I thought it would be a fun experiment to try and preserve tomatoes through brining (salty water). So I boiled up (way too much) water to dechlorinate it, and gave it 1.5 tbs of salt per quart (probably too much).

I read that vegetables will tend to float to the top in the ferment. I needed some way to keep them down. So I rummaged through the fridge and cut a round piece of cabbage and jammed a carrot across the top. That kept the brine levels well above the vegetables.

Lessons learned, and video, are below the photo.

My first mistake was closing the top of the jar. The next evening I came to pop the top, as I heard these ferments need to be “burped” and boy did it burp. I knew that keeping the jar sealed would not work long-term.

So after research, I decided to put a layer of oil on the brine to ward off mold.

Nov 2 update: The challenge is making sure this jar doesn’t spill over. The fermenting tomatoes produce gas and the gas pushes the brine up. I poke it with a stick twice a day to resolve the bubbles, which pass through the oil no problem.

The other challenge has been that the carrot which keeps the cabbage “weight” down got soft during the ferment and poked up through the oil layer. I ended up throwing it out. After reading about several fermenters allowing mold to collect on the top, and scoop the mold away when serving, I am going to be less militant about mold only on this batch.

In my next batch I will have proper weights for keeping the veggies down and I will give more headroom for fluctuations in brine levels. It’s too much work to go and poke the ferment every day. It should just be allowed to bubble up and out without any interference.

Video of fermentation activity just a few days after the initial bottling:

First jar of fermented tomatoes by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International