This is Recipe Roundup, episode 109. I know that eggs aren’t everyone’s favorite food, but they are an absolute nutritional powerhouse! The perfect balance of fat and protein, eggs are a great way to keep your energy consistent through the day. 

I personally am not always in the mood for the common breakfast styles of eggs, but boiled eggs are my usual go to. Even better, I love pickled eggs. Although I’ve already shared my recipe for red curried pickled eggs which use vinegar to flavor and preserve the eggs, there’s another way to make tasty tangy eggs – through lacto fermentation. 

Lacto Fermentation is the process of using salt and sometimes water to create an anaerobic environment for safe fermentation of vegetables or in this case, hard-boiled eggs! While you can use a starter culture like whey in order to get the fermentation going, you can also simply put in some fresh herbs and peppers – just like when making hot sauce or sauerkraut, the existing bacterial strains already present in the plants will be plenty!

I use a 5% or more salinity brine when using anything with peppers since they are extremely prone to molding. Unfortunately for those of us still using the imperial standard of measure, you’ll need to look up a few conversion charts! This is a much easier process with the metric system! Since one milliliter of water is 1 gram, it’s easy to figure out the right amount of salt for your brine! If you were mixing 1 liter of brine – you would need 50 grams of salt to make a 5% solution. You want to make sure you use salt that does not have iodine in it – so kosher salt and pickling salts are good options. Some sources recommend pink himalayan salt and others mention that some sea salts can contain molds that will mess up your ferment, but kosher salt is much cheaper and more readily available. 

Boil your eggs, peel and then place in a jar with your choice of sliced fresh peppers, garlic cloves, peppercorns, and fresh herbs. Cover everything with your brine solution and set the jar out of direct sunlight for a week or two. Make sure that all of the ingredients are submerged completely in the brine and burp the jar once or twice per day. Eventually, you will have wonderfully tangy eggs that are delightful on their own and even better as egg salad or devilled eggs.