Fermented foods are bubbling up all over Maine
Local businesses fermenting superfoods from tempeh to miso
By Amy Paradysz
AN ANNUAL SURVEY conducted by Today’s Dietitian magazine in November/December 2022 shows that fermented foods are the #1 recommended superfood (followed by seeds, #2, and blueberries, #3). Perhaps that makes the wild Maine blueberry cider vinegar and wild Maine blueberry sriracha by Ewing Fruit Co. in Warren or the wild pickled blueberries by Planet Naskeag in Brooklin super-superfoods.
These fermented blueberry products are among the intriguing made-in-Maine options at the state’s most eclectic fermentation shop, Onggi.
“We cast a spotlight on cultures that have long and rich histories of fermentation and food preservation and try to elevate and expose them to an audience that might not be familiar with them,” says co-owner Erin Zobitz.
Onggi is named after the Korean earthenware fermentation vessels called onggi (pronounced like a combination of “only” and “eggy”) and features Asian-inspired and regionally made fermented products. The latter category includes Maine-made Tootie’s Tempeh, West Maquoit vinegars, go-en miso, Heiwa Tofu and Atlantic Sea Farms fermented seaweed salad.
Onggi is nestled between fermentation-focused Root Wild Kombuchery on one side and Oxbow Blending & Bottling on the other in a foodie haven on Portland’s Washington Avenue. In this cluster of businesses, which also includes The Cheese Shop and a raw bar called The Shop, food shopping isn’t a task, it’s an exploration.
Onggi started out in a leased Black Box shipping container, which they quickly outgrew, then moved into the former A&C Grocery in May 2022. Co-owners Erin Zobitz, Marcus Im and Amy Ng make their own kimchi and sauerkraut, gimbap and baked goodies, like chocolate chip cookies made with sourdough starter.
“We started with home fermentation and developed deep and complex flavors that you can’t imitate with anything other than time, which is what enables this process to transform food,” Zobitz says. “You can get diverse savory, acidic flavors at the ready. When we talk about sauerkraut or kimchi, we’re harboring the natural lactobacillus that is on the vegetables and creating an environment for it to transform food. All that tang and acidity is amazing, given that all you put in is vegetables, water and in some cases salt.”
Onggi’s refrigerated ferments include house-made kimchis (cabbage or cauliflower) and smokey sauerkraut and Atlantic Sea Farms fermented seaweed salad. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
Humans have fermented foods for eons, for food preservation, to boost flavor and for a variety of health benefits. Many of the world’s most beloved foods—including coffee and chocolate—have fermentation as part of their process.
“Long before people could understand the science behind these transformations, they were using them to preserve food and derive a variety of flavors and products from a single crop and to get different health benefits from fresh versus fermented options,” Zobitz says.
Sarah Speare, founder of Tootie’s Tempeh, says, “The modern diet has become so processed, and eating fermented foods can help bring things back into balance. Fermented foods help with digestion and nutrient absorption and immune issues.”
Likewise, the maker of go-en miso, Nicholas Repenning, says, “Fermentation is about using microbes to break things down into a more accessible form. The microbes work in the way they would work in nature, so it’s kind of like rewilding our food.”
Here’s a bit more about four made-in-Maine fermented products, from Biddeford to Waldoboro.
Tootie’s Tempeh
Tempeh is a fermented soybean cake, that, like tofu, can be used as a meat substitute. The fermentation process not only binds the beans together but boosts their nutritional benefits.
“It’s a complete protein with calcium and tons of iron and all the B vitamins, including B-12, which is usually only available in animal products,” Speare says. “And it’s a prebiotic. It helps prepare you to absorb those nutrients.”
When Speare, a longtime vegan, realized that all commercially made tempeh is fermented in plastic bags, she wanted to find a more environmentally sustainable method. After three years of development—involving metal trays, an incubator and a precise temperature and amount of humidity and time—Tootie’s Tempeh launched in fall 2022. And, as a bonus, the plastic-free production means there’s none of the bitter aftertaste that turns some people off from tempeh. Instead, Tootie’s has a mild nutty or mushroom-y flavor.
Tootie’s Tempeh is made in Biddeford and found in the refrigerator section of dozens of Maine specialty food shops, including Onggi, as well as co-ops and (soon) Hannaford. Also shown in this photo: Heiwa Tofu, made in Rockport, and go-en’s dried rice koji for home fermenters. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
West Maquoit Vinegar Works
When longtime brewer Brad Messier gave up drinking, he turned his creative attentions to the double-fermentation process of vinegar making. For six years, he’s been making West Maquoit’s unique vinegar flavors—like Blue Fire and Fruit & Flower—slooowly.
To produce the bright and summery Fruit & Flower vinegar, for example, Messier starts by making three or four wines, incorporating rhubarb, strawberries, peaches and edible flowers. “That vinegar is summer in a bottle,” he says. “It distills down the idea of all these fresh things, and that they can be preserved, and that it takes time. The process is about two years, start to finish.”
Messier partners with Maine farms, sometimes getting creative with overripe or imperfect produce still perfectly good for vinegar-making. He also collaborates with brewers. The Mushroom Ale Vinegar, for example, is made from Black Pug Brewing’s “The Leshen,” a Scotch ale with shiitake, oyster and porcini mushrooms in the boil, and toffee sweetness. The finished vinegar is infused with dried black trumpet mushrooms and aged in toasted oak.
Not everyone knows what to do with a vinegar like that, which is why the West Maquoit website includes more than a dozen recipes. The Summer Butter recipe, for example, involves a stick of softened butter, a couple teaspoons of Fruit & Flower vinegar, a couple teaspoons of honey and a few herbs. But even just mixing a bit of Fruit & Flower with butter and slathering it on hot corn on the cob, as Messier suggests, elevates the flavors in way that needs to be experienced to be believed.
West Maquoit Vinegar Works of Brunswick has 14 varieties of vinegar on the market or in production. All are less than .25% alcohol by volume. PHOTO: AMY PARADYSZ
go-en fermented foods
“My wife’s from Japan, and when she came to the U.S., we needed a miso that met her tastes, so we started making our own a decade or more ago,” says Nicholas Repenning, who co-founded go-en with his wife Mika. “We’re known for making miso.”
In Japanese cuisine, koji (a cultured grain) is the start of everything from soy sauce and rice vinegar to miso, amazake and sake. To make miso, Repenning grows koji for a few days, then mixes it with cooked soybeans and salt before putting it in a barrel for at least a year. The result is a salty earthy, richly layered paste.
“But it’s so much more than that,” he says. “Miso has an ability to bring out the flavors from other foods. For salad dressing, mix a miso vinegarette—just miso, vinegar and a little bit of oil. Or mix miso with sour cream as a dip. Or, because miso can break down other foods, you can use it for marinating and tenderizing meat. I really like it on pork chops with some maple syrup.”
Nothing goes into Morse’s sauerkraut but cabbage, salt and sugar. Time does the rest. COURTESY PHOTO.
Morse’s Sauerkraut
At Morse’s in Waldoboro, sauerkraut has been made the same way for more than a century. Cabbage is hand-cut, shredded and tamped down with a wooden mallet while adding just the right amount of sugar and salt to get the wild Lactobacillus to start bubbling away. Pressed down by the same river rocks used for generations, the cabbage ferments at 48–50 degrees for 28 days—or longer for more sour varieties of kraut.
While the methods haven’t changed, the volume of production certainly has since Virgil Morse made his first barrel of sauerkraut on his family farm in 1919. These days, Morse’s ferments 120 tons of cabbage annually, much of which is grown by their neighbors, White Oak Farm.
At Morse’s on Route 220 in Waldoboro, look for lacto-fermented sauerkrauts, pickles and relishes. They also have a wide variety of cheeses and meats, with an emphasis on everything that goes well with sauerkraut, like kielbasa, or is made with sauerkraut, like Reuben sandwiches. “Our kraut is teeming with healthy probiotic cultures, which are important in maintaining a healthy microbiome,” says Cody LaMontagne, who bought Morse’s in 2015 with her husband James Gammon. “It’s natural medicine.”
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