Fermentation #9 – Chard Stalks
I’ve always loved cooking with different types of chard leaves! Why not try fermenting their stalks?!?!
There were big piles of red chard at my local market the other day and the stalks themselves were particularly large and crispy looking. I’ve always loved cooking with different varieties of chard over the years and am always trying to find practical uses for their stalks. You can use them in a stock, blanch them and make a relish or dip of some sort. You can also ferment them!
Going into this, I’ve never actually fermented chard stalks but had a good feeling about it! The stalk themselves are fibrous, crispy and full of moisture. They remind me a lot of celery stalks and also have a decent flavor to them. While I’d never fermented either chard or celery before, I imagined that both of these would hold up pretty well in a ferment and that you’d end up with a pretty nice texture (side note to try fermenting celery next 😬). Texturally, I was also really curious about the stringiness of the stalks and to what degree their texture would soften during the ferment.
For spices, I stuck to a mixture of cardamom pods, black peppercorns, dried ramp powder and Aleppo pepper. I kept it at a 2% salt ratio and gave it an initial 4 days to ferment. At this point, the chard stalks were still pretty tough and stringy so I decided to let it go another 10 days.
The result was much closer to what I was hoping for. A softer but chewy texture that still has a bite to it and is not unpleasantly stringy or fibrous. The center had an almost jelly likeness to it, similar to full sour fermented cucumbers.
In the end I liked these a lot! I think they’d go great on a charcuterie board and can also be sliced down to top sandwiches, rice and salad bowls, etc! So now we know, the chard stalk is a pretty valuable part of the plant in it’s own right.
Thank you for reading! Below is a video showing the whole process followed by a full recipe and additional breakdown
Cheers,
Joey
Youtube Video:
More recipes and videos on my Youtube HERE
Full Recipe:
Fermentation #9 – Chard Stalks
Ingredients
Method
- Place your fermentation vessel on a kitchen scale and zero out the weight. Combine chard stalks, cardamom pods, black peppercorns, Aleppo pepper and dried ramp powder into your fermentation vessel.
- Fill the vessel with water, covering all of the ingredients. Leave 1-2 inches of space at the top for the fermentation weight if using, and also for the pressure build up. Add 2% salt by weight. This means, if the weight of all of the ingredients in the step above is 2000 grams, you would add 40 grams of salt to the vessel. Close the vessel and move it around to dissolve all of the salt. This doesn’t have to be exact and can be adjusted to taste and preference.
- Once dissolved, open the vessel and use a fermentation weight or even just a small piece of paper towel over the surface of the mixture to ensure that everything is submerged in liquid before sealing.
- Place the vessel in a darker room temperature area that is out of any direct sunlight and allow 10-14 days to ferment (or until texture is firm but not stringy). Make sure to check on it at least once per day to relieve any pressure build up (if not using a pressure airlock). This pressure build up also indicates that fermentation is fully taking place.
