Beet Kvass
Beets are a fantastic food to use as medicine!
Including beets into your diet on a regular basis can help to support your liver and gallbladder function! Beets promote smooth flowing bile from the gallbladder. It is important to have free flowing bile in order to avoid build up of any sludge and crucial for healthy liver and gallbladder function...
The liver makes bile and the gallbladder stores and releases bile into the digestive tract.
Bile then helps the body to absorb the fats and fat soluble nutrients within our diet. Bile also helps the body remove toxins from the body.
Toxins are secreted into the bile and then removed via the stool.
You do not want sludgy bile if you want to feel good in your skin!
So, here is a recipe to help get that gallbladder up and running!
INGREDIENTS
4 beets
Filtered clean water (without chlorine, fluoride)
Sea salt
1 liter/1 quart glass Jar
INSTRUCTIONS
Thinly slice beets.
Layer beets into the jar horizontally all the way up to about 3 inches below the top of the jar. This helps to avoid floaters while fermentation is taking place.
Mix up 3 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of salt.
If you have a jar of sauerkraut around pour a splash of the juice into your water/salt mixture.
Pour liquid mix on top of your beets leaving about 1 inch of headroom from the top of the jar. (The ratio is1 heaping teaspoon of salt per cup of water. Use this if you need to add more water.)
Cover with a loose fitting lid and place into a bowl to catch any juices that burp out. Otherwise you can use an air sealed jar and burp each day. Watch out you can end up with red splatter all over your walls 🥴! But that is okay because beet stains come out quite easily!
Allow to sit in room temperature, out of direct sunlight, in a warm place for one week. The time frame will differ depending on your climate: warmer climates will ferment faster than colder climates. You want it to be slightly vinegary and effervescent. And you may see some white funky stuff that accumulates on the top, this is normal. You can scrape off with a clean spoon or just let it be. ***If you add in some brine from another fermented food it will speed up the process.
Once it has developed the taste that you like, you can either strain it or keep the beets in and place in your fridge. You can eat the beets if you want to!
Consume 50ml (1/4 cup) once a day for the first week and then increase it to 2 x 50ml doses, morning and night (or all at once!). This will help your body adjust to the fermented food. The goal is to consume at least 1/2 cup daily.
ENJOY! Let me know how yours goes and how you feel after consuming for 2/3 weeks!