What’s Inside A Year of Fermentation?

The time has finally come. My new book comes out this week.

What took over a year to research, develop, grow and write – and for so long felt so far away – is suddenly here. And some lucky people have started receiving their pre-orders already!

So I thought I’d share a more detailed look at the book and everything it contains: the complete recipe list and contents (which isn’t published anywhere else) and an excerpt from the book itself, to whet your appetite.

But before I do, I would like to share my sincere thanks. In the back of the book there is an acknowledgements paragraph, and at the bottom of it is my thanks to my online community. Honestly, I doubt this book could ever have happened without you. Some of you I spoke with personally for advice and cultural insight; others pushed and tested my ideas in new and interesting ways; and some simply come back each week and read my articles here. It all makes a huge difference, so thank you.

And, before we jump into what’s actually in the book, if I could ask one additional favour: if you plan to buy a copy of this book for yourself or as a gift, and happen to be in a position to do so, please consider ordering it this week. Opening-week sales make a huge difference to the lifespan and reach of a book, and tell a publisher that this is an author worth taking seriously.

Thank you.

Order here

This is the first page from the book.

A few people have asked for a proper contents list for the book, because the short contents page doesn’t really show how much is tucked into each chapter.

So, here it is:

45 core techniques · 162 recipe ideas · 50+ seasonal variations · safety & troubleshooting · salt-percentage charts · flavour theory · harvest calendars · substrate guides · equipment & terminology

I’ve kept the count fairly strict too. Jun and water kefir, for example, are taught as variations within the kombucha section rather than counted as separate core recipes. Black chilli is also included separately below because, although it uses the same spirit of controlled transformation and preservation, it isn’t technically a fermentation.

1. Rhubarb Cheong

2. Kombucha

3. Whey-Fermented Wild Garlic

4. Kanji

5. Lacto Spring Onions

6. Nettle Oxymel

7. Shoyu-Fermented Brassica Buds

8. Yoghurt

9. Cultured Butter

10. Milk Kefir

11. Mugolio – Pine Cone Syrup

12. Lacto Elderflower & Strawberries

13. Apple Cider Vinegar

14. Lacto Gooseberries

15. Umeboshi

16. Honey-Fermented Garlic

17. Ivan Chai

18. Doubanjiang

19. Lacto Tomatoes

20. Lacto Courgette Slaw

21. Hobak Kimchi

22. Apricot Mead

23. Kanzuri

24. Fermented Hazelnut Paste

25. Lacto Onions

26. Sourdough

27. Sowans

28. Siljo

29. Fermented Hot Sauce

30. Turşu

31. Kōji

32. Miso

33. Lacto Chilli Oyster Mushrooms

34. Shoyu

35. Apple Cider

36. Baechu Kimchi

37. Nukazuke

38. Dongchimi

39. Suāncài

40. Persimmon Vinegar

41. Amazake

42. Salt-Preserved Citrus

43. Fermented Radish with Schmaltz

44. Kōji-Cured Root Vegetables

45. Magnolia Honey

One of the things I wanted to avoid was writing a fermentation book that teaches you how to fill your cupboards with jars, then leaves you wondering what to do with them. But equally, if I picked up a book on fermentation and more than half of its pages were dedicated to meals, I’d feel short changed.

So throughout the book, each technique branches out into ways of cooking, seasoning, preserving and building dishes with the finished ferment.

• Tea

• Sugar alternative

• Beurre monté

• Pan sauce

• Marinade

• Deglazing liquid

• Sourdough

• Reduction

• Granita

• Spread

• Filling

• Topping

• Wild garlic granules

• Cure

• Seasoning powder

• Doughs

• Potato topping

• Leek tart

• Spring greens

• Fried rice

• Pasta

• Lamb shoulder

• Pancakes or crêpes

• Panna cotta

• Gelato or semifreddo

• Soups

• Smoothies

• Fresh kefir cheese

• Marinade

• Drizzle

• Glaze

• Dressing

• Granola and flapjacks

• Secondary fermentation

• Using the leftover pine cones

• Drizzle

• Cocktails

• Glaze

• Cakes and desserts

• Vinaigrettes

• Fish topping

• Sauces or reductions

• Cheese accompaniment

• Garnish

• Ochazuke

• Onigiri

• Umeboshi butter

• Bloody Mary

• Neri ume

• Pickling with umezu

• Straight from the jar

• Salad dressing

• Drizzle

• Glaze

• Marinade

• Compound butter

• Dip

• Tea

• Sauces

• Smoking

• Tea dashi

• Ground seasoning

• Chilli paste

• Marinade

• Yu xiang

• Hong shao

• Yoghurt or clotted cream

• Straight from the jar

• Dried fermented tomatoes

• Bruschetta

• Soups and sauces

• Brine-poached vegetables

• Tomato-brine hollandaise

• Seasoning with the brine

• Toastie

• Side dish

• Dip

• Filling

• Emulsifier

• Dehydrated hazelnut shards

• Aromatic base

• Sandwich filling

• Preserves

• Mackerel

• Fermented onion powder

• Brine glaze

• Purée

• Beer-battered mushrooms

• Mushroom tapenade

• Toast topper

• Miso soup or ramen

• Dumplings

• Mushroom XO butter

• Mushroom jerky

• Brine reduction

• Kōji flour

• Shio kōji

• Kōji-assisted lacto ferments

• Miso soup

• Marinade

• Broth

• Pickling base

• Glaze

• Rice balls

• Savoury porridge

• Caramel sauce

• Miso butter

• Parmesan alternative

• Savoury ice cream

• Dipping sauce

• Broth seasoning

• Tsukemono pickling brine

• Shoyu butter sauce

• Shoyu caramel sauce

• Cured egg yolks

• Shoyu glaze

• Kimchi jjigae

• Kimchi jeon

• Toastie

• Fried rice

• Tacos

• Bloody Mary

• Kimchi cure

• Stir-fry

• Soup

• Dumplings

• Marinade

• Natural sweetener

• Porridge

• Smoothies and milkshakes

• Ice cream or sorbet

• Daily tonic

• Kimchi booster

• Korean-style pickles

• Shrub

• Vinaigrette

• Drizzle

• Sorbet or granita

• Dips

• Gremolata

• Tagine

• Dressing

• Marinade

• Shellfish

• Open sandwich

• New potatoes

• Eggs

• Soup

• Warm grains

• Garnish

• Infusion

• Plant-based charcuterie

• Glazed oyster mushrooms

• Spring blossom pavlova

• Sticky aubergines

• Hot toddy

• Roasted carrots

• Glazed charred cabbage

That makes 162 recipe ideas without counting every individual suggestion inside them. A single entry such as “chilli purée”, for example, might then suggest using it in a jus, glaze, beurre blanc, consommé or caramel – but I’ve still only counted that as one idea.

The recipes are also deliberately designed to be adapted as the year goes on.

The book begins with rhubarb, but the same technique can move through the seasons:

• Gooseberry & ginger

• Strawberry & elderflower

• Hedgerow berries

• Pear

• Apple

• Leftover apple pulp from cider pressing

• Citrus

• Unripe plum

• Rose petals

• Cherry blossom

There’s also a cumulative cheong method for gradually adding trimmings such as strawberry hulls, apple cores and beetroot peel rather than throwing them away.

Seasonal secondary ferments include:

Spring: elderflower, rhubarb and lemon balm
Summer: raspberry, blackcurrant, mint and wild strawberry
Autumn: crab apple, quince, spruce tips, pine needles and rose hips
Winter: ginger, cinnamon and orange peel

The kombucha section also branches into:

• Jun – a lighter tea ferment made with green tea and honey

• Water kefir – a non-dairy sparkling ferment particularly suited to fruit and flowers

• Natural bottle carbonation

• Maintaining a SCOBY hotel

• Existing live-yogurt starter

• Wild black-pepper-stalk starter

• Wild green-chilli-stem starter

• Honourable mentions of Viili, Matsoni, and Filmjölk

• Strained yogurt

• Starter-cultured pasteurised cream

• Naturally cultured raw cream

• Wild-herb cultured butter

• Edible-flower cultured butter

Plus a whole section on using the cultured buttermilk left behind after churning.

As well as drinking it fresh, the book includes draining it into a thick cultured fresh cheese.

• Whey-inoculated version

• Salt-only lacto version

• Black carrot kanji

• Şalgam suyu variation

The same idea can move through the year with:

• Nettle flowers

• Meadowsweet

• Elderflower

• Thyme

• Rose

• Other fragrant herbs

• Whole fermented spring onions

• Lacto spring onion powder

• Fermented and dried sprouted leek-seed powder

• Green

• Amber

• Blushed or red varieties

• Ume

• Apricots

• Damsons

• Wild plums

• Cherries

• Korean aehobak

• Courgettes and marrows

• Fresh yuzu

• Lemon and orange

• Fresh kōji and dried kōji

• Fresh or green hazelnuts

• Mature cured hazelnuts

Alongside the main loaf:

• Making your own rye and wheat starters

• Brühstück/scalding

• Caraway

• Fennel

• Anise

• Coriander

• Sunflower seed

• Pumpkin seed

• Sourdough discard pancakes

• Sourdough crackers

• Cakes made with discard

• Cracked barley

• Barley flakes

• Oats

• Rich milk or cream sowans

• Chilled moulded sowans

• Toasted spent fermented grain tea

A year-round fermentation built around whatever is coming from the garden:

Spring: young radish, fennel and wild garlic
Summer: green beans, chillies and baby cucumbers
Autumn: cauliflower, beetroot and green tomatoes
Winter: red cabbage, daikon and Jerusalem artichoke

• Mustard greens

• Napa cabbage

• Lemon

• Orange

• Kumquat

• Long-aged citrus

• Chicken schmaltz

• Duck fat

• Butter

• Oil

• Carrot

• Beetroot

• Other root vegetables

• Smoked

• Charred

• Spice-marinated

• Vinegar-marinated

Alongside the 45 core techniques are quite a few smaller methods and offshoots that I haven’t counted as separate headline recipes:

• Jun

• Water kefir

• Natural kombucha carbonation

• SCOBY hotel and culture maintenance

• Black chilli peppers – a controlled blackening technique rather than fermentation

• Blackening apples, garlic, shallots, pears and chestnuts

• Cultured buttermilk cookery and reuse

• Strained kefir cheese

• Spicy fermented onion chutney

• Lacto onion ketchup

• Fermented onion powder

• Lacto onion jam

• Kōji flour

• Shio kōji

• Kōji-assisted lacto fermentation

• Dehydrated shoyu-mash seasoning

• Lacto spring onion powder

• Sprouted leek-seed seasoning

• Şalgam suyu

• Wild yogurt starters

• Cumulative seasonal cheong

• Using fermented brines as seasonings, cures, poaching liquids and reductions

• Using spent grains, fruit, kōji mash and other fermentation by-products rather than throwing them away

A large part of the end of A Year of Fermentation is about giving you enough understanding to eventually stop following recipes and start getting creative.

My aim was never to teach just 45 individual ferments, but to explain the principles behind them: how salt, acidity, temperature, microbes, time and ingredients interact; how to recognise when something is progressing normally; and how to start developing ferments of your own with enough knowledge to keep them safe.

There’s a dedicated safety section covering the practical things I think every home fermenter should understand, including:

• How to calculate salt percentages correctly

• Salt-percentage charts for lacto ferments

• Separate salt-percentage charts for miso

• Typical final pH ranges

• Storage temperatures

• Approximate storage and ageing times

• Acidity and pH

• Alcoholic and vinegar ferments

• Measuring alcohol with a hydrometer

• Cleaning and preparing jars and crocks

• Labelling and keeping useful fermentation records

The salt charts are there to make recipes easier to adapt, and give an impression of the upper and lower limits. Rather than simply telling you that one particular jar needs a certain number of grams of salt, they give you a framework for understanding how changing the salt percentage affects fermentation rate, flavour, and storage.

There’s also a full troubleshooting section.

Fermentation can look, smell and behave strangely even when everything is working perfectly, so I wanted to distinguish between the weird things that are normal and the things that should actually make you throw a ferment away.

It covers:

• False starts and stalled ferments

• Foul or putrid smells

• Coloured mould

• Slime or mucilaginous textures

• Insects, larvae and unusual fuzzy growth

• Unexpected colour changes

• Unexpected cloudiness

• Ferments that simply taste wrong

• Likely causes of each problem

• When something can be corrected and when it should be discarded

The idea is to remove some of the uncertainty that stops people fermenting in the first place.

There’s a practical equipment guide, but one of the principles of the book is that fermentation shouldn’t require a laboratory’s worth of specialist kit.

It covers things such as:

• Clip-top jars

• Ceramic and glass crocks

• Fermentation weights

• DIY weights

• pH meters

• Hydrometers

• Temperature and humidity probes

• Heating mats

• Insulated fermentation boxes

• Dehydrators

Alongside guidance on when these things are genuinely useful and when they’re just overkill.

There’s also a terminology section for the language that tends to crop up once you start reading about fermentation.

This includes microbial terms such as: Lactic acid bacteria, acetic acid bacteria, wild fermentation, and inoculation, as well as flavour and chemistry terms including: Umami, kokumi, brine, pH, enzymes, and amino acids. And practical fermentation language such as: Anaerobic and aerobic, backslopping, racking, and primary / secondary fermentation.

So you don’t need to arrive already knowing the vocabulary.

One of my favourite parts of the introductory material is a flavour chart looking at the relationships between:

Sweet, salty, acidic, bitter, spicy and umami.

Rather than thinking about these tastes separately, it looks at the way one can suppress, amplify or balance another.

That leads into a broader section about using fermented ingredients as part of seasoning.

Miso doesn’t have to mean miso soup. A fruit ferment doesn’t have to become a drink. Fermented tomato brine can supply the acidity and seasoning in a sauce, whilst cheong can soften bitterness. Miso brings salt, sweetness and umami simultaneously, as well as fruity notes. And vinegar can provide the final lift that makes everything else taste clearer.

As a hobby, fermentation can easily become a collection of jars gathering dust, so my intention here is to show you how ferments can become another tool in the language of cooking.

There’s guidance throughout the book on how to take a finished ferment and explore beyond its obvious use. That means learning to think about:

• Brines as seasoning liquids

• Fermented fruit syrups in sauces and marinades

• Miso and shoyu in desserts

• Fermented vegetables as ingredients rather than side dishes

• Fermented liquids for poaching

• Reducing brines into glazes

• Drying ferments into powders and seasonings

• Turning fermentation by-products into entirely new ingredients

• Combining fermentation with roasting, smoking, drying, curing and other kitchen techniques

Many of the 162 Recipe Ideas exist for exactly this reason: they show what each ferment can become once you stop seeing the jar as the finished dish.

There’s also a section specifically about experimenting with ingredients and designing ferments for yourself, which looks at how changing the substrate can affect the result, and how to make those changes deliberately rather than simply throwing unusual ingredients into a jar and hoping for the best.

For example:

• Swapping one root vegetable for another

• Changing the legumes used in miso

• Using different grains for kōji

• Combining grains and legumes

• Choosing ingredients according to their protein, starch and fat composition

• Altering aromatics while leaving the underlying fermentation system intact

• Understanding which parts of a recipe are flexible and which are there for safety

There are dedicated legume and grain substrate tables showing the approximate protein, starch and fat composition of different ingredients.

The legume information includes things such as beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas, while the grain tables compare substrates such as rice, barley, wheat, rye, maize, oats, millet, sorghum, spelt and others. These are there to help explain why changing a substrate changes fermentation, rather than simply giving you a list of substitutions.

Most importantly, the creative sections sit alongside the safety material, to highlight which variables you can play with while keeping conditions within sensible boundaries and not poisoning yourself.

Because the whole book follows the seasons, there are also harvest calendars showing roughly when ingredients are likely to be at their best, covering:

• Vegetables

• Fruit

• Herbs

• Foraged ingredients

• Grains

• Dairy

The charts aren’t intended as rigid dates, as seasons move according to geography and weather, so I’ve avoided tying everything down to specific months and a British-only view on seasonality. But instead as a way of understanding what is likely to be abundant, affordable or at peak flavour at different points in the year.

So you can look at spring and see things like young greens, radishes, rhubarb, herbs and early flowers coming into their own; move through berries, tomatoes and courgettes in summer; into apples, chillies, mushrooms and roots in autumn; and then towards stored crops, citrus and long-ageing ferments through winter.

For me, that relationship between fermentation and seasonality is really the heart of the book.

At the end of the book there’s also a resources and further-reading section for anyone who wants to go deeper into the microbiology, history, food traditions and techniques behind the recipes.

And finally, there are the acknowledgements, because a book that moves through Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, British, Eastern European, Indian and many other food traditions inevitably rests on a great deal of knowledge that existed long before I arrived, and which was shared with me by a handful of generous and knowledgeable people.

So the full picture is:

45 core fermentation and preservation techniques
162 named recipe ideas and ways to use them
50+ seasonal and ingredient variations

Plus:

Safety and salt-percentage charts
Troubleshooting and spoilage identification
Equipment guidance
Fermentation terminology
Flavour theory and seasoning
Guidance for creating your own ferments safely
Legume and grain substrate tables
Seasonal harvest calendars covering the garden, shops and wild ingredients
Resources and further reading
Acknowledgements

If you’re interested in ordering a copy of my book, you can click here to find it on Amazon, or here, to find out where else it can be ordered from. Or, you can order it via your local bookshop.

Thank you for joining me in celebrating this momentous occasion, the publication week of A Year of Fermentation.