It seems that I need to clarify that last post a bit. We are not marinating the ramps; we are fermenting them. I’ve been reading *Preserving The Japanese Way* by Nancy Singleton Hachisu, and I am totally inspired. (The book is wonderful. You should definitely buy it.) The ramps in white miso are a riff off of misozuke, a Japanese technique of fermenting vegetables or tofu in miso. The most commonly seen version of misozuke is that of garlic cloves buried in a jar of miso. These are some of the easiest pickles to make at home if you have access to good miso. We like the South River Miso Company when we can find it, although we used a different organic brand this time because that’s what they had at the store.
In the traditional technique, garlic cloves or other sliced vegetables are buried in miso for a period of days, weeks, or months to ferment. Many recipes direct home cooks to put down a layer of miso, a layer of cheesecloth, the pickling ingredient, another layer of cheesecloth, and then a layer of miso. This helps preserve the miso so that it can be used for another batch of pickles when the first one is done. After a few batches, the juices released from the vegetables water down the miso too much to use anymore.
Several years ago, we did an article for *PopSci* on quick pickles. It gives you some great background information on the pickling process. Regardless of whether you are using a liquid brine or miso paste, the vegetables are always completely submerged in the pickling medium and then covered to keep oxygen out of the fermentation process.
Over the years, we evolved our method to use the vacuum sealer to pickle watermelon rinds, cucumbers, squash, and myriad other vegetables. It speeds up the process considerably and makes them easier to store if you have limited space. So, we’re going to let these ramp-miso pickles ferment a little longer. A good friend of ours suggested that 3-6 months will give the best flavor, even though you can eat them much sooner, so we’ll see if we have that kind of self-control. Yes, there are risks with home pickling, but if you trust your gut and your tongue, work clean and smart, you will probably make something delicious and perfectly safe to eat.
About the Author
