Tomatoes (enough to fill your jar of choice, leaving 2 inches or more at the top)
Fresh Basil, left whole (1 sprig with several leaves per cup of tomatoes)
Garlic, roughly chopped or sliced (1 clover per cup of tomatoes)
Brine:
1 Tbsp + 2 tsp Sea Salt
2 c Water
- For the Tomatoes:
- Wash the tomatoes
- Poke each tomato with a skewer (1-2 for cherry tomatoes, 2-4 for bigger ones)
- Layer the tomatoes with the garlic and basil in a jar, ending on tomatoes (to avoid garlic or basil floaters)
- Put something on top to weigh them down (non-metal). I have mason jar-sized weights but you can also use a clean glass jar filled with water, a clean rock, a cabbage leaf that wraps around the top, or maybe if you're using bigger tomatoes you can wedge them in well enough so that they stay in place.
- Pour the brine over the top so that it covers the tomatoes by 1-2 inches.
- Cover with a lid, a tea clean towel and elastic or a fermenting lid.
- Leave somewhere dark-ish for 5-7 days.
- Check on them daily to make sure nothing has floated above the surface (if it has, poke it back down and secure it).
- Taste them at day 4 -they should be sweet and a little acidic and slightly fizzy.
- Store in the fridge in their brine.
- Use the tomatoes, basil and garlic in cooler recipes, cooking them will destroy their beneficial bacteria.
- Purée them into hummus (use the brine too, in place of water!), top off your avo toast with them, add them to salad, put them out as appetizers mixed with some olives, put them out on a vegan cheese platter, roughly chop them up to make salsa, eat them right out of the fridge.
- For the Brine:
- Whisk the salt and water together to dissolve the salt.
- OR bring a small amount of the water and all of the salt to a simmer and then turn off. It will dissolve faster this way. Transfer to a cooler container and cool it down further with the rest of the water. Make sure it is closer to room temp before you pour it over the tomatoes.
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