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  • RecipesWe love to create delicious recipes with gut health in mind. By using our recipes, you can easily create any dish knowing that it’s good for gut health! Our recipe blog also includes Vegan Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes, Gluten Free Recipes, and Paleo Recipes.
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Fruits & Roots

Ten Easy Fermented Vegetable Recipes for Beginners

Get ready to become a confident home fermenter with these easy fermentation recipes for beginners. You’re guaranteed to get great results on the first try.

Recipe Index | Ferment | Fruits & Roots

Ten Easy Fermented Vegetable Recipes for Beginners

Get ready to become a confident home fermenter with these easy fermentation recipes for beginners. You’re guaranteed to get great results on the first try.

Fermentation Recipes for Beginners

The best fermentation recipes for beginners are sauerkraut recipes! After you master sauerkraut, I suggest trying out fermentation for pickles and other “vine-growing” vegetables. By vine growing, I mean it grows on a branching plant from a flower.

Here are my top five easy fermented vegetable recipes for beginners.

I advise starting with number one, then working your way through number ten.

By the time you make the tenth recipe, you’ll feel like a cultured guru too!

The main supplies you need for these recipes are a large mason jar, a fermentation weight, some sea salt, and a kitchen scale.

How to Make Old Fashioned Sauerkraut with Caraway Seeds

Enjoy this delicious Bavarian-style sauerkraut recipe made with caraway seeds. In this step-by-step recipe, you will learn to make old fashioned sauerkraut with caraway seeds in a mason jar.

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Roasted Garlic Sauerkraut with Black Pepper

This recipe is a traditional, wild fermented sauerkraut with roasted garlic and black pepper incorporated. If you love garlic, crisp sauerkraut, and a light pepper flavor then this Roasted Garlic Sauerkraut with black pepper recipe is for you!

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Homemade Kimchi Inspired Spicy Sauerkraut Recipe

What does kimchi taste like? It’s spicy, umami, sour and absolutely delicious! Learn how to make kimchi sauerkraut, a spicy sauerkraut recipe with delicious kimchi flavor.

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using my hads to show the tightly packed layers of a fresh raw red cabbage

Fermented Beet and Red Cabbage Sauerkraut

This fermented beet and red cabbage sauerkraut recipe is the best way to make fermented beets and cabbage. Beet sauerkraut is ready to eat in three weeks.

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Turmeric Napa Cabbage Sauerkraut

If you ever wondered if you can make sauerkraut with napa cabbage, the answer is yes! This delicious turmeric sauerkraut recipe is a simple napa cabbage sauerkraut, perfect for preserving in-season fall and winter cabbage.

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How to Ferment Sauerkraut with Orange, Sesame, and Ginger

Learn how to ferment sauerkraut with orange sesame and ginger. With only six ingredients and some patience, you can make this flavorful sauerkraut incorporating fresh orange, sesame seeds and freshly grated ginger root at home! Wild fermented sauerkraut contains billions of gut-healthy microorganisms, lots of vitamins, and prebiotic fiber.

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Fermented Cucumbers: Fermenting Sliced Cucumbers Two Ways

This fermented cucumbers recipe makes it easy to ferment pickles that stay crunchy and crisp. Learn the best techniques for fermenting sliced cucumbers.

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The Best Lacto-Fermented Green Beans with Ginger and Scallions

Green beans are one of the best and easiest vegetables to ferment! With just salt, water, fresh green beans, spices, a fermentation weight, and a mason jar you can make these probiotic-packed fermented green beans at home. This recipe requires a kitchen scale for measuring ingredients and two weeks of fermentation at room temperature.

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Pepper Fermentation Recipe: Learn How to Ferment Any Type of Pepper

How do you make fermented peppers? What is the best salt ratio for fermenting peppers? how long to ferment peppers? With our Easy Pepper Fermentation Recipe you’ll have the best fermented peppers in just 5 weeks! Learn how to ferment peppers at home.

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Easy and Nutritious Fermented Giardiniera

Giardiniera is a mix of pickled vegetables in vinegar or oil in Italy, but here we used wild fermentation to create a delicious fermented Giardiniera. For this recipe, we developed a spicy, pleasantly sour preserved vegetable mix, made even more nutritious through fermentation. By the way, in Italian, it is pronounced jar-din-AIR-ah, and it literally means “from the garden.”

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More Fermenting Recipes for Beginners

  • How to Ferment Sauerkraut with Blueberries and Açaí
  • Fermented Baby Bok Choy
  • Fermented Pepperoncini Recipe
  • Fermented Spicy Garlic Pickle Spirals
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Kaitlynn Fenley Author, Educator, Food Microbiologist
Kaitlynn is a food microbiologist and fermentation expert teaching people how to ferment foods and drinks at home.
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fermentation food microbiology sourdough sauerkraut fermenting at home fermented foods fermented drinks
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welcome!

hey i’m kaitlynn, i’m a microbiologist and together with my husband jon we are cultured guru.

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  1. Pattie
    08|08|2022

    I’ve been making beet kavass for a while now but my last two turned from beautiful red to brown. It tastes watery. Any ideas why.?

    Reply
    1. Kaitlynn Fenley
      08|09|2022

      I don’t have a beet kvass recipe here yet. My guess is that you made it with salt, and beet kvass is supposed to be made with sugar.

      Reply

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My favorite topic I teach in our online course is My favorite topic I teach in our online course is called Fermentation Variables. The whole lesson is centered around the fact that there are six main variables that influence the outcome of fermentation.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Sugar
Salt
Oxygen
Acidity
Temperature
Time

Temperature and time depend on each other most closely. 

that means, for all of our foods and drinks that ferment at room temp, things slow way down in the winter cold. 

The fermentation timeline is simply longer when it’s colder (and faster when it’s hotter). The microbes, kind of like us, make things happen slowly in the cold winter. 

I think this is yet another sign from nature that we’re supposed to rest and be gentle and gracious with deadlines, work, and not rush things this time of year. 

Let it be slow, it’ll still be great, it just takes a little more patience and time. 

If you’re looking to start fermentation as an analog hobby in the new year, our courses are 40% off right now! You can use code NEWYEARS at checkout. (Yes, you learn online, but it’s delicious, long form content + the skills are life long). What you learn empowers you to get off the computer/phone and go ferment some delicious foods and drinks. 

Touching cabbage and dough is just as good as “touching grass” lol 

Let me know if you have questions about our courses or just fermentation in general in the comments!

#fermentation
Yes cooking kills the microbes, but idc. I mean, I Yes cooking kills the microbes, but idc. I mean, I care, but in a “thank you for your service microbes” kinda way. 🫡

Cider braised pork and sauerkraut is a perfect choice for New Year’s or any winter meal! I lovvveee pairing it with butternut squash polenta bc it’s full of vitamin C for cold and flu szn. 

Eating pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day is a tradition. And I really do think it brings good luck and prosperity.

Get the recipe on our blog, linked in my profile and in story highlights! 

I’m really looking forward to creating more recipes like this in the new year, to show you all the joys of incorporating ferments into meals and recipes 😌✨ stay tuned! 

#newyear #sauerkraut #fermentation
One Christmas I gifted everyone in my family the N One Christmas I gifted everyone in my family the New York style sourdough bagels and they were thrilled. (The bagels we’re actually way under proofed, but I still gifted them and everyone loved them lol)

You can get the full recipe on my blog! And these can be made with discard and instant yeast or with just active starter.

 All the details are in the 5-star rated recipe on my website. 

#bagels #sourdough
This cookie dough is long-fermented overnight in t This cookie dough is long-fermented overnight in the fridge for the softest, most flavorful, melt-in your mouth sourdough gingerbread cookies.

For Christmas 2025, I tried something new with these cookies. I created a gingerbread sourdough starter to use in this recipe! I made it by feeding some of my established starter a mix that includes molasses and gingerbread spices. I just added the instructions for the gingerbread starter in the notes of my cookie recipe.

Get the full recipe and directions on my website! https://cultured.guru 

You can use the recipe index to see all my Christmas season recipes!

#gingerbread #sourdough
My gingerbread sourdough starter recipe 🎄✨ Like a My gingerbread sourdough starter recipe 🎄✨

Like and save for some fun Christmas sourdough baking! 

I made this up a few days ago to use in my soft sourdough gingerbread cookies. (cookie recipe is in my recipe index on my website!)

#sourdough #gingerbread
Christmas gift feta cheese🧀🎄✨ Part two of my four Christmas gift feta cheese🧀🎄✨

Part two of my four part series on homemade fermented foods to gift this holiday season! This one takes about five days total to prepare, so start now if you plan to gift this one on Christmas. 

GOOGLE “cultured guru feta” to get my feta recipe any time! You can also use the recipe index linked in my bio! 

#fermentation
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