Brad Builds A Fermentation Chamber & Makes Tempeh (ft. Sandor Katz)

You can see my T-shirt

Please pass the bacteria.

Bacteria are not all bad, bacteria actually are necessary

for our health and wellbeing and for the health

and wellbeing of the earth. Exactly, beautiful

Hey guys, today on It's Alive,

I'm joined by my guest, Sandor Katz,

fermentation legend, inspiration of mine.

We're gonna be making a incubation chamber

fermentation chamber

and we make it a little tempe together.

Let's get into it.

[upbeat music]

I'm so excited to be able to introduce you

to the joys of making your own Tempe,

and also to show you how easy it is to create

an incubation chamber that can mimic

the temperature conditions of a tropical place.

By creating this chamber to keep it warm,

we're encouraging the growth of these fungi

that really are what create Tempe.

All right so, Sandor, we've got our fridge here,

a little mini fridge, little college,

little dorm special there.

And we're using it for it's insulating box, right?

Exactly, and you could use a big styrofoam box,

you could use your oven, if not turned on.

Yeah yeah, I mean anything

that's an insulated chamber, that'll be easy to warm up.

To retain the heat.

Yeah, between about 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit,

and we're gonna be making tempe,

you can also use it to make koji

and certain other kinds of ferments

that need a temperature range that.

[Man] Perfect, beautiful.

You can use a heating mat like this,

any kind of a gentle source of heat.

And then we're actually gonna use this,

this is a temperature controller,

so we'll set a target temperature-

Right.

It has a sensor and then it'll turn the source of heat,

whether it's a light bulb or the heating mat

on and off as necessary to maintain

that target temperature. Regulator.

And then I have just a little,

like an oven thermometer and a little digital readout,

just so we can monitor and we can make sure,

just to, I don't have to go trustin'.

It's just a nice little, little check, check.

Then one other thing we're gonna do

is using your drill, we also need a little bit of oxygen,

so we need some air circulation.

So whatever the insulated chamber that you use,

if it is completely sealed

you just need to make a couple of little holes in it,

like right about here. All right, I like it.

Fire in the hole?

Go for it.

[drill vibrating]

Oh mama, that was short.

[Man] Let's just do one on this side.

How am I gonna turn this thing now?

[man laughs] [drill vibrating]

And these are tiny little holes

just to make a little bit of air circulation

so there's oxygen for this fungus to be able to grow.

I like to put the heat source in the lower portion of it

because heat rises.

There we go, I like this. Oh yeah.

That's great, we need to put the sensor

to this temperature controller inside.

[man laughs]

I like to do that on the top shelf-

Okay right.

'Cause that's where the tempe will be.

And then we'll actually plug the heat source

right into the temperature controller

so that the temperature controller

can turn it on and off as needed.

If we set it for say 85 degrees Fahrenheit,

whenever the temperature

is below that it turns on the heating pad.

And whenever the temperature reaches our target

it turns off the heat source. Right.

Let me just also point out that I've seen people

turn a spare closet, or an extra bathroom,

into their insulated chamber with a little space heater.

There's a lot of possibilities.

On a hot summer day, you don't need any of this.

Then you're in the tropical temperature range

and you can just do it at the ambient temperatures.

And it's really just kind of working with nature,

which is I think a lesson,

if there's one thing we can all learn from today's lesson

is to work with nature.

[bell chiming]

Let's make some tempe. Okay.

So tempe is a traditional food from Indonesia,

specifically the island of Java.

And it's basically soybeans

that are bound together by the growth of a fungus

that helps to digest the soybeans

and make the nutrients of the beans more accessible.

[Man] And we got some soybeans here.

Soybeans have a really a heavy hull on them.

Right, right.

And the fungus that we're trying to cultivate

on these can't penetrate that hull.

[Man] Oh yeah.

So the idea is that we split them

and that causes the hulls to fall off,

and it also creates more surface area

for the fungus to grow on,

so you get a tighter binding of the beans together.

This is called a Corona mill.

This is a typical Mexican mill

that's usually used to grind up corn into masa.

So let's go ahead and pour these in here.

Yeah, [indistinct] the hopper.

They're all getting splint. They're all getting cracked.

We don't have a lot of powder.

We don't wanna turn this into a powder.

Okay, so you want some texture,

you don't want it to be a mush.

Exactly.

Once we put this in water, the hulls will float to the top.

So what I'll usually do is skim off the bulk of the hulls.

Right, look at that, beautiful.

And now we're gonna cook them and like you said,

all that crack papery hull is gonna float up.

Just rise to the top with your foam

when it begins to come to a boil.

And then we need a little pot with water.

[water spraying]

All right, so we got in a little water

bringing up to a boil, unsalted straight water.

Is there a reason no salt?

Yeah, I mean, salt could inhibit the growth of the fungus.

So, you don't wanna use any salt.

We don't have to wait for this to come to a boil,

lets just pour this in here. Throw it in.

I'll set a little timer

What I tend to do is, with my clean hands,

just get in there and squeeze so we don't end up

with pieces of soybeans in the floating hulls.

But then you can see that we can just scoop off

the hulls and so-

Get the bulk of it out.

Yeah.

And that's it, I'll throw it in the compost.

This compost gold right here. Yeah yeah, that's great.

I mean your chickens would probably even eat it.

They will go in there, I put it in this little bin.

Chicken stuff, they go in there, don't worry about it.

[chicken clucking]

I'm beginning to see bubbles, so I would say,

now we'll set our timer for 45 minutes.

Relatively short cooking makes the beans soft enough

for the fungus to penetrate,

but we don't want to cook them until

they're luxuriously soft,

which in the case of soybeans would be many hours

because we really need to maintain the shape,

the form of the beans in order to leave space

for the fungus to grow.

Some of this foam that's coming,

we wanna just skim off the foam.

Yeah, get rid of that.

And then if there's any way we can like lower

the temperature- Yeah absolutely.

It's good to just have a low simmer.

[bright music]

[timer rings]

So our timer went off, it's been 45 minutes.

And the best way that I know of

to test the doneness is just to to taste one.

Make sure your teeth can easily go through it.

Perfect, and now we're gonna strain them out.

[Man] We are having my strainer here,

beautiful, beautiful.

Before we can add the spores, we need to do two things.

We need to cool them down,

so they're lower than body temperature

and we need to dry them.

Excess moisture will support undesirable bacterial growth.

[graphic blipping]

Excess moisture will support undesirable bacterial growth.

Spread them out right there,

and we'll just turn on this little fan.

[Man] Oh you found my soybean dryer fan?

And then really what we wanna do is

just kind of stir it around

so the different surfaces get exposed.

If this were at the boiling temperature

or close to the boiling temperature,

and we had tried to add these spores

we would kill it with the high heat.

So we need to bring this down

to lower than body temperature.

[wind whistling]

Most of the surface moisture is gone-

[Man] Yeah, they look quite dry-

It's cooling down.

Look it's 92 degrees Fahrenheit.

What we don't want, is for it to cool all the way down

to ambient temperature

because then it'll take time for it to heat back up.

So I would say, let's go ahead and turn the fan off

and get rid of the fan.

And we set our chamber already to 80.

So we wanna get this in so it's just kinda keeps

that party going that life. Exactly.

Happy, happy wants to thrive.

Right, so now we'll go ahead and get it in this bowl.

So we wanna, acidify it a little bit.

So we're gonna add just one tablespoon of a vinegar.

Every fermentation process is about creating an environment

that's gonna support the growth of the organisms

that you want. That's right.

And a lightly acidic environment

is just the healthiest environment for this fungus to grow.

So we don't need a lot of vinegar,

we're gonna use just a tablespoon.

It's important to stir it thoroughly.

If you have a pocket with much higher acid

then that would end up inhibiting the growth.

So we wanna sort of fully distribute that.

[Man] 'Cause our next step is gonna be

to inoculate it with the spores.

The spores are the starter here.

So a spore is analogous to a seed.

So this will grow into the fungus

this is enough for one pound of soybeans.

And then we just want to spend a couple of minutes,

stirring it around. Yeah.

We want every surface of these beans

to come into contact with the spores

so that we get an even growth

of the mycelium.

And then what we're gonna do is put it into plastic bags.

[Man] Perforated I see.

But yeah, yeah, the perforation

is really, really important.

So just use a little pin,

this enables it to hold most of the humidity inside

but allow for sufficient air circulation

so that the fungus gets the oxygen that it requires.

I'll fill up each of these bags,

and we don't wanna fill them all the way.

[Man] Cute little pillows.

Yeah, exactly.

But when we open this up in, 24 to 28 hours,

it's gonna be a white mass,

that really holds all the beans together.

And then we'll get them into that incubator

that's already warmed up

and let's get them on the top shelf in there.

[Man] Set it, forget it, Sandor.

There you look it's 85 degrees, that's right in the middle

of the money spot. Right in the money spot.

Now we just have to wait.

They're gonna go for a total of about 24 hours.

We have some ones that you set up down

and you traveled with.

Yeah, so I I brought these two

pieces of tempe with me. Look at these little bundles.

If you see these little black dots-

[Man] Yeah, hard not to.

Most people I think would throw this away.

It is utterly safe and harmless.

This is exactly the sign

that the mycelium has grown as much as it can,

and it's beginning to sporulate and it's ready to eat.

[Man] I'm obsessed with the texture of this thing.

That is just a cohesive block

and then the cross-sections are [indistinct].

[Man] Oh my God, it's beautiful, Sandor.

It's firm. It's firm. It's firm.

It's satisfying.

It's always cooked, like this is not a food

that is typically eaten raw, it's best fried.

[Man] Cool, I got a little cast iron here.

Okay, and I see there's some coconut oil right here-

Yeah we got a little coconut oil.

Just sear it.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Okay, okay yeah, we got a nice sizzle,

I'm just gonna go ahead and put-

[Man] Yeah, load them up.

We can fit them all in here.

Let's see, is there room for one more? Yeah.

[Man] Always room for one more.

[Man] Oh yeah, and you can see how the oil's disappearing,

they're absorbing oil.

I'm gonna just put another spoonful of oil in there.

[Man] Yeah, it's [indistinct] right?

Oh yeah look at that. Oh yeah look at that.

It's starting to crisp up beautifully.

These were just beans,

all we added to the beans was a tiny bit of vinegar

and the spore.

You know it's a real transformation

involving very few ingredients.

[Man] Looks little hash Browns, right?

Yeah, and you could just sprinkle salt on it

or in this case, a little drizzle of our Tamari on it.

I wanna try it just like this first.

Mmh.

Oh wow, it's delicious.

Yeah.

It's almost like a peanut and a potato.

It's really good. Yeah.

I mean peanuts and potatoes are like two of the foods

we can't stop eating once we start eating them.

Yeah, we just keep going.

Tempe can be the same way.

[Man] Oh got to put a little cabbage on it?

[Man] You've got to have a little sauerkraut with that.

[Man] Yeah yeah.

Sauerkraut enhances almost everything.

In my book I have a recipe for sauerkraut chocolate cake.

I bet it's one that you never thought of.

Mmh hmm.

Little crème fraîche and some caviar on this

that wouldn't be bad either.

No, not at all.

I mean, it's really quite a contrast.

You can really see

what a dramatic transformation

you have in just the 24 hour period.

And in this really,

the beans almost disappear under the mycelium,

but then when you slice it and cook it

the bean structure is revealed again-

It's still inside. Yeah.

[Man] It's beautiful.

So this is my new book that's just coming out now,

Fermentation Journeys.

And there's a lot about tempe in here,

beautiful photos of village tempe production

that I witnessed in Indonesia.

I show these tempe bowls, so you could eat the soup

and then eat the bowl. Oh wow.

But the basic recipe for tempe

is in my first fermentation book, Wild Fermentation.

One of my fave, it's such a great book.

Well, Sandor, thank you again for sharing your process

of how to make tempe with me.

I mean, how to make an incubator chamber,

which obviously worked great for this and your book man.

So congratulations on it again.

It's freaking awesome, check it out guys.

And that's Sandor Katz, the fermentation guru,

the legend man, thanks again. All right.

[Man] Thank you.

[Man] I think close to each other

if we're gonna get both of you.

Whoa! Oh God.

[men laugh]

Yeah, it's one of my skills actually

is pretty good reflexes.

[upbeat music]