Fermented Pumpkin

Our food forest is giving us plenty of pumpkins and I was looking for some different ways of preparing and eating pumpkin. I love fermented cucumbers which are very popular in Poland where I was born so I came to the idea to try the same with pumpkin and it is a big success!! That is why I want to share the recipe with you. While I am writing this post, we have already eaten the first two smaller glasses :) The texture is great, the taste lightly sour and little bit sweet. Just delicious! Try it yourself and let me know how did you go! Enjoy!

Fermented Pumpkin

• "half-way" ripe pumpkin
• water + salt: 1 large table spoon of salt per 1 liter of water. You might need more than 1 liter of water depends of how many jars you make.

You also need per one medium to large size of jar:

• 1 fresh, dried or frozen dill stalk
• 2-3 large fresh garlic cloves
• 1-2 cloves
• 4-5 black pepper seeds
• 1 horseradish leave (optional)
• about 1cm length of fresh ginger (optional)

1. Boil water with salt. Let it cool down up to room temperature.
2. Clean the jars and lids! Wash in a dish detergent water, rinse and sterilize with fresh boiled water. It is very important to use super clean and sterilized jars!
3. Wash pumpkin, dill and horseradish leaves. Peel garlic cloves and ginger.
4. Wash and peel the pumpkin and cut into 2cm large cubes or 1cm x 4cm pencils. Keep some of the pumpkin skin.
5. Fill each jar very tight with one pumpkin peel, pumpkin cubes, together with garlic, dill, black pepper seeds, cloves, ginger and horseradish leave. The horseradish leave is optional. It is preventing your pumpkin of getting too mushy but I have also fermented cucumbers without the leaves in the past and it was good as well. Leave some room at the top.
6. Fill in the salt water. The pumpkin needs to be covered entirely but you still need to leave at least 2cm free room under the lid.
7. Close the lid and leave in a dark place in room temperature to ferment.

Depends on the room temperature, the pumpkin will be ready in about 7-14 days. Open one jar and try. It should have a nice sour-sweet taste and pleasant flavor. 

Once ready, keep it in fridge for up to 3 months.

Tipps:

• Pay attention to cleaning everything thoroughly! If you get some unhealthy mold under the lid or your fermented pumpkin goes off, it means that you either didn't clean it properly or you have overseen a faulty dot on your pumpkin 
• Place the glasses on a tray in case some water comes out of the jar during the fermenting process. It happens sometimes if you don't leave enough free room in the glass.

Here some photos of the whole process:

The photo below shows the glasses after 12 days of fermenting

 The pumpkin has kept the beautiful yellow colour and it taste delicious.