I’d like to make a suan cai that minimizes sodium by using trace mineral supplements to help create the saline environment which promotes the lactic acid bacteria and other microbes responsible for safe and healthy fermentation.
Lushui is what the Chinese use in low sodium suan cai. It’s seawater with the sodium mostly removed, leaving mostly magnesium chloride and 70 plus trace elements. It has been used for thousands of years by the Chinese in fermentation, baby food mixtures, and other human health related products.
I did a little experiment this morning. I have Trace Mineral Drops from ConcenTrace that I’d like to use however, fermented cabbage recipes provide the amount of salt necessary in either mass (eg – grams) or volume (eg – tablespoons) of a solid and the trace mineral supplement is a solution. So, I weighed an aluminum vessel, weighed 10ml of the trace mineral drops into the aluminum vessel, heated until the weight stopped dropping, and will now do some math to figure out about how much salt is in these drops.
- Aluminum vessel weight = 4.00g
- Aluminum vessel with 10mL trace mineral drops weight = 16.42g
- 10mL trace mineral drop weight = 12.42g
- Post evaporation aluminum vessel with trace mineral precipitate weight = 7.57g
- Trace mineral precipitate weight = 3.57g
This works out to 0.357g of trace mineral salts per milliliter. The aluminum vessel was only about 12 cm tall and I could see where splattering ad occurred and precipitate was left behind all the way up the walls. Meaning, some was likely lost over the walls. My guess is the supplement has between ⅓ and ½ of a gram of trace minerals per milliliter. I’m waiting on a response from the manufacturer on mineral salt content in grams per liter. If I don’t hear back I’ll use 0.40 g/ml in my recipe calculations.
I’ve read reports that ~2 kg of cabbage will fit in a half gallon jar and the salt content should be between between 1.5% and 2.5% of the cabbage’s weight, so 40g salt for 2 kg of cabbage would be 2.0%. I think I’d like to aim for this number.
- Possible salt ratio
- 50 ml of concentrace (equal to ~20g of trace mineral salts@ 0.40 g/mL)
- 10 g himalayan/other
- 10 g salish/other
Addition of seaweed may be able to account for the additional mineral salt content needed besides the trace minerals and has some sodium chloride for flavor. I’ll need to check on specific products and their mineral salt contents down at the food co-op.