little jar again pour some milk over there put them in the fridge and they can hibernate in your fridge for a bit or you can just continue to use them if you're making a ton of cafir and you're in a flow just make another batch so we're actually not done yet this is just fermentation one it should still be a little bit thin at this point the second phase is where we're going to thicken this stuff up and really build the flavor and it's very simple all you have to do is is just let it sit at room temperature for another day or two and this is actually after two full days and you can see it's completely transformed you've got all of those little micro bubbles in there from that fermentation it's pretty much doubled in size and look at the thickness on this this is like a drinkable yogurt at this point and just like an unsweetened yogurt you've got a lot of potential there but of course mixing it with some type of sweetener is going to take it to a whole new level so you saw in the last video when I was meal prepping I used this in pretty much every single smoothie that I made because the combination when you mix this with just a little bit of fruit to be honest is unbelievable it really mixes with such a nice flavor so that's been my major use for milk a feir but it has totally been a GameChanger at home for me let me know in the comments if you are someone that ferments milk cir at home and if you have any fun suggestions on how to use it because I imagine myself continuing to make cfir for a very long time and welcome to my fer a room sorry for the lighting in here but this was a room that I built out it's in the basement specifically just to have shelves full of different fermentation projects but as you can see a lot of empty jars which is a bit sad but you know you you build the foundation and then you kind of work into it over time right that's what this video is about just small baby steps and one of the best baby steps to get into fermentation is right here these are just lacto fermented veggies we've got a sauerkraut over here this was actually bok choy from the garden I'm specifically going to chat about this one which is one of the easiest fermentation projects of all time because you just need to understand how to properly salt cabbage so I actually have a seavoy cabbage here that I got in my farm share and I had to remove a few of those exterior layers because they were a bit damaged but I will save those for later which you'll see why in a second then I sliced my way right through that cabbage threw it in a bowl and I've shown you this combo before it's one of my favorites I had some fresh carrot from the garden so I just took the skin off the carrot and then peeled that carrot right into the cabbage and just these really thin strips and then finally add had a little piece of Ginger left over from the kimchi so I microplan that right into the bowl for a little hit of extra flavor and just a note when aromatics are fermented they intensify a lot so if you use some garlic or Ginger you don't need much to flavor whatever you're making so first I'll find the way to my veggies and I'm going with 2 and 1/2% salt ratio so I'll multiply that by 025 to get around 11 G of salt so I added that to the veggies and just started working that in which is going to help break down and start to release the water from that cabbage which like you've seen in all of these recipes today we need that water for an anerobic environment so what I like doing is stuffing all of that cabbage and carrot into a jar and then I'll pop on a clean leaf that I had reserved which will make sure that none of those little cabbage leaves float to the top and cause any type of molding on the top of your water level and I let this sit for a few hours just to see where the water would actually balance out and I did need just a few extra tablespoons of water to make sure everything was submerged and this right here is my cool dark space where these fermented which is about 65° in here perfect for lacto fermentation and in my opinion The Sweet Spot for sauerkraut is like two or three weeks that's when you really start building flavors you can go shorter but you can also go longer as well and just one of the best condiments little sides to have in your fridge for many weeks to months so for fermentation projects but I did just want to show you a quick little recipe of bringing these things together which is a rice bowl cuz I actually had some pork belly in the freezer which I defrosted and I chopped up I seasoned the pork belly and then I soused the pork belly got it perfectly tender and with the excess pork liquid and fat that cooked off in the sousi process I poured that into a bowl added that fermented honey garlic little bit of black vinegar soy sauce chili paste and just cooked that down until it was a beautiful sauce and then I fried up that pork belly to render off that fat and get that skin super crispy and then plate it up the most insane Rice Bowl oh my God oh my God best rice bowl of my lifeso if you've been a longer time viewer of pro home Cooks you know that I am pretty obsessed with fermentation but you've also probably noticed that there hasn't been much fermentation content on this channel over the last year or two and the reason for that is because fermentation takes time which I don't have much of these days but if we are trying to maintain a balanced diet it is essential to eat fermented foods as a piece of that puzzle and I just refuse to let them go away forever so my goal was to start bringing back some fermentation projects one by one just very slowly and when you're building any habit it's all about taking baby steps not going from zero to Marathon overnight so today we are going to be covering the four easiest possible fermentation projects that can get me back in the game and hopefully give all of you a little more inspiration to start fermenting more food at home all right first up look at this stuff it's incredible fermented garlic honey right here and on a scale of easy fermenting projects to like delicious results fermented garlic honey is straight off the charts so if you're new to fermentation and you just want a really fun and simple project that's going to flavor blast your home cooking fermented honey garlic for the wi and this recipe is so easy because it only requires two ingredients honey and garlic with a little bit of prep time so the first thing I'm going to do is peel a bunch of garlic and I'm going to be using two full heads of garlic for a 12 oz jar now most people know this peeling trick at this point and I really only call on it for moments like this when I'm peeling a bunch of garlic but if you break up all those clothes pop them in between two metal bowls and just give them a big old shaky shaky garlic skin will release off the clove and then all you have to do is peel it off and you're left with a bunch of peeled fresh garlic now I'll add all of those cloves to a clean 12 oz mason jar and the second ingredient of course is honey which actually came from my neighbor's yard who has a few hives and she sells this incredible fresh honey so I picked up a few jars specifically for this fermentation project and this will work with any honey but if you can find some raw honey you're going to have more of that natural bacteria presence which is going to help in the fermentation process and I'm using just enough honey to fill the jar close to the top leaving just a little bit of head space then I'll pop on the lid and the process of fermentation is pretty simple you're just going to place it in an area that's away from the Sun you don't want to expose it to natural sunlight and in the first few days those G cloves will float to the top so every day you just want to give it a turn over to make sure they get a nice coating of honey and they're not exposed to oxygen for too long and like most lacto fermented foods the best sign of fermentation are those little air bubbles which is the CO2 being released from the fermentation process which after just a few days you should start seeing and I'll just keep turning the honey every day and you'll see after about 4 or five days the Honey's actually going to transform from a super viscous substance to more of a thinned out liquidy substance which is a good sign and when you open the top you should get a little gas pressure release as well from that CO2 buildup and now this has been fermenting for maybe 3 weeks now let's give it a little try wo you're not getting super funky flavors or anything like that it's just a really intensified garlic infusion in your honey so at this point you could let the garlic sit in there but what I'll do is just strain off those cloves I can blend those up for something else and then I'll have this infused garlic honey to use I mean salad dressing stir fry pretty much anything I'm actually going to make a little sauce with this later once I have a few more things fermented which brings me into the next fermentation project all right with the explosion of Korean food over the last decade most people at this point have had least tried kimchi and I bet a lot of you Pro home Cooks have attempted to make it at home I've shown you how to do it on this channel but I will say traditional kimchi made completely from scratch can be a bit of a process when you're dealing with these huge nap of cabbages and you're salting them and you're weighing them down with plates it can be a lot but this right here this magical little jar of daon kimchi in my opinion is a much easier product to actually make but it's just as good not to mention I did have a bunch of daon radish in the garden that I had to preserve and ferment for the winter so the first thing I did was wash off my daon radish and these are much smaller than a traditional radish if you're buying them in the store they're going to be 2 to three times as big or you can use actual Korean radishes which are like five times as big and I'm just going to remove any of the brown spots or any wilting to the exterior but since these organic it's totally fine to leave on any of that healthy skin which will just add some more flavor and nutrients next I'm going to chop them up in the little bite-sized pieces and the Size Doesn't Really Matter so much as far as the fermentation goes it's really just depending on how you want that final condiment to come out but once that water is released they will shrink in size probably 30% and then I'll just pop them in a bowl and a lot of recipes will tell you to Salt them at this point but in my personal opinion since these are coming from my garden I want that water staying in this jar because it is supercharged from the growing process everything is filtered out through the roots in the soil and it's packed with nutrients so I'm just going to Salt the actual kimchi dressing that goes on top of the daon which we're going to make right now so I got out a blender and every kimchi needs some type of sweetness to help with the fermentation in my case I'm going to add a nice chunk of Asian pear I just peeled the skin off of that but you can always just add in extra sugar if you don't have pear then I added some green onion I peeled up some ginger added that to the mix a few cloves of garlic and the most essential ingredient is the GOI jaru which is the traditional Korean chili found in all spicy kimchi but you can always make a white kimchi which is just a non-spicy kimchi if that's your preference and then finally I added a good bit of salt and just Blended that up until it was a paste and I added that to the Dacon and just mix that up until all of those daon pieces were well dressed and then I packed it into a jar the goal specifically with lacto fermentation which is happening with kimchi is to keep everything submerged under the water line because we need that anerobic environment which is without oxygen to promote that healthy bacteria that lactic acid to really start to take over so right at this point you can see there's actually not much water in there at all so I just let that sit for a few hours and after a few hours so much of the daon water was released to the point where I didn't have to add any extra water I could just push that way down and it was completely submerged below the surface now you just need some type of loose lid in there so nothing actually gets into your kimchi and then you'll just find a cool dark spot in your house and you'll let that ferment for a few days and after just one day you can see right here those CO2 bubbles already starting to form which tells me that the fermentation is really starting to activate so I just let that sit for another few days I think I went for around a week totally up to you depending on your funky preference the longer it sits of course the funkier it's going to be but right around 7 days you can see some massive air pockets in there and this thing is fully fermented and just absolutely incredible of course you can store it in your fridge for a while look at this little kimchi Cube my God my God that is good again the diecon is just much easier to prepare it almost seems simpler to actually ferment too cuz they're just cubes rather than like all of these strands of actual cabbage and it's the perfect condiment I've been using these in rice bowls all week which you're going to see later on in this video as all of these things come together into one beautiful dish now I'm not just doing these fermentation projects to preserve food longer honestly one of the biggest reasons I do it is for the health benefits because as human beings we've only had controlled Refrigeration for like 150 years and obviously we've been around a lot longer than that so our bodies have adapted right along with all of these foods that we needed to make to survive say a winter and like I mentioned before I just don't have as much time to make fermented foods and I'm not consuming as much as I would like which brings me to the sponsor of today's video seed which has been an absolute GameChanger for me seed was actually a product that my wife was taking and raving about for over a year and I finally jumped on the bandwagon about 4 months ago and I haven't looked back now I atat a very healthy diet I grow my own food I cook about 90% of the things I eat but I was still just feeling a little bit off it felt like I needed just a little bit more support for my gut and my Digestive Health which is why I decided to start taking seeds ds01 daily symbiotic now I've tried a lot of different probiotics in the past and honestly I just stopped taking them after like a week because I didn't feel much of a difference but seed was a completely different game now I didn't know this but most probiotics don't even survive the trip through your body to make an impact on your gut which is why when I was taking them I didn't feel much of a difference but seeds Prebiotic which is the actual outer capsule and the probiotic which is the inner capsule is engineered for prision entry through the GI track to survive the journey through your body so the 24 broadspectrum probiotic strains can actually make an impact on your gut where it's needed to reap the benefits of the probiotics and one of my favorite Parts about seed as a company is that all of their packaging is completely biodegradable so you get your initial starter kit and then they send you refill kits in a bio degradable packaging so you can compost everything so if you're interested in trying out seed you can click the link below my bio and use code word Pro home cooks for 15% off your first month supply of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic all right so what I have right here is some milk cafir which is something that I personally was holding off on for a bit but my brother just kept talking it up for months I finally hopped on board and it is lifechanging now really this is just like a controlled souring of milk to some degree kind of like a yogurt but unlike yogurt it is so much easier to make because you don't need to heat anything up you don't need to worry about any separation and it's actually loaded with like five times more natural strains of probiotics compared to a yogurt now this is the only fermentation project today that actually requires a specific culture they're called cafir grains they're really easy to find you can get them on Amazon or Etsy and as you can see here these grains have been sitting in some milk in the fridge which is basically a hybrid iation stage for them until you're ready to make the cafir so the first step is to strain off those grains because that milk that was helping them stay alive is now completely over fermented and way too sour so you'll just work those grains around until they're all nice and straightened off and you can see they're like gelatinous little balls which is actually a colony of natural yeast and bacteria that's going to ferment your milk and then I'll add those grains to a clean jar and the ratio you're looking for is around one teaspoon of grains per one cup of milk so I had about 3 tpoon total of grains so I'm going to add 3 cups of milk to ferment and you want to make sure your milk is not ultra pasteurized because that pasteurization process is going to kill off a lot of that natural bacteria that's going to help ignite that fermentation process and I'll give everything a gentle stir and I'll just let that sit with the lid slightly popped in a darker place and cafir can take a range of temperatures if it's cooler in your house it will ferment a little slower and of course if it's super warm it's going to ferment much quicker but room temperature is totally fine so I'm going to let this sit for one day which is technically the first fermentation process for your cfir and you can see after 24 hours you've got a little separation towards the top which is totally fine you've got some air pockets forming some of that CO2 building which is a good sign and it should smell just a little bit sour and at this point those grains have actually done their job if you kept them in there it would get too sour so we're going to strain those off and then to reserve them for another time just pop them in a little jar again pour some milk over there put them in the fridge and they can hibernate in your fridge for a bit or you can just continue to use them if you're making a ton of cafir and you're in a flow just make another batch so we're actually not done yet this is just fermentation one it should still be a little bit thin at this point the second phase is where we're going to thicken this stuff up and really build the flavor and it's very simple all you have to do is is just let it sit at room temperature for another day or two and this is actually after two full days and you can see it's completely transformed you've got all of those little micro bubbles in there from that fermentation it's pretty much doubled in size and look at the thickness on this this is like a drinkable yogurt at this point and just like an unsweetened yogurt you've got a lot of potential there but of course mixing it with some type of sweetener is going to take it to a whole new level so you saw in the last video when I was meal prepping I used this in pretty much every single smoothie that I made because the combination when you mix this with just a little bit of fruit to be honest is unbelievable it really mixes with such a nice flavor so that's been my major use for milk a feir but it has totally been a GameChanger at home for me let me know in the comments if you are someone that ferments milk cir at home and if you have any fun suggestions on how to use it because I imagine myself continuing to make cfir for a very long time and welcome to my fer a room sorry for the lighting in here but this was a room that I built out it's in the basement specifically just to have shelves full of different fermentation projects but as you can see a lot of empty jars which is a bit sad but you know you you build the foundation and then you kind of work into it over time right that's what this video is about just small baby steps and one of the best baby steps to get into fermentation is right here these are just lacto fermented veggies we've got a sauerkraut over here this was actually bok choy from the garden I'm specifically going to chat about this one which is one of the easiest fermentation projects of all time because you just need to understand how to properly salt cabbage so I actually have a seavoy cabbage here that I got in my farm share and I had to remove a few of those exterior layers because they were a bit damaged but I will save those for later which you'll see why in a second then I sliced my way right through that cabbage threw it in a bowl and I've shown you this combo before it's one of my favorites I had some fresh carrot from the garden so I just took the skin off the carrot and then peeled that carrot right into the cabbage and just these really thin strips and then finally add had a little piece of Ginger left over from the kimchi so I microplan that right into the bowl for a little hit of extra flavor and just a note when aromatics are fermented they intensify a lot so if you use some garlic or Ginger you don't need much to flavor whatever you're making so first I'll find the way to my veggies and I'm going with 2 and 1/2% salt ratio so I'll multiply that by 025 to get around 11 G of salt so I added that to the veggies and just started working that in which is going to help break down and start to release the water from that cabbage which like you've seen in all of these recipes today we need that water for an anerobic environment so what I like doing is stuffing all of that cabbage and carrot into a jar and then I'll pop on a clean leaf that I had reserved which will make sure that none of those little cabbage leaves float to the top and cause any type of molding on the top of your water level and I let this sit for a few hours just to see where the water would actually balance out and I did need just a few extra tablespoons of water to make sure everything was submerged and this right here is my cool dark space where these fermented which is about 65° in here perfect for lacto fermentation and in my opinion The Sweet Spot for sauerkraut is like two or three weeks that's when you really start building flavors you can go shorter but you can also go longer as well and just one of the best condiments little sides to have in your fridge for many weeks to months so for fermentation projects but I did just want to show you a quick little recipe of bringing these things together which is a rice bowl cuz I actually had some pork belly in the freezer which I defrosted and I chopped up I seasoned the pork belly and then I soused the pork belly got it perfectly tender and with the excess pork liquid and fat that cooked off in the sousi process I poured that into a bowl added that fermented honey garlic little bit of black vinegar soy sauce chili paste and just cooked that down until it was a beautiful sauce and then I fried up that pork belly to render off that fat and get that skin super crispy and then plate it up the most insane Rice Bowl oh my God oh my God best rice bowl of my life\n"