Fermented Food

It’s hard to believe that with only brown rice, soybeans and water, you can turn them into healthy Cultured Tofu & Yogurt without any special equipment!

As I become more conscious of how I use resources for my cooking, I try to find ways to use less ingredients and equipment to create healthy meals.

Eating foods that contain probiotics have become more important too. This keeps my guts healthy, and yogurt was a big part of my diet for a long time.

When I was no longer comfortable with all the plastic containers from buying yogurt, I tried to make my own. However, the fact that yogurt can’t be made without a yogurt maker or maybe an instant pot wasn’t appealing to me.

I didn’t have any of those machines, and I was not interested in buying them.…

dry it in a breathable tray

No more equipment than a bamboo steamer is needed. Follow this simple recipe and instructions, and you can make Brown Rice Koji right in your kitchen!

In this post, besides learning how to make Brown Rice Koji, you will also learn how to use it to make healthy & tasty brown rice amazake.

Ever since I learned how good koji is for your health, I always wanted to add it to my dishes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do this as I didn’t want to buy bag after bag of it.

I was optimistic to try and make my own koji rice, but just couldn’t. All of the recipes and instructions I looked for showed that special equipment is important to making koji. Also, I had to precisely monitor the temperature during the period I was making it.

Sadly, those reasons were enough to scare me away from making it for a long time.

As I always wanted to eat food that is good for my gut, koji kept calling me back.

At one point I decided that buying all the suggested equipment might be the best way to go. It’s so worth it to have homemade koji rice on hand, plus Brown Rice Koji is very expensive and hard to find.

Just before I decided to order the equipment, my thoughts went back a few thousand years into the past. The first koji rice wouldn’t have been made with all this modern equipment. That’s it, I should be able to make it like people used to without having to own so much equipment.…

drying the balls in a warm area

How long does it take to make commercial soy sauce–do you know? I don’t, but I do know this Homemade Soy Sauce takes at least ONE year!

I’m deeply fascinated by the way Korean soy sauce is made. I lost myself dreaming back in time while researching it, and I wanted to be able to make it at home so badly. There was a lot of work involved, and initially I was too afraid to start.

However, in December 2017, I overcame my fear and made my first batch of Homemade Soy Sauce. Not knowing how it would turn out, I filmed every step of the process.

The result wasn’t exactly like I imagined. I wanted to have a lot of fermented bean paste that I could use as miso. There was too much fungi in the paste however, and I was afraid to use that part.

However, the taste was amazing and the process of making it was worth sharing. So, I finished the video and shared my experience via my Youtube Channel in 2019. As a result, I got a lot of reviews–both positive and of course, some negative ones too.

I have learned so much from this experience, not only about how to make soy sauce, but also a lot more about other related products as well.

I also learned to appreciate the foods I eat more, to be patient and not to rush, and best of all I learned that high quality things can’t be made fast!…

Simply ferment cashews with Penicillium Roqueforti and age it at least 4 weeks. It’s hard to believe this Vegan Blue Cheese is not made from dairy?

I stopped eating any kind of meat since 2004. It wasn’t too hard to make up my mind not to rely on other lives to live, although I still ate dairy cheese.

A few years later, as I learned more about the dairy industry, I tried to give up dairy products altogether as well.

However, giving up dairy wasn’t easy. There is dairy in almost everything, and the most difficult item to give up is cheese.

I have tried replacing my cheese cravings with commercial vegan cheeses on the market, but one I bought was so bad that I couldn’t finish it. It was highly processed with some unfamiliar additives in it–not what I wanted to put in my body.…

With a practical method & simple equipment, this Homemade Soy-Free Tempeh recipe is perfect. It’s so tasty, healthy, and best of all: no soy or plastic involved!

If you eat a plant-based diet, I’m sure you know tempeh. There are so many kinds of tempeh on the market nowadays, but most commonly its made from soy.

I have no problem eating non-GMO soy, but sometimes, I crave something different such as Homemade Soy-Free Tempeh to get different flavors.

I wanted to make my own tempeh for so long but I got so intimidated by all the equipment they suggested in order to make it at home. Also, when I looked closely into making it, my other big concern was all the plastic used.

All of the tutorials I researched suggest to use plastic bags, or to use banana leaves if I want to make it the way people in Indonesia made it in the past.

Using plastic bags for making food? Nah.…

vegan cheese (cashew camembert)

Take a bite of this Vegan Cheese and you’ll be amazed that it’s not dairy cheese. Not only does it look exactly the same, but it also tastes the same–even better!

Knowing how much the dairy product industry impacts our health and the environment, my family cut down dairy product intake by more than 80% over the past few years.

Whenever I talk to people who are trying to go plant-based, most of them say the same thing: that giving up cheese is the hardest.

It was hard for me too. I started to look into it more seriously to find something to replace the dairy cheese we ate. Unfortunately, most Vegan Cheeses on the market are highly processed and the tastes are unbelievably bad. …

This Homemade Nutritional Yeast Substitute is both healthy & tasty. It’s made with only 2 healthy ingredients you already know: miso and sprouted chickpeas.

I have been trying to make nutritional yeast at home without success for a long time. After a lot of research, I realized there is no way for me to make this at home.

Making nutritional yeast as we buy it from stores requires a special lab that’s full of commercial equipment. There is also a scientific fact that ordinary people like me don’t know: it’s a very highly processed food, and shockingly, most brands are genetically modified!

The vitamin B-12 I thought occurs naturally in commercial nutritional yeast is actually the fortified type, and added in later. …

This complete guide of Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar will walk you through from start to finish. From using cultured apples to growing mother–you’ll know it all.

Apple Cider Vinegar is a wonder food that most households have it in their pantries. The health benefits of it is phenomenal. It’s versatile. Besides consuming, it can be used for almost everything.

I love fermented foods and believe that we need good bacteria to keep our gut healthy. When the gut is healthy, we don’t tend to get sick as often.

So I ferment a lot. From fermenting whole grains, making water kefir and lacto-fermentation to soy sauce. Of course, Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar is one of them. I always make sure to have one batch of vinegar going so I don’t run out and have to buy it.…

store sprouted-toasted buckwheat in glass jars

Sprouted Buckwheat is one of the world’s healthiest seeds. It’s gluten free, and people can rely on for amino acids, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants!

I grew up eating Japanese soba noodles made with buckwheat, but I had no idea what buckwheat really was. However, trying to eat everything healthy the right way, I came across buckwheat. The first time I saw real buckwheat, I thought it was grain, but it is actually a seed!

Knowing about phytic acids in whole grains, nuts and seeds, I do a lot of fermenting and sprouting of these things before I cook them, and buckwheat is something I like to sprout too!

Sprouting anything sounds difficult, but don’t let the sound of it stop you. To me, sprouting buckwheat is even easier than other kinds of seeds or beans. I’m writing this post while living abroad, and I didn’t have all the equipment I used back home, so I am sprouting buckwheat with a recycled jar, and a basic strainer, and the result is great!…

Water Kefir is a great way to have a probiotic drink without dairy. It’s full of beneficial bacteria strains that are also vegan friendly!

I know how good kefir is to my body, as I have been making my own with local goat’s milk for many years. I was so happy with the result and the milk even came in reusable glass bottles.

It is not so easy to find such high quality organic milk in glass containers everywhere however, and I have been looking for a way to be less milk dependent.

I read more and more about how much plastic packaging ends up being burnt somewhere outside the US after we recycling. …

Lacto-fermented cauliflower is one of the easiest ways to eat raw vegetables, and to consume prebiotics to keep your gut healthy at the same time.

As I try to balance my diet with both cooked and raw vegetables, lacto-fermented vegetables are an important part of what I eat.

It amazes me how simple it is to get good bacteria to keep our bodies healthy–just by mixing any kind of vegetables you want to eat with salt and water, and letting the wild yeast work for a few days. Before you know it, it’s ready to eat.…

This Fermented Cranberry Sauce is not only good for holiday meals, but it’s also a good way to keep your guts healthy while enjoying your favorite meals!

Many holiday meals can’t be completed without cranberry sauce. Even though crabberies are very sour, when you eat them as a sauce, it’s sweet and most people love it. We tend to forget that a lot of sugar is what usually makes cranberry sauce taste so good.

Since sugar plays such a big role in making cranberry sauce taste good, I have my own way of sharing some of this sugar with wild-good bacteria in my house. That’s right, I let the good bacteria eat some sugar in cranberry sauce, and turn the sauce into a healthier, raw and fermented version!…

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