So recently learned from my doc that I need to follow a low fodmap diet. It’s no big deal as long as I can eat potatoes (so many amazing things you can do with potatoes). I was wondering if anyone had some great low fodmap recipes that I could make that my wife (who doesn’t need to follow the diet) and I could enjoy. I’m the cook, so as long as she enjoys it, we’re good to go. I just made julienne fries with an egg on top and I found this amazing LFODMAP Louisiana hot sauce that I poured over it all. One of the best brunches Iade since I’ve had to follow this diet.
Edit: Thank you to those who are supportive of medical conditions such as IBS, Crohns, and Celiacs (which are the conditions that should use a low FODMAP diet). Also I’m very appreciative of people who are knowledgeable in the diet that I am referring to
FODMAP MEANS fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. All the things that are known to trigger reactions in certain GI issues that some people have. It’s an important issue because you have serotonin receptors in your GI tract. It can also impact daily life and sleep!
However, I’m asking for recipes for low FODMAP diets. I ask very respectfully that if you do comment, please give me a recipe(s) instead of expressing the importance of the diet or that you know what the diet is.
Again, respectfully, recipes, please. Stop telling me you know what the diet is.
interested
Sorry, been away from the computer. This is the most basic recipe I can come up with and it’s intended for anyone to be able to do without special tools or supplies. You can get a whole lot fancier if you invest a bit of money into better stuff.
To do a basic sauerkraut, you need only five things:
-Cabbage
-Salt (kosher/picking salt works easiest but any will work. avoid salt with lithium and iodine as they prevent microbial growth)
-Water
-A fermenting container (no metal!) If you have some jars on hand, go grab them. If not, start collecting used pickle and mayonnaise jars until you have 4 - 5 around.
-A dark or covered place that remains at room temperature. If you have a tray, get that out to catch any drips.
-Optional flavors–mustard seed and caraway seed work well, so do black peppercorns. This is where you can get experimental. Add about a teaspoon per cabbage.
For understanding scale, a single cabbage will fill somewhere around 2 regular pickle jars. I like to keep more around just in case you need more space.
Take off outer leaves from your cabbage and save them. Cut the cabbage in half. Try to remove the thick core that will be near where the root came out. You should be able to cut out a triangular wedge and remove nearly all of it. A little bit doesn’t matter–it’s edible, but tougher than the rest. You will notice the texture difference but I have never found this to be a big deal.
Lay your cabbage half on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, make vertical cuts throughout trying to keep the size of each the same. It doesn’t really matter how you cut it–this is your preference–but it should all be consistent for a consistent result.
If you want to get accurate, weigh your cut cabbage. For each 100g of cabbage, you will separately measure out 2g of salt. It doesn’t matter what measure you use, your target is 2% salt by weight. If you don’t have a scale, that’s fine. For each cabbage, measure out a heaping tablespoon of salt.
Mix the sat very well throughout the cabbage. Massage it firmly with your hands for several minutes–you actually want to bruise it a bit. Let it sit for a while–perhaps as much as an hour–for the salt to draw out water. If enough water is drawn out, it will make its own brine. This seems to depend on each particular cabbage and sometimes it will be necessary to add in extra brine on top.
Place the cabbage in your jars and tamp it down. Use a large spoon or similar and push it with some force deep into the jar trying to fill in all the space possible. You need roughly 25% head space (i.e. leave the top 1/4 of the jar empty) to accommodate the release of CO2. The fermentation process will cause everything to expand and you don’t want it pouring out of your jar.
At this point, let the sauerkraut rest for a few hours uncovered as it will continue to form more brine. I tend to do the steps up to this point in the morning and the following steps in the afternoon or the evening.
For each jar, take a cabbage leaf and use it as a cloth to hold the cabbage down below the brine layer. You can tuck it in around all sides of the jar. It is IMPERATIVE that very little of the cabbage be exposed to the air or it will rot rather than ferment.
If you need to create more 2% brine, then get out your scale and weigh out 200g of water. Add an additional 4g of salt and mix until dissolved. Pour into each jar as necessary until the cabbage is properly covered. If you don’t have a scale, then you can put in about 1.25 tablespoons of salt per each two cups of water.
Cover the jars with their original lids. These lids should be left not only loose, but completely unscrewed. Take no chances of letting gas build up lest you explode a sauerkraut somewhere. If I ferment in a jar, I just put the lid on top of the jar and don’t rotate it. Put jars in your fermenting location and cover with a cloth–this is mostly to keep direct light out but it can also keep dust and such out.
Allow the saurkraut to ferment for roughly 2 weeks. I like to open them every couple of days to give them a good sniff. If things are going well, it should smell bitter but not rotten–if you are like me, you’ll unironically go “Hey it smells like the stuff in the store!”. The liquid on top should also be generally clear but perhaps a bit cloudy. If you notice mold on top, then the salt balance may have been off. You can scoop off the top layer of liquid/mold and add in more brine, though if it is way off, you may not be able to correct it.
After 2 weeks, give it a taste/smell. Does it need more time? This is your call. If so, leave them out for another week. If not, throw it in the fridge and let them sit for a day. The following day, you can screw the tops on tightly.
I use a fermenting pot that you can get on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L94YNGX
This works better but I found that it also takes a bit more practice than the jars. The jars are your perfect place to start and at really minimal expense. I will note that I have had several batches fail for a number of reasons that I learned lessons from. Most of them have come out just fine, though.
I hope this works for you. Please let me know if you do some sauerkraut and send photos.
P.S. my favorite recipe is to use one green cabbage with one purple cabbage. Comes out sort of a bright purple color. Add in a teaspoon each of caraway and mustard seed per cabbage. Lots of flavor!
thanks for the very well written post!!
I make my own fermented hot sauce and ginger bug but haven’t done cabbage yet and didn’t even think of saurkraut i was gonna do kimchi but my roommates love saurkraut so i’m excited to try this out.
one thing i learned about dealing with headspace is to put a ziplock bag of water at the very top of of the jar. Nothing can squeeze past it except liquid so you don’t end up with anything solid poking out and getting moldy! I just did a sriracha that sat for months and it was heavenly. I don’t crack my jars though i use the wire bale type that’ll vent gas so i just look for the cloudiness from the lactobacillus.
i’m gonna do this very soon.
Was thinking about it today. I want to try making hot sauce. Wonder if you’d share a method?
sure, it’s really easy and if you like hotc sauce it’s both fun and saves you money.
The only special equipment I use are wire bale jars, a stick blender and xanthan gum for some sauces. Can get jars and bottles cheap at goodwill. I also keep sodium benzoate and add it to sauces i give away but just keep the ones i make in the fridge and they are always gone fast.
My method: Boil a big pot of water and let it sit with a lid overnight to get all the chlorine out. We are counting on lactobacillus to outcompete any other bacteria and to provide us with the lactic acid that preserves the peppers. Don’t want to kill the lactobacillus with too much heat or chlorine but she can handle a little salt.
Wash (with some of the de-chlorinated water) and cut a pound or 1000 grams of peppers up (it’s easier for me to buy a pound but easier to calculate the additives with a kilogram just go with whatever you got), leaving the stems on a few of them for flavor. You can add in garlic, onion, whatever. i have big jars that can hold this many at once but you might use less peppers or more jars as needed.
Whatever amount of peppers you end up with, stuff them in your jars leaving a couple inches at the top. sprinkle them with 3 to 5% of their total weight of kosher salt. Then top it up almost to the top with dechlorinated water.
Then I put a plastic bag filled with water in at the top of the jar so all the peppers are submerged and clamp it shut.
brine may ooze or even spray out under pressure so i put a towel over the top.
let it sit for a week or a few months and when your’re ready separate the brine from the soft pickled peppers, blend up the peppers and add in your cloudy brine until you like the consistency (lean towards watery), then add in 2-3% by weight of xanthan gum to stabilize it, thicken it and keep it from separating in the fridge.
I put mine in those sealable glass bottles with the rubber gasket and wire clamp and they last months in the fridge and are so good! I get all my equipment at goodwill I wait until they are half priced or marked cheap and only pay $1 per bottle or jar unless it’s very big or has cool designs.
good luck!
oh yeah if you get farty smells or you just want a more mellow flavor or you are storing it in bottles without a rubber gasket seal you can cook the pepper mash and brine and that’ll mellow it out.
Thanks!! Going to share this thread with my brother too.
Kimchi ands sauerkraut really are the same thing from slightly different traditions. I switch back and forth between them. Use Napa cabbage, Korean chilies, and your optional fish sauce/shrimp. I do mine vegan. Talking with lots of Koreans, there really isn’t a right way, you have your family recipe basically. If It’s a vegetable, you can kimchi it and someone does.
Thanks for the tip on the bag, will keep that in mind for later use.