Celebrate with a Glass of Kvass!

Beet Kvass all dressed up!

I have a lot to celebrate today.  I just finished up a big work project and the kids in my afterschool math program just took their last contest of the year.  To savor the moment, I took a break and had a nice glass of Kvass.

Beet what?  Yes, that is beet kvass, a drink generally thought of as a tonic.  In the traditional diet classic book Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon Morell, she reports that this drink is known for promoting regularity, aiding digestion, alkalizing the blood and cleansing the liver.  She also says it is good for kidney stones.  She references a book called Ukranian Dishes by Lubow Kyivska and in the book Kyivska says that no Ukranian home was ever without its beet kvass. 

It is a very simple drink to make.  It is just a few beets cut up coarsely and then some whey, sea salt and filtered water.  You put this on the counter for several days and you are rewarded with Beet Kvass which can then stay in the fridge for a long time but probably won't because you'll drink it up soon (however it tastes even better if you let it sit a few more days in the fridge before you break into it).  

I happen to actually like the taste of this stuff so I drank my kvass in a fancy glass and savored it like a fine wine.  Perhaps when one has been eating fermented foods for so long, these things actually start tasting good!  They do to me.

There is something magical about beets and fermented beets apparently are like an exclamation point; they just make everything about the beets more nutritious and in a form your body can easily absorb.

 Here's how Sally makes her Kvass:

3 medium organic beets, peeled and chopped coarsely
1/4 cup whey
1 TBS sea salt
filtered water

Put the beets in a mason jar and add the whey and sea salt and then fill the rest of the jar with filtered water.  I sometimes find that cutting back the salt to about 3/4 TBS is the right mix for me.  The whey can be made by taking yogurt in a strainer and letting it drip through a cheese cloth into a bowl for several hours.  The clear liquid that strains through is the whey and if you do this long enough, the yogurt will become cream cheese!  (bonus cheese making lesson).  

That's it, you just put all the stuff in the jar, stir it together, and let it sit on your counter with the lid secured.  In three days, you will have a slightly sour, very pleasing tonic that you can drink in the morning and at night at about 4 oz each.  There is no alcoholic fermentation going on, just a nice development of lactic acid that is a great probiotic and a healing drink.  If you grated the beets you might get into the alcoholic type of fermentation but this drink is not about that.

When you get down to the bottom of the jar with just a little liquid still left, you can refill with filtered water and start the process all over again by making another batch letting it sit on the counter again for three days.  It won't be quite as potent the second time around, but it is still good.

So from those humble 3 beets you can get a gallon of healing tonic that will do all kinds of good things for your body!  If you become a fermentation regular like me, somewhere along the line you will find that you actually enjoy the taste!  I find it cleansing and energizing and I can almost feel on a cellular level how it is doing good things for my body.  Cheers!


And apparently I'm not the only one yapping on about the beauty of this kvass.  Here are a few other bloggers who love the stuff as much as me:


ttp://marly67.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/beet-kvass/


http://thenourishingcook.com/how-to-make-fermented-beet-kvass/


http://bethstedman.com/2010/05/14/beet-kvass/

Also posted at Kelly the Kitchen Kop