Earlier this year, I caught a large bluefin tuna off the coast of San Diego. It was promptly gilled, gutted, and iced. Once home, I cleaned it further, vacuum-sealed it, and froze it.

I come from a Sicilian family, and my grandmother recently told me how her father used to cure tuna roughly 70 years ago. According to her, he would pack chunks of tuna in salt inside small metal cans, place a piece of wood over them, and leave them in the garage for about three months. They would then slice the tuna thin and dress it with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and parsley.

I decided to try a cleaner, refrigerated version of his method.

Here's exactly what I did:

• Completely thawed the previously frozen tuna.
• Cut approximately seven pieces, each about 1 inch thick and 2–3 inches long.
• Completely buried the pieces in pickling salt inside an airtight plastic container. I didn't measure the salt; I simply used enough to fully surround every piece.
• Placed a mug on top of the salt as a weight to keep the fish submerged if enough liquid accumulated to form a brine.
• Refrigerated the sealed container, undisturbed, for three months.

Today marks approximately three months. The tuna remained completely buried in salt the entire time. A considerable amount of moisture appears to have been extracted, as the bottom half of the salt is noticeably wet, although there's no standing pool of liquid.

The fish is now considerably firmer and denser than when fresh. I cut a piece in half to inspect it (photos attached), and the interior appears relatively uniform. I also touched the tip of my tongue to the very center to check for salt penetration, and it was extremely salty.

As for smell, it definitely has a fishy aroma, but nothing rotten or particularly offensive. It smells about how I'd expect heavily salted fish to smell, somewhat similar to opening a can of anchovies.

Here's where my concern comes in.

I was excited to finally try it and asked ChatGPT to find some traditional serving recipes. Instead, it started warning me about botulism, ultimately recommending that I not eat it. It acknowledged that my preparation sounded reasonable but emphasized that salt penetration, appearance, and smell cannot definitively rule out botulinum toxin.

I understand the seriousness of botulism and that there's no way to conclusively verify safety without laboratory testing. Realistically, though, I'm not going to send a few pieces of homemade cured tuna to a lab.

What I'm hoping to understand is the practical level of risk here.

Given the thickness of the pieces, complete salt coverage, apparent moisture loss, significant salt penetration, and continuous refrigeration, are there any specific red flags in my process that would make botulism a genuine concern?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people experienced with traditional salt-curing methods, especially cured fish. Is there something fundamentally different about my process compared with established methods for products like salted anchovies, baccalà, or traditional Sicilian cured tuna?

I'm not looking for anyone to guarantee that it's safe. I understand that botulism is rare but potentially fatal. I'm trying to distinguish between a meaningful food safety risk arising from something I did incorrectly and a very remote risk that technically exists with many traditional food preservation methods.

Any practical insight, particularly from people familiar with traditional preparation of salt-cured fish, would be greatly appreciated.

Beginner here... How long would you leave it? I made this on a whim

Started my first cheong last month out of quince fruits my dog found growing in our yard. Yielded about 2 1/4 cups of syrups and 1 cup fruit solids, I folded the solids into a muffin batter with some cardamom. Delicious!

Hey everyone!

I'm making miso for the first time, and I'm not quite sure if things are going as they should.

I've been fermenting for several years and have made kimchi, dill pickles, sauerkraut, and kombucha multiple times, so I'm familiar with fermentation in general. However, this is my first time making miso, and I'm finding it a little confusing.

It's been about a week, and there's barely any liquid forming. I can see a tiny amount at the bottom, but we're talking less than a teaspoon. I was under the impression that miso would produce some liquid (tamari), so I expected to see a bit more by now.

I'm also wondering about the setup. With my usual lacto-ferments, I use lids and weights to keep everything submerged, but I understand miso is a different kind of fermentation. I'm not sure if I'm approaching this the right way.

Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients

• 303 g dried soybeans
• 300 g rice or barley koji
• 119 g non-iodized sea salt
• 1½ cups soybean cooking water

Since there wasn't much liquid, I wondered whether I simply wasn't pressing it down enough. I'm using parchment paper, cardboard wrapped in plastic, ceramic pie weights wrapped in plastic, and on top of all that - stones in ramekins to add more pressure.

The miso has been stored in a closet, away from light, in a cool, dark location.

So, for those of you who make miso regularly:

• Is it normal to see almost no liquid after the first week?
• Should I expect liquid to accumulate at the top, or does that happen much later in the process?
• Does miso need to be pressed down under weights like a lacto-ferment, or is the approach different?
• Should I be using a lid, an airtight seal, or something else entirely?
• Is there anything I should change at this stage, or should I just leave it alone and be patient?

I'm happy to provide more details about the process if needed. I'd really appreciate hearing what to expect when making miso for the first time and whether my experience so far sounds normal.

Thanks!

I am currently about 5 days into a new fermented hot sauce. Left is mengo and jalapeno, the right is grape with a mix of chillies that we had left over from the plants this summer including jalapenos, finger chillies and then a load of purple ones which I forget but are pretty tame.

Just felt like posting more than anything but will update with how they turn out.

Made with half of the almost 9lbs cabbage I grew in my garden! (I did put weights over it)

As title says - started fermenting my first ever batch of saurkraut on the 20th. Fairly warm where I am so temps have been ranging from 23-25C. After 3 days the kraut stopped smelling like cabbage completely and just smells very strongly like vinegar. Have checked pH on strips each day and we are around 4.0 at the moment. Just want to check and make sure the smell is normal as I bought some commercial wild fermented sauerkraut which doesn't smell like vinegar at all - just cabbage and sharp.

I pickled some Daikon and Carrots recently. I had to draw out some brine and replace with rice wine vinegar because they were over salty. The salt problem is gone, but OMG they smell when I open them. It's like farts. There is no spoilage, so it's all fine, but super strong.

Flavor is ok. They aren't anything complex, but held on to most of the texture and did not get unpleasant as some had warned

I love fermenting things, especially cabbage. But, fermenting foods in the house makes it stinky and I have friends over often. Will it work to ferment things in my back yard? I don't mean burying a crock in the ground for the winter but having a crock on my patio table for a few days or weeks.

I got this jar from Lakeland and it has a one way valve to let air out but not in. The other one you can lift up to reduce the pressure when opening.

Should I leave more headroom? I don't want to waste any and I don't have any other jars and it's such a small amount!

Just wondering if the headroom isn't necessary with this kind of lid...

So i have some ginger around the house and saw a video about how to make a soda at home so i try this one

I don't have a glass jar tho so i have to use a plastic bottle

Hello dear fermenters, I have recently found my passion for fermentation, and I had some promising results with kombucha brewing. Now it’s time to move to something else and since I have a huge purple cabbage in the fridge, I thought it was about time I try to make my own sauerkraut. I know I could easily find a beginner recipe online, but Reddit has provided with so much useful info and inspiration recently, that I thought I might ask here and see. So, how do you make sauerkraut? Is it possible to make them with a hint of sweetness? Thank you very much

Hello! I am having a hot sauce problem and need some advice: In the past, when I've made hot sauce, I've cut up peppers and added salt a bit at a time over a few days to pull the moisture out and create a brine that way. But what this leads to is a hot sauce that is too salty because I just keep adding salt along the way to reach a point where the brine is level with the top of the peppers and that keeps the mold away.

A friend suggested I should pre-mix a brine with water and salt and just add it to the chopped peppers. The problem is that I've now got a layer of mold at the top that doesn't disappear when I mix it back into the brine. I think that maybe fermentation just isn't happening. Not sure what to do! My fermenter isn't airtight, I just use a jar and an airlock but it's never been an issue before because any minimal mold that's formed I have just mixed back and it's been killed by the fermentation.

I have been asking AI a lot but my fermentation keeps stalling, and wondering if anyone here could help. I have a 5-gallon wash of agave syrup and water that started as 1.075 gravity, pitched with go-ferm and champagne yeast (2024 best by date). It fermented to about 1.06 and stalled, I boiled some eggshells and baked them and ground them into powder because it got pretty acidic given that a sample reacted with baking soda. Added that, along with some nutrient of boiled distiller's yeast and a little more go-ferm (cooled down) since I didn't have another nutrient (this is all leftover stuff from when I bought supplies a few years ago). Got the airlock bubbling pretty heavily for a couple of days, and then stopped (was still at 1.06ish gravity though), and I have pretty much left it for 2 weeks, no airlock bubbles.

Measured the gravity again and it was 1.05-1.045ish, but I am guessing that is lactic acid fermentation since there was no bubbling? It currently tastes a little alcoholic, a little sour, and a little sweet. I'd like to make agave wine and distill some into an agave spirit, but I am not sure how to get the rest of the sugars to ferment into alcohol instead of acid, and whether it is already too acidic to save. Thinking of adding more eggshell powder but I'm not sure it will actually help anything at this point. Does anyone have any ideas on any other actions I could take? I do have some other yeasts (distiller's, ale, more premier blanc) and one packet of prestige wd - should I try any of those? I would try adding baking soda to bring the acid down more but I don't want to make it salty.