The story below is from our January/February 2022 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Salem native Andrew Kingery blends his Appalachian roots and passion for fermentation with rustic loaves, wildly creative kombucha and plenty of pickles.
It’s a late fall afternoon and Andrew Kingery has just returned home from his day job as a cabinet builder and is switching gears to engage his culinary brain. Armed with only an incomplete handwritten family recipe, he’s been tasked with recreating the “It’s a Funny Cake” – a vanilla cake with a thin bottom layer of fudgy chocolate that’s baked in a pie pan – to celebrate his stepdad’s birthday.
Though Kingery is a woodworker by trade, it’s not surprising that he’s in charge of cake, given that he’s an avid baker who loves playing with recipes. “My dream job would be to work in a test kitchen,” Kingery says. “I want to build a personal test kitchen for myself at home. Somewhere I can be and work with recipes.”
Perhaps fermentation lab would be more apt. As the founder of Folklore Ferments, Kingery bakes naturally leavened breads and pastries using a sourdough starter, brews kombucha, and makes sauerkrauts, kimchi, pickles and miso. Since he and his family left Nashville to return to his hometown of Salem in late 2020, Kingery has steadily built Folklore Ferments as a platform to share his culinary cred and passion for fermentation through his rustic loaves, creative kombucha and knack for teaching.
Kingery got his start locally at the Salem Famers Market before moving to LEAP’s Grandin Village Farmers Market last June, where shoppers considered themselves lucky if they snagged one of his tender cinnamon buns or chewy baguettes and boules before he sold out. He also used the same sourdough starter to create pastries to showcase seasonal fruit, like galettes with poached pear and lemon zest or glazed apricots.
One of Kingery’s favorite parts about establishing Folklore Ferments’ local presence at the market is interacting with fermentation enthusiasts. With national health trends touting fermented foods as essential to a healthy gut, coupled with the steady trend of farm-to-table food, there appears to be an appetite for fermented foods and a renewed interest in preservation. Along with offering advice for specific projects or dispelling misconceptions, Kingery loves sharing how he incorporates fermented foods at mealtime. His whole family, including his two children, love sauerkraut, pickles and sour homemade yogurt. A go-to meal includes turkey sausages paired with sauerkraut and potatoes, a nod to a traditional Nashville meat-and-three called kraut and wieners. Kingery’s favorite is a red ‘kraut, which combines crunchy red cabbage, earthy sweet beets and bright red onions to cut the sweetness.
Listening to him describe flavor combinations and textures, it’s easy to see why he became a sought-after fermentation source in Nashville. There, he honed his passion for making kombucha after connecting with Joel and Leah Larabell, a master tea sourcer and master herbalist, respectively, who owned High Garden, a tea house with a kombucha bar. “They are really the ones that set the stage for me to become what I am today,” Kingery says. “I was able to take knowledge gained from them and create a product that even people who didn’t like kombucha, loved. Subtle, complex, and made with intention.” At home, Kingery’s recent flavor combinations on tap include African kola nut and black cherries and blue spirulina with local raspberries.
At High Garden, he also met Sean Brock, a chef whose dedication to Appalachian cuisine and heritage seeds has earned him national acclaim. “He would frequent our shop and he fell in love with the products I was creating,” Kingery says. At the time, Brock was developing recipes for his next Nashville restaurant and invited Kingery to conduct test ferments for him. Using Brock’s recipes, Kingery tinkered with making sauerkraut with greasy beans, white cabbage, corn, and red chilies, and experimented with fermenting whole ears of corn. “I still make these. They’re incredibly delicious, sweet, sour and bubbly. You bite into the kernels, and they burst with carbonation,” Kingery says.
Working with Brock has also been a meaningful way to reconnect to his own Appalachian roots. Kingery recalls helping his grandfather pick beans, okra, banana peppers, peas, and radishes from his Salem garden to put up in jars. “After reading Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation, I realized ‘that’s what grandpa was doing,’” Kingery says. “That’s a very Appalachian thing, utilizing a root cellar to keep vegetables throughout the winter at times when people didn’t have refrigeration or when refrigeration was an expensive commodity.”
Kingery intended to be part of Brock’s latest Nashville restaurant, Audrey, but a Nashville tornado and a global pandemic delayed the opening. By then, Kingery and his family were looking for more stability and returned to Salem, where they bought a 1930’s craftsman-style home in January 2021. In the dirt patch in the garage where the old coal shoot ends, Kingery dreams of digging to create his own root cellar – an ideal addition to his test kitchen-fermentation lab.
Speaking of additions, Kingery recently purchased a 1964 Shasta Camper that he’s converting into a mobile café and kombucha bar. Come fall, he hopes to serve baguette sandwiches (with fermented accompaniments, of course), kombucha, and seasonal pastries. Like his brews, bakes and pickles, Kingery’s idea is wildly creative. And he sees Roanoke’s percolating food scene and culture as the perfect starter for launching it. “A town like this…something like that would probably thrive.”
Sauerkraut 101
Andrew Kingery hopes to offer quarterly fermentation classes, starting with a simple sauerkraut class and working up to more intensive projects such as miso. “I want to have a set outline and outlet for people to get involved with fermentation and have somebody help with all of the mysteries of it.”
One of the biggest hurdles Kingery sees people encounter with at-home fermentation is the fear that they’ll create something harmful. But he’s here to reassure us. “The inherent environment in which fermented products exist, those harmful bacteria cannot exist because of pH,” he says. “Botulism can’t exist in a pH below 4.5. And all fermented products, if they ferment for any amount of time, very quickly go below 4.5.”
For a simple, entry-level project, Kingery recommends making sauerkraut. Here are the steps:
Select a head of cabbage (whatever color you like), chop it up, and add it to a large bowl. Sprinkle a generous amount of Kosher salt on top (about 2 Tablespoons for a head of cabbage), and using clean hands, work it in to the cabbage. Taste it. If it’s not salty enough, add more. If it’s too salty, add more cabbage.
When you can grab a handful of cabbage and squeeze liquid out of it, you’re done (after five to 10 minutes). Pack the cabbage into a resealable two-quart jar, pressing down so the liquid rises to the top, and seal with the lid. Store the jar in the refrigerator.
Every two to three days, open the jar to release the gas created during the fermentation process. After one to two weeks, your sauerkraut will be ready.
The story above is from our January/February 2022. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!