Alright VSalonistas, impart upon me your wisdom -
my wife and I have been making various fermented foods for a few years and finally invested in a good crock to replace our makeshift collection of mason jars, drilled lids and gaskets. The upshot is that we can make much larger batches now. While this is great (who doesn't need 15L of kimchi?) it has led me to the following question: can you can fermented/fermenting things to make them shelf-stable? I've seen shelf-stable sauerkraut, kimchi etc. in stores, but I'm wondering if they use something (UV, argon flood..etc.) to stop the fermentation before it goes into the jar.
The scientist in me thinks that this should be okay, since the canning process creates a vacuum and without gas exchange the fermentation process should halt, thus you won't get expansion and thus it will not explode. However, I'm not willing to play that game and end up with a massive broken glass/kimchi/kraut/chutney situation in our pantry.
So, to those of you who ferment in large batches, what do you do to keep these things around assuming you don't have a walk-in refrigerator?
PS free kimchi and some killer riding to anyone passing through Marseille - drop me a PM.
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