Fermented Herbs: Part 1 Make Your Own

 An herbal carrot kraut.  Can you guess the herbs? photo from The Resiliency Institute

There are two options for getting more fermented herbs in your life.  See some of the other articles on this blog for reasons why that might be a good idea.  Otherwise here is the first vehicle...

The first is to brew/ferment your own food or drink that contains the herbs you're interested in consuming.  This is a relatively simple option if you have some experience fermenting food.  If you don't,  then it's probably time to get started.  I do teach classes on fermenting foods so you'll either have to come visit Hawaii to take one,  or you'll need to invite me out to give a class in your town.  Or simply check out this video on fermenting veggies.  If you still want to know how much salt to add use 1.5 teaspoon per pound of vegetables. 

Fermented vegetables are usually what I recommend people begin with.  They are not only ridiculously healthy for a number of reasons,  they are fairly simple to make.  But fermented beverages are also simple to make.   If you want personalized help or coaching around either of these shoot me an email or leave a comment.

Adding fresh, dried, or powdered herbs to your vegetable of beverage ferments makes them a potent vehicle for ingesting those very herbs.  In previous posts  you've seen that fermentation increases the absorbability (also referred to as bioavailability: bio-avai-la-bility... what a wonderful word) of the antioxidants and other substances in medicinal herbs.  This is generally true for minerals as well.  Here is an example.  So maybe consuming a fermented food "enhanced" with a beneficial herb might just might be the fermented functional food you've been waiting for.  

In the next post I'll talk about some fermented herbal products on the market.  In the meantime,  get started making your own.  Here is my favorite video explaining how to do just that.  For more questions contact me via my Facebook page: Ferment To Be