What fermentation is doing in my barbecue

The sourdough starter I failed at for years

A long time ago, I failed at sourdough.

Not once. Several times. I worked with whatever I had in the cupboard: clamp-lid jars, the kind everyone owns. I fed it by eye. I wrote the date on a piece of tape with a marker, when I remembered to. I never really knew whether it had doubled or whether I was telling myself a story. And I had no simple way to keep it cold between two bakes without smothering it.

I even bought a jar sold as being made for the job. It was a jar. With a label on it.

I gave up. Not for lack of interest: because the gesture wasn't comfortable, and a gesture that isn't comfortable doesn't get repeated. That's true at the barbecue, and it's true everywhere else.

Fermentation isn't a change of direction

For a few months now you've seen a lot of sourdough, kombucha and jars of vegetables go past in my content. The question comes up often: why is a barbecue coach getting into that?

Because I have never done barbecue. I work with fire, matter and gesture. Barbecue is the tool I handle best, it isn't the subject. Matter is the product and everything you do to it before the flame: sourcing, season, ageing, marinades, rubs. Fermentation sits in exactly the same place. It isn't an addition to my line, it was already in it.

And there's a simpler reason: it interests me. Enormously. I started digging into it for myself, with no content plan behind it.

Ferment for flavour, not for storage

This is the turning point, and I think it's what most people miss.

In most people's minds, fermentation means preserving. A grandmother's trick, a way to get through winter. It is that. But that's not what interests me.

What interests me is what fermentation does to aromas. It doesn't just make a vegetable last longer, it transforms it. It brings acidity, depth, notes that didn't exist in the raw product. It makes a cabbage more interesting than it was. It gives a carrot something taut and long on the palate that no cooking will ever give it.

In other words: it's a transformation. Like fire.

Two transformations that work together

From there, everything overlaps. Fire concentrates, caramelises, smokes, dries. Fermentation acidifies, digs, stretches. They are two opposite ways of going after flavour, and they answer each other well.

The most obvious examples are the dumbest ones.

Pickles on a burger. Everyone puts them on. Almost nobody makes them. Between an industrial pickle and a lacto-fermented one you've followed for ten days, it isn't the same product. On a patty seared hard on the plancha, properly fatty, that sharp acidity does all the balancing work. It's the simplest way in, and it's already a slap in the face.

Kefir in the buns. Here you go further. You replace part of the liquid in your dough with kefir. You gain acidity, softness, structure. The bun becomes a real component of the burger instead of a neutral support.

Sourdough and the wood-fired oven. That's the logical next step. A wood-fired oven isn't just for pizza. Same hearth, same heat management, same reading of the dome. Except that instead of a yeast-risen dough, you're loading a bread you built over several days. The fire gesture is identical. The matter has another density altogether.

Kombucha next to a smoked cut. A long, fatty, smoked piece needs cutting through. A sharp, lightly acidic drink does that better than a soda.

What the right equipment changed

Back to my failed starter.

What unlocked it wasn't some technique I discovered. It was equipment designed for the job. I put my hands back in it with the Kefirko fermenters, and it worked first time. Within a few weeks I was at a level I had never reached by guesswork.

It isn't magic, it's simply solved.

The sourdough fermenter. A wide glass jar with a graduated cup that works as a measure, a lid and a storage pot all at once. A rubber band to mark the starting level, so you see at a glance when the starter has doubled and when it's at its peak. A fermentation clock on the lid to mark the last feed. A sealing disc for the fridge. Nothing extraordinary taken separately. Put end to end, it removes exactly the five small frictions that had made me give up.

The 4-litre kombucha fermenter. Stainless steel spigot, which matters when you're working with very acidic liquids over time. A lid that lets through the oxygen aerobic fermentation needs while blocking what shouldn't get in, with an active carbon filter for the smell. Built-in station to follow the temperature. You draw from the tap, you top it up, the fermentation never stops. It's continuous brewing, not batches.

The vegetable fermenter. For pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut. The glass is inert, it doesn't argue with the fermentation, and it's transparent: you follow what's happening instead of imagining it.

What the three have in common is comfort. And comfort is what makes repetition possible.

I work at it the way I learned barbecue

I didn't learn fire from a book. I learned it by cooking every day, failing, starting again, noting what had changed between two attempts. Hundreds of times.

I'm doing exactly the same with fermentation. A jar going at all times. One test a day. Ratios I shift by a degree, by an hour, by ten grams. Things that go straight in the bin, and others that end up on a plate and teach me something.

That's why you see so much of it right now. It isn't a theme I picked to fill a calendar. It's what's sitting on my worktop at the moment I film.

And it's also why I'm going to keep sharing it here: the ratios, the temperatures, the real timings, and the failures. Not the clean version that makes it look like it works every time.

Fire transforms. Fermentation transforms. I have no reason to choose.

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The Kefirko fermenters I talk about in this article were supplied by the brand, which I work with. What I say about them comes from daily use, and I would say it in the same terms if I had paid for them.