Fermented foods are excellent for your gut health.  The probiotics they offer are some of the best you can get, and for much less than buying pills at the store.  Actually, this fermented salsa recipe was nearly free with vegetables from the garden.

Fermented salsa is apparently the best recipe to make when learning to ferment your own foods.  It is both simple and delicious and you can likely get most of the ingredients right out of your garden.

Here we go:  Wash and sterilize some mason jars, just like you would to make pickles.

Fill the jars with tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and whatever else you have that would be good in salsa.

Add 2 teaspoons of salt.  Mix well and then pack the salsa down in the jars.  Be sure to get all the bubbles out.  Also be sure that the vegetables are fully submerged in the liquid of the tomatoes.  If you need to add a small amount of water, that is fine.

The next thing you need is a weight and an airlock for your mason jar.  You can buy a nice setup and they are easy enough to find, but I haven’t got mine yet.  I found this neat technique where they used a plastic bag full of water as both an airlock and a weight.

The idea is to fill the bag enough to keep the veggies in the jar completely submerged in the liquid so they don’t get moldy.  Push the bag against the inside of the jar around the top to cover your veggies but still allow the air bubbles from the ferment to escape.  If you fill the jar too full, the ferment will over flow and make a big mess.

Wait about two days and give it a taste.  If it’s not quite right, let it go another day.  You may not know what quite right is until you have made it a few times.  It will also ferment slower if it is colder and faster if it’s warmer.

And just so you know, this is fantastic on eggs.

Check these links for recipes:

Ferment Works

Cultures for Health