Fermented Foods; A Lost Nutritional Friend

Earlier this fall I broke my ankle and was confined to an armchair. Not being a sit-patiently-with-your-leg-in-acast kind of girl, I spent some time researching which foods would help me heal fastest. Nutrition books were stacked high, search engines whirred away. Leafy greens, check; wide variety of fruits and vegetables, check; almonds and other nuts, check; oily fish, check. Sauerkraut. Uhhh, sauerkraut, really? Honestly, I almost kicked the wall with my good foot in vexation. Now, I suspect that some of you share my ambivalence toward sauerkraut. On the other hand, those who like it seem to wax poetic about it. Last month I suggested that there might be less than flattering talk in this newsletter about sauerkraut; you would be surprised at the heated words that elicited from some readers.

Here’s the deal with sauerkraut: it is a fermented food, and therein lies its secret power. Fermented foods are a lost nutritional friend. In the days before refrigeration, making sauerkraut was similar to salting cod or smoking meat — a method of preservation. It turns out that the bacteria present in sauerkraut — lactobacilli — also helps to preserve humans; it is a key ingredient in a healthy gut, which in turn is key to a healthy you. Researchers are currently studying the relationship between gut flora and a range of health issues from obesity to allergies to autism.

At it’s most basic, sauerkraut is nothing but layers of cabbage and salt placed in a large crock or jar, covered with a lid and left in the basement for a couple of weeks or until lactobacilli turns the cabbage into sauerkraut. The salt effectively kills all other bacteria.

These days, as we eat factory-processed food, down antibiotics with abandon and use hand sanitizers to chase away germs, we all need more fermented food to help create healthy gut bacteria.

Anyway, there I was, banging my cast against the wall and staring down a large jar of sauerkraut. In the end, I chopped up a huge bowl of parsley, tossed in a cup of sauerkraut, and added a slug of extra virgin olive oil, (the sourness of the sauerkraut acting as the vinegar in this salad), a cup of cooked quinoa for protein and a few toasted pine nuts for crunch, and Bob’s your uncle! Healthy and Delicious. Family members were gobbling it up! I actually began to crave it. Yesterday one of the boys asked if we could have “some more of that yummy sauerkraut salad” sometime soon.

A final note on ingredients: steer away from pasteurized sauerkraut — the pasteurization will have killed all those lovely bacteria. Look for raw or bottled sauerkraut with a minimal number of ingredients. Other fermented foods include kimchi and miso paste, but not, dearly beloved, wine and beer (although fermented, these are mostly pasteurized these days). To reap the full benefits of sauerkraut it should be eaten cold, at room temperature, or at the very most, only slightly warmed.

HEALTHY AND DELICIOUS SALAD

Toss the following ingredients together and drizzle with a  good amount of extra virgin olive oil

1 large bunch of parsley, rinsed, dried  and roughly chopped

1 cup raw sauerkraut

1 cup cooked quinoa or farro

handful toasted walnuts or pinenuts

a few radishes, if you have them for color and crunch

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper.