Rebecca Ghim on fermentation, food waste, and future flavours
This week, Robin spoke to Rebecca Ghim, co-founder of The Ferm, a vegan, zero-waste Korean fermentary in East London. Her business upcycles overlooked ingredients like cauliflower leaves and broccoli stems from restaurants and farmers into kimchi and other pickles.
Rebecca explained the logistical challenges of sourcing "waste" materials, highlighting the difficulty in convincing suppliers and farmers to work with her. She shared her love of recipe development, and the particular challenges of transforming bitter waste materials into palatable products, and how this often required making adjustments to traditional fermentation techniques (thinly slicing cauliflower leaves to ensure even fermentation and reduce bitterness, for example).
She discussed the many challenges she's faced, from building new waste-processing supply chains to the difficulties of working with patented vegetables, like tenderstem broccoli, and convincing the British public that fermented vegetables should be in pouches rather than jars.
You can follow The Ferm on Instagram and find Rebecca's ferments in many independent shops, as well at at Stroud Green Farmers Market in North London every Sunday.
Hosted by Robin Sherriff.
Original music & editing by David Craigie.
The Fermenters Guild Podcast
Bringing bubbles of microbe-related discourse directly to your earholes, Fermenters Guild founder Robin Sherriff hosts conversations with fermenters from across the fizzosphere.
We cover topics from food waste to nutrition to book publishing to seasonality, discussing everything which fermentation lands upon (which, like so much wild yeast, is almost limitless).
Where can you listen?
