Fermented Wild Garlic & Chilli
- tellus-mater
- May 2
- 3 min read
Ingredients:
Wild garlic (shit loads)
Chillies (dried or fresh is fine)
Table salt
Method:
1) Wash your wild garlic and take the time to ensure you haven't by accident picked up any other plants in haste or error. Below I have added the picture of the bits I pulled from mine. It is amazing how a small distraction from the task can result in an imposter species slipping in.
2) Once you are happy your wild garlic is indeed all wild garlic give it a weigh and note the weight down.
3) Chop it up and add it to a decent sized bowl that leaves you plenty of room to squidge it all about.
4) Add 2% SALT. That is what you need to work out from your weighing of the wild garlic. Google will do it for you, or use a calculator to do the following sum:
eg: enter 800g (wild garlic) x 0.02=16g (salt)
5) Add the salt to your wild garlic.
6) Massage, scrunch, squeeze and mix that mf wild garlic and salt mixture for around ten mins with clean hands. It's therapy. Put into it your frustrations, your thoughts and your woes if you like. Or pretend it is that twit who's repeatedly annoying you or being an asshat etc. Who are we to judge? Or sing at it and do it softly, it matters not. I just like to give it some vigour and thinking of my real life frustrations works well doing this on occasion! :)
(You can leave it and come back to it over the course of an hr or so, so if you have hand pains etc don't feel obligated to bust a gut over it.)
7) Snip up with scissors (YOLO),or slice, and add your chillis and mix in. Please see note below. Leave it for another hr.
8) Give it a scrunch again, there should now be lots of juicy green liquid!
9) Sterilise a large jar or a couple of smaller ones depending on how much you have made. I did tell you to use a decent quantity!
10) Squish the glorious mixture into the jars as tightly as you can and then pour over any remaining liquid. Don't waste a drop of this if you can! You want a jar big enough for there to be a bit of room left free.
11) Using a food bag (a dog poo bag would work too in truth (unused)! Fill it with some tap water and knot it to add to the top of your jar to hold the wild garlic under the green liquid.
12) Loosely add the lid if you can. For a Kilner I pop it closed, for screw tops I just gently tighten a little. Leave for around a week to ten days. Taste test it if you like each day or so. Burp it every day or so too, ie make sure you let some of the gas escape.
Then fridge it. And demolish. And regret you didn't make more.
The End
Notes: So many people asked me on Facebook how to make this and I hope this recipe is sufficient! With regards to the amount of chillies, I added approximately thirty dried to a 1.3kg of wild garlic. But of course this could equate in spiciness to only one ghost chilli being added to another batch of the same weight!
So in short, taste your chilllies and add accordingly. Good luck! If its too spicy for you, use it as a party/bbq challenge over the summer! Or mix with sour cream/mayo to make a dip!
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