How To Make Gut Healthy Fermented Salsa!

Author's Bio: Jessie Gutsue, MA, RDN, IFNCP

Are you interested in a gut healthy fermented salsa? Well, I've got the perfect recipe for you and we are going to talk about it in just a second.

Hi, I'm Jessie Gutsue and I'm a functional medicine dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic. If you're interested in more gut healthy cooking tips, then check out the link here for our Five Tips For Quicker Gut Healthy Cooking.

Now, today we're going to talk about how to make a gut healthy fermented salsa. Don't be afraid of ferments at home because they really are not supposed to be scary. I'm going to show you how to overcome your fear of making ferments at home with this perfect recipe. It only takes about three to four days to ferment depending on your preferences, and I feel like the shorter the timeframe ferments, the less chance that there are things to go awry, which makes it a perfect recipe for you to start with.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

Ingredients You’ll Need

Let's get started on going over these ingredients. So pretty standard for some of 'em. And then there's a couple of surprises in here too. So we have tomatoes and I chose cherry tomatoes. You're welcome to choose whatever variety you have on hand, best ones that look in the store, but the cherry tomatoes will be a little bit sweeter. We also have green pepper.

Again, alter it to whatever color you wish and cabbage, which is sort of a fun surprise to mix in there. But I love to add cabbage into this mix. It comes with a variety of ingredients, including vitamin K and little bit of fiber in there, and it's a cruciferous vegetable, so it's great for anti-inflammatory properties and lots of other benefits. I like it too for the textural difference because it gives it a little bit more crutch.

We also have a jalapeno, a red onion, some fresh cilantro and tomato paste, which is another ingredient that you might not see in a lot of ferments, but this is tasty. Last but not least, a couple of cloves of garlic and some salt, and that will round out our ingredients for our fermented salsa.

Preparing the Ingredients

So we are going to get started on chopping our ingredients, beginning with our cherry tomatoes. I'm chopping these into nice bite-sized pieces. One of the fun things about ferments is that the evolution that happens during the fermentation process, the foods get a little softer, the colors will change too, and the flavors are the biggest change, and they just become this tangy, so tasty and end up being salsa.

Okay, I'm going to chop up about a cup here. We have about a cup of chopped tomatoes, which is what we'll use today. So I'm just putting aside the ingredients into a bowl on a scale, and this will help me determine what my final weight is. So one of the things with ferments is that there's a general rule for how much salt you add, so we'll get to that in just a minute, but as you see, I'm just dumping it into a nice big bowl, a glass bowl so that when I finally salt, I can get all the ingredients nice and incorporated.

So we have the tomatoes are in, and now I'm chopping up my onion, and you'll use a small onion or maybe like a quarter of a large onion for these, I'm just chopping into nice small pieces a little bit bigger than an eraser.

And we have a quarter cup of onions, so I'll add this to the bowl and then we'll cut our cabbage. Now I've already pulled off the couple of outer leaves and I am going to pull off one more. We'll reserve this for the ferment weight actually. So we'll put this aside.

Okay, so we're going to cut about a half a cup of cabbage again into nice bite-sized pieces. Like I said, cabbage is an cruciferous vegetable, which comes up with a whole host of benefits. One of the benefits is that it's an anti-inflammatory food study show that those with higher levels of cruciferous in their diet have lower levels of inflammation.

We've chopped this up and I'm going to get my measuring scoop, and we have about a half a cup there, so I'm a little over. We'll put a half cup in. Next we'll chop up our green pepper and you'll see this green peppers of course have tons of vitamin C and fiber, and they're nice and crunchy.

Again, they add some good texture and this will be a half a cup of pepper. Now you're welcome to get whatever color pepper you want. Okay, so I have about a half a cup of pepper here and I'll add that to our bowl. And finally is the jalapeno, and you'll seed this as well.

So pulling out the seeds, as you know, is going to remove a lot of heat there. All the seeds are out, and now I'm going to mince this up into smaller pieces than the pepper, than the sweet pepper. Now, this won't have a ton of heat, so if you want something a little bit hotter, then reach for your favorite pepper or maybe don't seed it. Okay, so I have the jalapeno chopped up, and the jalapeno is about a quarter cup. So one medium jalapeno will do. There you go. Okay, quarter cup of jalapeno. Now I'm going to mince the garlic. So smash the paper wrapping off of two garlic cloves.

Garlic is a great ingredient to add in here. Not only does it have loads of flavor, but lots of different phytonutrients like Allison that will help to do a lot of different benefits like detox in the body to close the garlic going in. Now you see that I have measured most of my ingredients and I'm also adding 'em to a weighted bowl or a weighted scale, and that's because I want to show you the difference.

So if you don't have a scale at home, you can always measure the ingredients with serving scoops and then put the appropriate amount of salt in based on that. So there's a rule for salt. It's about 2% of salt per weight of food. So I have about here just shy of a pound of food, and of course I've omitted my cilantro so far, but this is with everything includes the tomatoes, cabbage, pepper, jalapeno, onion, and garlic, and I will add in the tomato paste. Then we're going to mix it up and we're going to add in the salt. Now, I said 2% the weight that equates to about two teaspoons per pint jar. So I'm using just a ball glass jar here, and I'm going to mix this in.

Now the tomato paste will take a second to incorporate, and one of the things that you'll notice is if you find your tomatoes are not super juicy, you'll have to work on adding a little bit more brine, whether that be more tomato paste, a little bit of water or a little bit of lime juice, whatever gets enough water. But that's why we're mixing these up right now in a glass bowl.

And then we'll salt them and we'll salt them and let them sit for a handful of minutes, like 10 minutes or so. And that salt will act on all of these veggies and will break down the cell walls, and it will help to pull out that water that's available within those veggies, thus creating the brine that is required to submerge your vegetables during fermentation.

The Fermentation Process

So I said I had about a pound of food, so I'm going to do two teaspoons. Now, I always advise do less is more, do less first and then taste it if need be, and then decide if you want more. You can't pull salt out. So I will now mix this up, the salt, and we'll let it sit here and watch that salt just bring the food to life.

Meanwhile, we'll let this rest, and now I'm going to chop my cilantro. Now, I reserved my cilantro for after that initial mixing because it's an easily bruised herb. So I want to reserve it to try to eliminate any bruising or too much bruising.

And I love adding herbs and spices into food. It's an easy way to add a load of different nutrients and phytonutrients in a really compact food. So it's so small, but it adds so much flavor and so much nutrition. And oh gosh, does it smell good? But funny thing is actually if you have friends or yourself that doesn't enjoy cilantro, of course omit it if you wish, but there's actually a gene that controls how cilantro tastes to us.

So if somebody says cilantro tastes soapy to you, probably because they have that gene that unfortunately doesn't allow them to enjoy it. I personally love the freshness of cilantro. Okay, so we'll put that in and we'll give it a little mix.

Oh my gosh, that smells so good. Oh my gosh, there really is nothing better than adding herbs, and they just are so fragrant, so so yummy. Okay, so that's our mix right now. Okay, so let's talk about the benefits of fermented foods. There are tons of them, and I'm sure you're familiar with the first one that we'll start with, which is of course, it's a probiotic.

Benefits of Fermented Salsa

Rich in Probiotics

I love fermenting my own foods because there's a couple of different benefits that supplemental probiotics can't provide you with. And the one is that you get your native probiotics, those native bacteria, especially if you home grow your food in your own region.

And then the bacteria sort of evolve in different ways than a controlled supplement would be. So you don't get the same thing every time, which is good because then you can diversify your gut microbiome with those different probiotics. And probiotics are the bacteria in our gut. They're really important.

Boosts Immunity

For my second reason why fermented foods are beneficial is because it helps support immunity. So fermented salsa particularly has lots of vitamin A, vitamin C, the lycopene, there's fiber, there's lots of different benefits to it. And these in a probiotic fashion like fermented salsa will help to make your gut bacteria stronger and help you fight more infections because 70 to 80% of your immunity is found in your gut. So it's really important to make sure that your gut is fed well.

Easier Digestion

And number three, I love fermented rich foods because it really lets more people enjoy more fibrous foods than they may otherwise be able to. So if you struggle with things like gas or bloating or you follow a low FODMAP diet for that reason, some studies actually show that you're able to consume fermented foods easier without the digestive struggles that you would otherwise get in the raw fashion.

And that's because the bacteria have already gone to work and they've started to chew down those carbohydrates for you. So you have a little less work to do. So then you can expand your diet even further, which is really important in the ultimate goal for anybody that's on a low FODMAP diet.

Enhanced Nutrient Absorption

And then another benefit of fermented salsa and fermented foods in general is that they can help enhance the absorption of different nutrients. So this one's a little bit controversial, I'll say. There are things called antinutrients found in plants, and these things make sense. The most common one that we've heard of is probably phytic acid. And these antinutrients found in these plants are literally for the plant to survive in the wild. So it's something that makes a lot of sense for it. But for us, consuming these antinutrients, they can bind different other nutrients found in the plants and not allow us to absorb them.

So what fermentation does is it can increase the bioavailability of certain nutrients, like in this case, the lycopene found in the tomatoes or the vitamin A. So there's lots of benefits for fermentation. Now going back to the antinutrients, there's some newer studies that do show that maybe there is a wrong nomenclature to call them and that there may be benefit to them. So I think that one still needs to have some research behind it.

Lower Sugar Content

The final benefit of fermented salsa is that you have a lower sugar intake. A lot of store-bought salsas will have some added sugar, whether it be honey or sugar. Nonetheless, it's sugar and it's not really necessary. Try this fermented salsa, get the tang, and trust me, you'll never go back. Okay, so that's for the benefits of our fermented salsa. And now we're starting to see a little bit of glisten on these veggies showing that there's some more liquid.

Final Steps and Storage

Pull it out. And we are going to transfer this to our glass jar for fermentation. So I have my ball jar here. You're welcome to use whatever pint-sized jar you have. I also like to use a stainless funnel. I just find it is a little cleaner for me in the transition process. Now, I would also recommend a wider based and wider mouth jar because you'll see in a minute it helps to create the juices with a wider base in a wider opening. You don't worry about breaking the jar, and you can really get some muscle down in there to push those juices out of your veggies.

And all right, so here's where the magic happens. I'm going to push these down, and this is just a wooden rolling pin, but there are tools specifically for this process. I find this to be sufficient. You can also use a wooden spoon if you want to get your hands in there, you can do that too. But you can see that this is creating a lot of juice, smashing and mashing those veggies together. And ultimately that juice, or more appropriately called brine is what will keep the veggies submerged and safe throughout the fermentation process.

So I'm going to add just a little bit more here. I do want to leave about an inch or so of Headspace to make sure that there's room for gas release and my fermentation weight. Okay, see that is ca with liquid. As you can see, we're left with about an inch of headspace, and the top is the brine that the veggies will stay submerged within.

The beauty about this recipe is that the fermentation way is the cabbage leaf. So I love that. What I do, you can cut it to a perfect size. I just roll it up and then add enough in order to keep the veggies submerged. So I roll it into the shape of the mouth opening.

And I'm going to use a couple different pieces in here, and then I'll fit on here. There we go. And then I'll fit on here, the lid. Now, this is a stainless lid. I would recommend if you have available plastic lids so that they don't erode with the acidity that happens with fermentation. But I will use this because it's a pretty short ferment as well. And then there you have it. It's fermented salsa. And honestly, this is one of the tastiest things.

This is fermented salsa that I've had in my fridge that I've already fermented, and you can see the change in colors and the texture's a little softer. It's absolutely delicious. You can enjoy fermented salsa a lot of different ways. One of my favorite ways is actually with eggs. You can also, of course, dip your chips on it. Use it with any dish that you would typically enjoy salsa with.

I hope you try this recipe, and if you do, please leave some comments below and let me know what you thought of it or if you made some tweaks of your own.

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Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestive.com

And get more information. Thank you again. I hope to see you next week.

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