Welcome to the July edition of our monthly food blog, The Rumbly Tummy. If you are a dedicated follower of the food blog, you may have noticed that we’re a week late in giving you a new recipe to try out. That’s because last Wednesday (the first Wednesday of the month) the new video for our song, “I Must Be The Sun,” premiered on PopMatters, which we thought was pretty cool so we wanted you to focus all of your attention on that. But don’t worry, all you timeophiles out there, we’ve got a new recipe for you today and will be back to our regularly scheduled blogging next month.
You may also have noticed, as said dedicated follower of the food blog, that we have a kombucha problem. Well, it’s really only a problem for Mallory, who has a hard time with the kitchen counters looking like science experiments. Over the pandemic, Scott’s kombucha did really well, which meant that by the time we were ready to get back on the road, he’d collected an entire motel’s worth of scobys and Mallory made it clear that it was check out time. For those of you who aren’t in the know, a scoby is a “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast” and is the filmy stuff you see floating on the top of kombucha or in apple cider vinegar. Often referred to as “the mother,” it’s alive and is what turns regular old sweet tea into the deliciously tart and divisive beverage. If you’ve been making your own kombucha you will notice that with every new batch of kombucha, you get a new scoby growing on the top, a new tiny friend to care for.
My brother, who gave me my first scoby from his original “Scoby Wan Kenobi,” told me early on that I was going to have too many someday and that when that happens you must give them away, make kombucha vinegar, or turn ‘em into jerky. I’d already given them to all the friends who’d take one and had a batch of really tart kombucha vinegar brewing, so as we got ready to hit the road, it was time to make Scoby Jerky. And spoiler alert, it turned out great! It’s a pretty simple process, but takes place over two days, so make sure you have some time and you don’t mind your kitchen smelling like delicious scoby jerky.
Kombucha Scoby Jerky
Ingredients:
Scobys. I used whatever extra I had, roughly 5. Cut into thin strips.
1 TBSP grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, diced
1/2 cup amino acids
Pinch of smoked paprika
Black pepper to taste
Dash of vegan Worcestershire sauce
6 TBSP honey
Instructions:
1. Cut the scobys into thin strips. Place on greased dehydrator trays and let dehydrate at 105 degrees for 4 hours.
2. Mix together the rest of the ingredients. Add dehydrated scobys and let marinade for 12-24 hours.
3. Grease trays and place marinated scobys back in the dehydrator for 8 hours at 105 degrees.
4. Store in a mason jar. Jerky should be good for about a month.
Remember, scobys are full of good probiotics that, in abundance can cause upset stomachs, so don’t eat too many in one sitting even though you’ll want to.
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