Kindling Podcast Episode 3: Kirsten and Christopher Shockey
Tune in as Storey publicist Anastasia Whalen speaks with Kirsten and Christopher Shockey about their new book, The Big Book of Cidermaking.
In this episode, expert fermenters and best-selling authors Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey (Fermented Vegetables, Fiery Ferments, and Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments) explore the power and importance of fermented foods and discuss their own first ferments; yogurt making for Kirsten and sourdough baking for Christopher.
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Full Podcast Transcript
Deborah Balmuth:
This is Kindling, The Storey Publishing Podcast, where we explore the spark that ignites a deep-rooted passion for sustainable living. I’m Deborah Balmuth, Storey’s publisher. From growing organic food and making herbal remedies to fermenting, weaving, and raising chickens, the authors we’ll meet will empower you with the skills and savvy they’ve gleaned from years of hands-on experience. In each episode of Kindling, you’ll learn what fuels these authors’ excitement and what they love most about creating books that share their expertise and enthusiasm with the world.
Fermented foods have become increasingly trendy over the years, showing up on menus created by rockstar chefs and in cocktails concocted by top mixologists. But fermentation goes back to ancient times, and according to the authors that we’re about to meet, even the greenest of beginners can make their own fermented foods, from kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickles, to curried golden beets, pickled green coriander, and carrot kraut. Kirsten and Christopher Shockey are best-selling authors of many books, including Fermented Vegetables and, most recently, The Big Book of Cidermaking. Here they are, dishing with Storey publicist, Anastasia Whalen, about their passion for fermented foods.
Anastasia Whalen:
Kirsten, Christopher, thanks so much for joining us. To start, can you take us back and tell us the story of how you first got into fermented foods?
Kirsten Shockey:
We bought 40 acres and it came with really beautiful old apple trees, and we got so much juice off of them every year that Christopher started making cider. And at the same time, we had dairy goats, so I started making cheese with all the milk that came in.
And the funny part is, the language wasn’t such as we called it fermentation in the same way that it seems to be used now. So we didn’t really think of it as fermentation like the word is used today. The first thing where I feel like I fermented something was after my mom gave us a crock literally full of fermenting cabbage in it for Christmas, and I think that was in about 1999. And so, that was when we started fermenting vegetables and talking about it in that sense.
Christopher Shockey:
Then we fermented grains, sourdough. I loved baking sourdough bread, and so we had this dream… We’ve had lots of dreams on the farm, how it’s going to pay for itself. But one incarnation was to build a bakery, kind of a rural bakery. And so we were building the bakery by hand, and then we had a really bad winter storm, and the building fell in. So that was the end of the bakery idea. But the good news is, we built a really solid house, kind of like the three little pigs, that one fell in but this one’s very solid. And that’s where our commercial kitchen is today and our studio.
Anastasia Whalen:
So you mentioned a crock of fermented vegetables from your mother, but you also mentioned sourdough. So which one was your first true ferment?
Kirsten Shockey:
I think I was making yogurt in college. So if we really want to go to the first true ferment, we’d have to go to just really basic yogurt making.
Christopher Shockey:
For me, it was sourdough followed by cider, had been the two. But I’ve eaten everything that Kirsten’s made, whether I want to or not. So on a consumption level, I’ve covered all the bases, but the vegetable fermentation she’s always been the lead on that.
Anastasia Whalen:
I had the opportunity to sit in on one of your kimchi classes and a miso class, and I was amazed to see people of all ages, all demographics, and all with varying knowledge of fermenting. What do you think it is about fermenting food that attracts such a variety of people?
Kirsten Shockey:
People come to it for very different reasons. And either they stay with that reason or make some discoveries. For example, all the talk about the microbiome and how our human bodies have evolved with microbes and that it turns out they are super important for our own wellbeing, I think is a huge driver. I think a lot of people that would never have thought of fermented foods maybe don’t feel great or whatever and are looking for some health reasons. And in the process, might discover that these foods tastes great. So then I think there’s a lot of people that are just consummate doers and makers and experimenters around their food, and they want to see what they can do with it. And they love that adventure. And then maybe they start feeling better.
Christopher Shockey:
It’s also pretty. I think there’s an artistry to it too. If you think about it, and especially on the Gram, there’s some just gorgeous photos of all the things we talked about. I guess you could even make yogurt look pretty, but people dived into sourdough right now during the pandemic, right? It’s the big thing, but besides all the things that Kirsten listed, I think just creating something with your hands that’s beautiful. For some of us that aren’t talented with oils or pastels or watercolors or sculpture, we can take these ingredients and get it down and then start riffing on it. And there’s an artistry to that. Things beautiful at the end
Kirsten Shockey:
And kind of to build on that. There’s a huge connectivity that people have with their food and their food systems. Once they start with whether it’s kombucha as their first ferment or vegetables, they start looking locally. And so I think that’s in the mix as well. It’s just sustainability.
Anastasia Whalen:
In the course of about six years, you have published three books, Fermented Vegetables, Fiery Ferments, and Miso, Tempeh, Natto. And you have The Big Book of Cidermaking coming out this September. And then you have another book slated to come out in 2021. Can you speak to what it has been like bringing so much fermenting knowledge into the world?
Christopher Shockey:
Well, we figured we’re at a half a million words, pretty much on fermentation at this point. Is there another thing we can ferment? We’re looking for more things. You start to look at everything, like, “I can ferment that.”
Kirsten Shockey:
We’re pretty passionate about food and food systems. That goes way back before fermentation was the thing that we started doing. This was never a goal. It all just sort of fell into place. As life is, you think you’re down one path, and suddenly you’re marching down another path.
Anastasia Whalen:
Speaking about your process a bit more, a very common review of your books is that they are incredibly researched and thorough. Can you walk us through your process?
Kirsten Shockey:
Well, we’re both somewhat scattered in our process, so it’s not a linear process. But Christopher is the researcher, for sure. He loves to pull apart scientific articles and go down all the rabbit holes they will take him down. And he can get lost in that for a very long. For me it’s I’m trying to imagine somebody somewhere in their home kitchen being able to do this. It should be accessible.
Christopher Shockey:
I guess if we just talk about process, once we have an outline that the publisher is good with, we’ve got some interior glass doors, and we’ll just create sticky notes. So imagine two doors full of brightly colored sticky notes, and the chapters becoming the different parts and the recipes. And then, as the book develops, you can’t really see out the doors anymore because they’re just so full of sticky notes and sticky notes on top of the old ones, if that recipe needs to be tweaked. And then I hunker down I’m looking for, “What’s the science behind that?” Because I need to know first the rules and what’s safe and why it works. Then it feels safe to go somewhere else, Kirsten will head to the kitchen and she’ll just start making things.
From my perspective, there’s pots and crocks and jars and bubbling here and oozing there. And there seems to be no rhyme to reason to everything. But in her mind, they’re all experiments and they’re all starting to understand and flavors and all of that. And so we have these two different areas going on at the same time. And eventually it all comes together into putting the words back in the book. And that’s where we both have Achilles heels. For me, it’s I forget to write down really cool things that I find, or I can’t find them again.
Kirsten Shockey:
You don’t know how many times we’ve lost really good information. But you told me, “Where is it?”
Christopher Shockey:
And for Kirsten, it’s writing down what she did in the recipe. She’s done it two or three or four times. But the actual ingredient… And she’s gotten much, much better at this. But in the beginning because she was just an intuitive cook, which means you don’t write anything down and you don’t know exactly how much you put in there. And so, we both had to learn to stop ourselves when we’re kind of in that passionate moment where we’re just loving what we’re doing. Say, well, “Write this down,” and then remember where you put it.
Anastasia Whalen:
That goes into my next question. Your books have recipes for actually making fermented foods like kimchi and miso. But then you also have in the back of the books, baking and cooking with these fermented foods. So when you’re developing those recipes, do you just kind of go for it and do your intuitive cooking?
Kirsten Shockey:
Oh, for sure. So I’m not trained as I’m just a home cook. What I think I draw from is, I’ve lived lots of places in the world as a child. My dad is an anthropologist. And so, I’ve grew up with a German grandmother cooking and teaching me things. And I grew up eating all kinds of things because for an anthropologist, his children were not going to say no to anything that was put before them because that’s impolite, right? So I’ve got sort of no problem mixing media. So I think that’s definitely where just the intuition takes over.
Anastasia Whalen:
A common theme in your books and in your talks and your classes, is the health benefits of fermented foods. From hot sauce to hard cider, there are so many different benefits from the fermentation process. Can you tell us a bit about those benefits?
Christopher Shockey:
Microbes love sugar, just like we do. And so depending on who they are, they’re converting that into something else. And it’s something that we like. In the case of cider, they’re taking that sugar and making ethanol. But also, there’s some bacteria in there that affects the acids, malic acid to lactic acid. And so you get some probiotics, people are surprised. But if you don’t kill all the microbes, like most commercial ciders do at the very end, but if you just let those wild kind of symbiotic group of yeast and bacteria do their thing, you’ll end up with a probiotic drink meaning there is living microbes still in the cider, especially the lower alcohol ciders that you can drink. So even the thing like cider could be healthy, which is really kind of cool.
And then beans and grains and vegetables, again, it’s different microbes that are pre-digesting the food for us before we eat it. And I think a lot of those same microbes are in our guts doing the work later. So it’s a really a symbiotic thing, if you think of us as just a host for microbes. We’re starting in out and transforming that food and something that we can get the most nutrition and energy from when we actually do consume that. So on a practical level, it’s really a great way to consume food for health.
Kirsten Shockey:
The big thing that I try to give people to, as a takeaway, is that they often come to it for the probiotics because that’s what gets the press. But really it’s so much more complicated and deeper than that. And yeah, the probiotics are only one piece of innumerable health benefits. You take the soybean for example, and we should not be eating it unfermented. Just hands down, it’s full of anti-nutrients and then as soon as you ferment it, it goes completely the other way and is an absolute super food that now we can digest because the microbes have predigested. So there’s just so much to unpack there.
Anastasia Whalen:
You touched on it a little bit before, but what makes this message of the beneficial nature of fermented foods so important to you guys to share?
Christopher Shockey:
For us, it gets back to those food systems and just overall health. I think for so many people, they’re compromised in lots of ways and they want to eat better. And we’ve always felt that it needs to taste good. In the end, if it doesn’t taste good, people stop eating it even if good for them. And so we’ve always tried to find ways to make it approachable and make it taste really good so that they’re surprised by how easy it is and how good it tastes, and then they eat it long enough for them to get addicted to it. That’s really kind of what’s going on is our biomes start to change a bit. They start craving it. Really what you’re doing is you’re trying to change people’s behaviors to eat more healthfully. And to do that, you need to change that gut. Honestly, it’s the way it plays out I think from a scientist perspective.
And so, people have to eat the healthier food long enough to start to make changes to their gut and start craving it differently. And then they can go from a huge sweet tooth, not thinking nothing but, to not really craving sweets anymore. And it takes time though, to do that. And so I think that’s been one of our driving forces. And in it’s really sweet when people come up and they talk about how things have changed for them. And it’s everything, it’s people with diabetes, it’s people with obesity, it’s all of the health, eating-related, anything that eating touches. Somebody will come out after a presentation or online and tell us how they wanted to do it and they never did and then, that they got the courage to do it and they did it, and they had some successes and they shared it with their family. And now they’re the one that’s making the food for other people. And they just feel so proud, and they feel better. I think in this world, we need something like that. We need something that we can own and do and share with others, that’s healthy.
Kirsten Shockey:
Taking that further, that ownership is huge. And that ownership of, I did this and I can do things for myself and I don’t need to be dependent on factory foods. And now I am interested in looking at my local farmer’s food, or growing a little something in a pot outside my window. Or I think the rippling effect of having a hand in your own food production and the rippling effect of feeling better, and maybe thinking more clearly or getting outside more because you feel better or just all of those things, I think play into it. And for me, it’s exactly that, it’s people feeling better and making small changes that are better for the planet.
Deborah Balmuth:
That was Anastasia Whalen, speaking with Kirsten and Christopher Shockey, co-authors of Fermented Vegetables, Fiery Ferments, Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments, and The Big Book of Cidermaking. To learn more about Storey publishing’s books and authors, visit storey.com that’s S-T-O-R-E-Y.com. And if you have questions or comments about what you hear on Kindling, let us know. You can email us at feedback@storey.com. That’s it for this edition of Kindling. Coming to you from the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. I’m Storey’s publisher, Deborah Balmuth. Thanks for listening.
KINDLING IS PRODUCED BY SHEIR AND SHIM, LLC.
Learn More
Best-selling authors and acclaimed fermentation teachers Christopher Shockey and Kirsten K. Shockey turn their expertise to the world of fermented beverages in the most comprehensive guide to home cidermaking available. With expert advice and clear, step-by-step instructions, The Big Book of Cidermaking equips readers with the skills they need to make the cider they want: sweet, dry, fruity, farmhouse-style, hopped, barrel-aged, or fortified. The Shockeys’ years of experience cultivating an orchard and their experiments in producing their own ciders have led them to a master formula for cidermaking success, whether starting with apples fresh from the tree or working with store-bought juice. They explore in-depth the different phases of fermentation and the entire spectrum of complex flavor and style possibilities, with cider recipes ranging from cornelian cherry to ginger, and styles including New England, Spanish, and late-season ciders. For those invested in making use of every part of the apple, there’s even a recipe for vinegar made from the skins and cores leftover after pressing. This thorough, thoughtful handbook is an empowering guide for every cidermaker, from the beginner seeking foundational techniques and tips to the intermediate cider crafter who wants to expand their skills.
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