Aaah, kefir! I could wax lyrical about this marvelous health giving drink but I’ll spare you the rave and get to the point. The key to good health is your gut and the key to a good, healthy gut is the micro-organisms that live in the gut. Kefir is a very powerful probiotic drink that can repopulate your gut with all the good bugs. Traditional diets throughout the world all included some form of fermented foods:
Japan – tsukemono (pickled vegetables), miso, soy sauce, natto
Germany – saurkraut
Ukraine – beet kvass
Korea – kimchee
Thailand – fermented fish sauce
And the list goes on and on and on. Yoghurt is probably the most well-known fermented food (besides wine and beer!). Kefir is like yoghurt but the difference is that it has over 30 different micro-organisms compared to only 2 or 3 in most types of yoghurt. Basically, it is a very powerful probiotic yoghurt drink and a lot cheaper than most of the probiotic products that you buy off the shelf in health food shops.
Kefir is a very traditional drink that is consumed all through the Caucasus from Russia through to Iran. Ask any Iranian, Turkish, Russian etc and they know what you are referring to. My friend who spent a lot of time travelling in this region says you can buy it everywhere. Traditionally it was kept in a goatskin bag that hung at the entrance to people’s houses. As people passed in and out of the house, they would give the bag a shake (as this helps the fermentation process). It’s quite sour and on its own, it can be a bit of an acquired taste so most westerners tend to turn it into smoothies by blending other things with it.
What is kefir? Well, it’s a culture that looks like squishy little cauliflowers called “grains” (they are in front of the jar in the photo above). To make the drink, kefir, you put the kefir grains into milk (cow’s milk, goat’s milk or even coconut milk for the truly dairy intolerant) and the fermentation process begins. After 12 to 24 hours, you get a lovely yoghurt consistency. You then pour this through a colander to separate the kefir grains from the yoghurt, pop the grains back into the jar which you then top up with fresh milk. Then to the kefir yoghurt, you add whatever yummy things you like to add to smoothies: banana, frozen berries, honey, etc. We add things like powdered barley grass, freshly ground flax seeds and kelp to turn our morning drink into a Superfood Smoothie. This is how we start our day. It’s satisfying, yummy and your gut loves you for giving it so many good bugs to combat the bad bugs and nourish you back to good health.
Now the other great thing about kefir is that you can strain it to make cheese and whey which you can then use to make all sorts of amazing fermented foods like our favourite: beet kvass or if this drink really doesn’t do it for you, you can make great fizzy juice with store-bought juice and whey.
So, to get whey from your kefir, this is what you do: first strain the kefir through a colander to separate the grains from the yoghurt. Put a colander over a bowl, then line the colander with cheesecloth (or calico or something similar) and pour the kefir yoghurt into it. Cover it up and leave it overnight. In the morning, you should have something similar to cream cheese in the cloth and fairly clear whey in the bowl. Store the whey in a jar and it is then ready to use for fermenting things like beet kvass! We’ll get to the fizzy juices in a later post so stay tuned….
Now if this post has really sparked your interest in kefir, you can read more about it here.
