Liver and Lymph Burdock Ferment Recipe

      

1st picture: burdock root   2nd picture: Burdock purple flowers/burrs    3rd picture: burdock leaves    4th picture: Liver and Lymph Ferment

Burdock Root (Arctium Lappa)

Burdock, also known as Gobo root is a power packed root that has many nutritive and potent medicinal properties. The optimum time to harvest burdock root for food or medicine is in the late winter of its first year. Burdock has a very deep tap root, which extend a foot or more into the earth below. Some roots are thin and some are much thicker.

When identifying burdock, look for the purple thistle-like flowers in the summer that develop into brown burrs in the fall. They stick to you like velcro as well.

Known as one of the best blood, lymph, and liver purifiers, burdock cleanses and eliminates impurities rapidly from the body. It is also excellent for skin conditions and diseases of all kinds.

it has mucilaginous, alterative, tonic, diuretic, and diaphoretic properties. It enhances the body’s elimination process so that the toxins and waste products can be removed efficiently. This process gradually helps to restore proper function to the body, moving the body to a state of integration and health.

Burdock is also abundant and rich in minerals.

You can use burdock root in many medicinal preparations but I thought it would be interesting and delicious in a food preparation, such as in a fermented product. Burdock root has a mild flavor and adds a nice crunch and tasty addition to this recipe.

Remember, eating a wide array of wild foods and/or wide array of fruits and vegetables helps to inoculate our digestive system with billions of friendly flora, which supports our immune system and aids in our overall health. Eating a wide array of these foods gives us a plethora of different healthy flora (prebiotics and probiotics) and creates a stronger and more diverse microbiome.

Incorporating burdock and other edible wild foods and herbs in our diet can help us achieve a microbiome that has a wide population of diverse friendly bacteria, especially when used in lacto fermented/ cultured foods.

Lacto fermented foods have been made for centuries all over the country. Fermented foods are a wonderful way to incorporate healthy flora into your digestive system. Eating a small amount of these fermented foods at mealtimes aids digestion and promotes bowel regularity. One serving of a lacto fermented food can have more flora than an entire bottle of probiotics.

Recipe

1 cup of fresh, well washed, and chopped burdock root ( I use my food processor to chop the root)

2 carrots (washed and chopped into very thin discs)

5 cloves fresh garlic cloves (minced)

¼ cup freshly grated ginger root

½ cup well washed and chopped leeks

1 TBSP brown mustard seeds

2 tsp black peppercorns

1 ½ -2 TBSP of Himilayan salt, Celtic, or Real Salt, or another type of unrefined salt

Juice of 1 lemon

First place chopped burdock root in a glass bowl and macerate it with the lemon juice. Then add the rest of the ingredients, except for the salt. Mix veggies together and then add the salt and massage all the ingredients well together, working all the ingredients with your hands to create a brine.

Place in a quart size wide mouth glass mason jar and press down firmly with a wooden hammer or wooden spoon until the juices come to the top of the veggies. There should be some juice at the top of the vegetables at all times, even when fermenting for the 3-4 days on the counter. If the vegetables are not fully covered, then mold can form on the top. If mold forms, the batch needs to be discarded.

*Placing a cabbage leaf on the top of the vegetables while fermenting helps to submerge veggies into the brine while fermenting. This also helps to keep the top from drying out. If you need to, you may open the jar during the fermenting phase to push down the veggies into the juices.

The top of the vegetables should be at least 1-2 inches away from the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for 3-4 days before transferring to the refrigerator. You can eat after this time but the flavor improves with age.

*Start with a golf ball size amount at meals, may slowly increase as tolerated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update:The Beauty of Nettles, Cleavers, and Burdock Root in the Healing Process
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