Learn the basics on fermenting foods to preserve and enhance nutrition for your family. Nicole Bartlett NTP share her wisdom with practical tips about fermentation — whether pickles, sauerkraut, kefir, yogurt or dilly beans.

Recorded live at the Prairie Roots Homesteading Summit in May 2026.

Video Transcript: 

I’m very honored to be speaking at a homesteading conference because I don’t really think of myself as cool enough to be a homesteader, but I married an OG homesteader from 20 years ago. As we were getting ready to leave, though, I realized just how much work it takes to leave your homestead. Maybe the people who didn’t have to do any work to come here just haven’t homesteaded yet. Apparently, I definitely am a homesteader.

Yesterday morning, right before we left, my husband was moving the chickens — and that was just the pet chickens at home. Then he was repairing the lid on their chicken tractor because it kept blowing off in the severe wind. I was taking water out to the goats and taking care of 150 plants that I didn’t want to leave behind because, what if they die without me? Meanwhile, he had already milked the cows multiple times to get everything ready before leaving. So I guess that officially makes me a homesteader.

I am delighted to be here, and I have to start by giving some background. I know we’re all anxious to get into the how-tos and see how this process works, and we are going to get there. But if you don’t understand why fermented foods matter, you’ll probably try fermenting something once, think, “Ew, I don’t think this turned out right,” and then never do it again. You have to have that determination and understand why you’re intentionally fermenting food in the first place.

Gut health is something we’ve probably all heard about. Has anybody thought about gut health or heard of gut health issues? Gut health problems have been on the rise, and fermented foods can be a powerhouse of nutrition — almost like medicine in your kitchen — that can help address those issues.

We know the gut is the foundation of the rest of our health. If you have health issues, you’re probably going to learn about your gut, inflammation, and how those things work together. Fermented foods can help your body by supplying healing nutrition instead of just eating foods that may not hurt you but also may not really help you.

Growing up, I definitely did not know about fermented foods. Most of our food was homemade. My mom made macaroni from scratch, and my cousin thought it was cool to come to our house because “Dawn makes the real stuff,” while we thought boxed macaroni tasted better than homemade. We also thought cafeteria mashed potatoes were cool because they tasted different from real mashed potatoes.

So we ate lots of homemade foods, but not necessarily in a “superfood” sense. We didn’t know about organic foods or GMOs. I have really fond memories of my mom and grandma sitting around processing corn to freeze, canning green beans, and making grape juice. Although honestly, it was more like putting grapes, sugar, and water in jars and canning it rather than actually juicing the grapes first.

A lot of what I do now is much more focused on nutrient density. As I got older, especially in my late teens, I started having more health issues. That led me to begin learning how the body works. I learned that I had been given antibiotics as a baby, and back then the medical system probably didn’t talk much about probiotics. My mom didn’t even realize antibiotics could affect my gut health long-term.

Because of that, I grew up without a gut that was well cultured with good bacteria. When we don’t start with good bacteria in the gut, bad bacteria have the opportunity to grow and take over. One of the reasons fermented foods are so important is because they help populate our bodies with beneficial bacteria. There is good bacteria and bad bacteria, and when we say “bacteria,” it’s not always something scary. Good bacteria does amazing things for us.

In my late teens and twenties, I really started learning about health and fermentation. I remember thinking, “Maybe I should take a probiotic. Maybe that’ll solve all my problems.” I don’t even remember if I tried one. But eventually we were exposed to people making kombucha, and that was probably the first fermented food I really encountered.

A sibling described seeing kombucha on someone’s countertop as “this weird thing that makes tea fruity but actually tastes really good.” And honestly, it does taste good. At the time, though, I was really sick and desperate to improve my health, so I decided I needed fermented foods in my life.

We lived in Watford City at the time, and I went to Cash Wise Foods and bought probably the worst possible beginner kombucha flavor imaginable — a green GT’s kombucha with chia seeds in it. I still don’t know why people put chia seeds in kombucha. I’ve certainly never added them to mine.

I don’t remember exactly what I thought when I first tried it, but I probably thought it was weird. Then I tried making my first batch of kombucha, and I can’t even tell you whether something actually went wrong or if I was just mentally over it. I thought it was gross.

But somewhere between that first batch and now, I must have kept making it because eventually I stopped thinking that. The lesson is that you can’t do something once and decide whether you succeeded or failed forever. You have to keep trying. If I had stopped there, my life would be very different, and I’m glad I didn’t stop.

Does everybody know what a SCOBY is? A SCOBY is the culture you use to make kombucha — the mother culture you start with. It kind of looks like a mushy mushroom.

My mom hated the way the SCOBY looked, so instead of using a clear gallon jar, we compromised and used a colorful ceramic crock with a spout. As long as she didn’t have to see the SCOBY, she was okay with it.

Eventually we moved from Watford City into a converted refrigerated semi-truck trailer that my dad turned into a three-bedroom home for our family of five. The kombucha was considered important enough that it got its own dedicated space in our tiny home. The crock sat right there in the living room.

Kombucha became a major part of our health journey. I was just telling my husband recently that he’s never even seen my dad drink soda, even though we grew up drinking it. Kombucha is what transitioned our family away from soda and toward something healthier.

That’s why I love talking about kombucha. It’s my passion because I think it’s such a good gateway into fermentation. People say chickens are the gateway drug to homesteading — well, kombucha is the gateway drug to fermenting foods. It replaces something people are often addicted to, and besides tasting good, it can actually help you feel better too.

We also need to talk about traditional foods because I use that phrase a lot. Traditional foods are foods that have existed for generations. They’re nutrient-dense and properly prepared.

For example, ketchup used to be a fermented condiment with real nutritional value. I even read somewhere that the earliest ketchup may have started as a fermented fish sauce before tomatoes were ever added. Now it’s basically just sugar.

Pickles used to be sour because they were fermented, not because vinegar was added and the jars were canned. I’m not against canning pickles — I actually enjoy both methods. And sourdough is another great example. If you buy “sourdough” bread at the store and vinegar is listed in the ingredients, that’s usually a sign it wasn’t truly fermented. They just added vinegar to make it taste sour.

Real sourdough is healthier because fermentation breaks the food down and makes nutrients more available and easier to digest. But if you’re buying bread made with conventional flour and vinegar, you aren’t getting the same benefits.

Is anyone familiar with the Weston A. Price Foundation? That’s an excellent place to learn about traditional foods. Some of the recipes in my handout probably came from resources connected to them. Fermented foods are just one category of traditional foods, but there are many others.

So why intentionally ferment food?

First, canning as a preservation method is actually relatively new historically. I’m not telling anyone to go home and only ferment everything from your garden. The best approach is to experiment with what sounds good.

For example, sometimes my naturally fermented pickles turn out amazing, and sometimes they get mushy or too sour. So I also can pickles because I love having shelf-stable canned pickles for sandwiches or years when I don’t have enough cold storage.

One year when I was pregnant with my first child, I fermented more vegetables than ever before and stored them in an extra fridge inside a tiny unheated house on our farm. Then morning sickness hit, I didn’t even want to think about fermented food, and eventually the house froze. Everything in the fridge froze too, and I had to throw it all out. It happens to all of us.

You might enjoy fermented salsa, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want an entire fridge full of fermented salsa. You can still can your salsa too. One author I read described her process as: eat foods fresh first, then choose fermenting or drying, and finally canning or freezing.

Canning generally causes the greatest nutrient loss because the food is cooked. Fermentation, on the other hand, actually increases nutrient availability. Even if the vitamin numbers on paper don’t look dramatically different between a raw cucumber and a fermented cucumber, the nutrients in the fermented version are more available to your body. Fermented foods also contain more enzymes and probiotics, making them healthier overall.

Fermented foods take the beneficial bacteria naturally present in the soil and multiply them. During fermentation, they create lactic acid, which preserves the food.

An important note: when you hear the term “lacto-fermented,” it doesn’t mean milk or lactose is involved. It refers to lactic acid.

Today we’re talking broadly about fermented vegetables, fermented dairy, and fermented health drinks. Usually I teach an entire hour just on kombucha, so today is more of an overview.

There are a few foundational principles that apply to all fermentation:

• Use clean, filtered water whenever possible. Chlorine isn’t good for the probiotics growing in your ferment.
• Use unrefined salt to avoid fillers, anti-caking agents, and aluminum additives.
• Use clean utensils, but don’t become obsessive with bleach or harsh sanitizers.

For example, if I cut raw meat on a bamboo cutting board, I’m not going to immediately use that same board to chop vegetables for fermenting without cleaning it thoroughly first. It’s less about fear and more about avoiding unnecessary doubt later when you wonder whether your ferment is safe.

In general, fermentation is safe because you are creating an environment where harmful bacteria struggle to grow while beneficial bacteria thrive. The process itself has built-in safeguards when done properly.

You also don’t need fancy equipment. Most of my vegetables are fermented in ordinary quart jars. I started kombucha in a gallon jar, and I do many dairy ferments in half-gallon glass jars. I don’t even own fermenting crocks.

If I left this conference thinking, “I can’t start fermenting until I buy an expensive crock,” I probably would never get started. Nice equipment is fine, but it’s absolutely not necessary.

I’ve read books from people who use elaborate systems with crocks, root cellars, and huge batches of vegetables. One woman described inviting friends over, opening bottles of wine, and spending all evening chopping vegetables for fermentation. Honestly, that sounded exhausting to me.

Another approach I read about was much simpler: put the vegetables in a quart jar, let them sit, and move on with life. That felt much more doable.

If fermentation feels overwhelming, there’s probably just a simpler method you haven’t found yet.

And finally, fermented foods don’t necessarily have to be stored in the refrigerator. Most vegetable ferments can sit on your countertop for weeks. Once they reach the flavor you like, you can move them into cold storage — whether that’s a refrigerator, basement, or root cellar — to slow the fermentation process down.