Ask Allie!
Ask Allie is our food-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!
Most of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog, since I frequently think you need a more immediate answer. You should anticipate 1-2 weeks between submitting your question and its appearance on blog. Although emailed replies normally take between 1-3 days, it can take up to a week.
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What is the difference between a jun and regular kombucha starter? Do you have a preference? Is there more health benefits to the jun over the hibiscus kombucha?
— Patrick
Caveat all this with the reality that I truly do not like either of them (I will, however, feed them happily to my plants once diluted), but to me the jun tastes closer to good than kombucha does (kombucha never makes it past “edible” for me). This is true of all kombuchas I’ve personally tried, as the jun tends to be milder in flavor, less astringent, and has a lower “funk” rating IMO. In terms of health, I’d be surprised if there was a ton of variance here from jun to any kind of kombucha. As far as kombucha itself goes, the only one I could ever pretend to tolerate was hibiscus, but I still think the jun tastes better.
If you’re into hibiscus and just really want to make it with honey, I’d do the jun and adapt it to hibiscus (just feed it hibiscus w/ its honey w/o the actual tea, same as you do for the kombucha version. By actual tea, I mean that contains tea leaves. Herbal teas are technically called tisanes because they don’t have any tea in them, and they both can be called infusions while retaining accuracy). If the type of sugar source isn’t a huge deal, I’d go with kombucha because we have that one in stock right now and I saw today that we’re out of all the jun right now. But if it is a big deal and you really do favor honey, Sabrina said jun (and I think all the kombuchas) should be fully restocked in this month; those SCOBYs really take their time to grow compared to making the starter culture!
Hello, Allie. Could I ask which one is good for non sour yogurt and non sour thick drinkable yogurt?
— Seulah
Hi there! For the mild thermohpils (regular yogurts), you’ll pick from this list, and for mesophils (where drinking yogurts happen as well as thicker ones), this list. From the mild mesophil list linked, the filmjolk, halsofil, and piima are the thinnest. The only ones we have milder than those on this list are sour creams, which of course are too thick for this purpose.
You may also want to consider milk kefir. The Caucasian grains are very mild and can be done for drinkable dairy rather than spoonable.
What is your favorite way to make tomato sauce? You put a lot of recipes in the blog that aren’t fermented now, so I hope it’s okay to ask this question.
— Rachael
Yes it’s okay to ask this question! I am always surprised that I don’t get regular food questions in addition to the ferment ones!
This depends on what I’ve got in the house. My favorite way, lately, is to grab some whole tomatoes out of the freezer, put them in a pan with a bit of water and whatever spices fit what I’m looking for, and simmer. The tomatoes will thaw pretty quickly and will already have their cell walls broken up by the freezing and thawing process, so you can simply mash them to your desired thickness with your spoon! Generally I let this kind of sauce simmer about an hour before I add it to my pasta. If I want a really smooth sauce, I hit it with my immersion blender about half-way through the simmer.
The fresh tomatoes version of this is the same, except that it takes longer before you blend or smash the tomatoes. I also will use more water initially, because I’m always worried they’ll burn otherwise. I don’t use a ton more, but yes more.
For canned tomatoes, I generally don’t add any extra fluids at all, unless part of my seasonings includes wine, lemon juice, or vinegar. Otherwise, same process.
Note that my tomato sauces generally fall into Middle Eastern, Perisan (if you don’t already lump that in with ME), North African, and Italian flavor profiles, so my spice selections vary based on what I want the sauce for. Almost always I include some onion and garlic in the seasonings, but the spices for me really vary a lot.
