_Unfermenting?

[JAR]

The purpose of the salt-in-water solution (simply speaking) is to engage the fermentation process, right?

- Because the process of fermentation changes vastly the taste of the food the purpose of fermentation is not to retain the taste and texture of the food as long as possible. (Other methods of food preservation, notably freezing, probably do this better.)

Questions:
-1 Is the end-purpose of fermentation to have safe-to-eat edible vegetables whose unique texture is now carrying the spices (e.g., garlic, pepper, dill, etc.) that have been added to the ferment?
-2 Can you UNFERMENT veggies? In other words, if you, say, only expose the vegetable to a salt water solution, can you approach the original vegetable taste by replacing the salt water with, simply water and progressively ‘revisit’ the original vegetable?

[Christopher Weeks]

The salt creates an environment where most putrefying microbes can not thrive. The microbes that are present on the veggies that can thrive do things we like by converting e.g. sugar to lactate.

I would agree that flash-freezing more perfectly (but far from perfectly) retains the fresh produce look/feel/taste. But requires electricity (or winter).

I would say that the end-purpose of fermentation is one of (1) to make something that resists spoilage or (2) to make something that tastes different and pleasant or (3) to make something that delivers pre- and pro-biotics to your gut -- or any combination of those things.

You cannot realistically unferment a fermented food. There isn't any easy way of rebuilding the produce form the lactic (etc) acid and the CO2 that has escaped your crock/jar anyway. But sometimes we oversalt during fermentation and will rinse or even soak the fermented produce in fresh water to make it less salty. This is a farm from perfect approach because lots of flavor other than salt gets removed as well, but it's (or was, at least) a common commercial/industrial approach to fermented cucumber pickles -- quick-ferment them in >10% brine and then a water soak to make them palatable.