What to Do With Over-Fermented Kombucha?

Kombucha Salad

Left your kombucha out for too long and it turned sour and nasty? Forgot about it and it over-fermented? Or maybe, you got coerced by the cute receptionist at your favourite yoga studio into buying a few bottles of premium (read: overpriced) kombucha, when you actually dislike the taste?

Don’t throw it out! Instead, give it a new life as a salad dressing!

It’s really easy, just simmer it over the stovetop to thicken it into a spoon-coating, slick syrup, intensifying its flavour and consistency Then, mix in some salt and oil, and you’ll get this complex tangy-sweet sauce to coat all your leafy greens in. The dressing tastes a little like iced lemon tea (probably due to the tea flavour in kombucha), which makes for a surprising (but not unwelcome) flavour in salads. In fact, I’d make a case that salad dressing might just be kombucha’s true destination.

Kombucha Salad

It’s an idea I first came across in The Noma Guide to Fermentation. In it, Chef René Redzepi and David Zilber recommends to “let the liquid slowly evaporate until it’s about one-quarter of its original volume and can coat the back of a spoon. The slower the kombucha reduces, the better—don’t’ let it come to a boil or you’ll cook out all the flavor.” This is key to get a great tasting kombucha syrup, which the book also suggests to use as a pancake drizzle in place of maple syrup, or even on ice cream.

For me, I prefer mine as a dressing, to go along with some seaweed salad, because kombu-cha, geddit? *wink wink nudge nudge* Anyway, if you’re not a fan of salads, or salad dressings (I can understand the former, but not the latter), here’s a list of ideas for what to do with old, over-fermented kombucha, with the salad dressing right at the end:



Add It to Drinks

Again, you can either reduce it down into a syrupy caramel, or add it neat to fruit juice to make a shrub. This is similar to the typical flavoured kombuchas out there, just a bit fruitier and tangier with a higher ratio of fruit juice.

Marinate Meats with It

Acidic foods can work wonders as a base for marinating meats, or even vegetables. Pineapple juice or apple cider vinegar are used in marinades to tenderize meat, and adding kombucha will have a similar effect. Don’t leave your meat in the liquid for too long though (I’d say less than 6 hours), because the acidity of the liquid will turn the meat to mush.

Use It on Your Face?!

This is an idea that I came across on multiple sites, claiming that it’s “GREAT for your skin” and makes for a “wonderful facial toner.” I’ve never tried this personally, but hey if it works for people, why not? I won’t be surprised if people use their SCOBYs as a face mask next. (Oh god I have an inkling that it might already be a thing…)

Make Salad Dressing

And of course, you can turn your kombucha into a cool dressing for salads. You can easily reduce down the caramel, and keep it in your fridge for weeks (possibly months). Whenever you need it, just stir up a tablespoon of the kombucha syrup in a tablespoon of oil, season it, and you’ve got a drizzle-ready dressing.

Also, funny story, I actually experimented with a kombu-flavoured kombucha, where I added a piece of kombu to the kombucha during the secondary fermentation. It didn’t alter the flavour much, apart from a barely detectable hint of salinity, but I suppose if you want to go that extra mile with the whole kombu theme, feel free to flavour your kombucha with kombu! (Let me know and I’ll send over a recipe/guide for it.

Here are some extra tips to get you making a killer kombucha dressing:

  • Reduce the kombucha low and slow. This allows more flavour to be retained, as opposed to boiling it, which would more violently remove the flavour into the air.

  • The amount of oil to kombucha is variable. But I like to go with a 1:1 ratio for this, because the kombucha syrup isn’t as eye-wateringly sour as most vinegars (which go by a more traditional 3:1 oil-to-vinegar ratio)

  • Depending on your kombucha, the resulting dressing will vary in taste. So it’s always handy to have a little lemon juice ready just in case your dressing is lacking a bit of sour zing.

Kombucha Salad
Kombucha Salad Dressing

Kombucha Salad Dressing

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

Dressing
240g (1 cup) kombucha
30g (2 tablespoons) grapeseed or flaxseed oil, or any neutral oil
5g (1 teaspoon) sesame oil
5g (1 teaspoon) mirin
2g (1/4 teaspoon) salt
5g (1 teaspoon) lemon juice, optional

Salad
20g dried wakame (Japanese seaweed)
1 Japanese cucumber
½ head green coral lettuce
½ head purple coral lettuce
5g roasted white sesame seeds, to garnish

Directions

  1. Reduce kombucha: Pour the kombucha into a wide pan (a frying pan works great), and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down to low so it no longer bubbles, and let it cook and evaporate for 30-45 minutes, or until the kombucha turns into a spoon-coating-thick syrup. For the 240ml of kombucha, I’d recommend reducing it down to about 30g (2 tablespoons) of intense syrup.

  2. Make dressing: In a bowl, whisk together the kombucha syrup, grapeseed oil, sesame oil, and salt until it comes together into a smooth, homogenous mixture. Give the dressing a taste, and stir in lemon juice to your desired level of sourness.

  3. Hydrate seaweed: Place the dried wakame in a bowl together with water, give it a stir, and let it sit for 5 minutes to fully hydrate, then remove the wakame, squeezing out the excess water.

  4. Make the salad: Slice the cucumber into small batons. Tear up the lettuce leaves. Then, toss the cucumbers, lettuce, and wakame in a bowl. Add the kombucha dressing to this, and toss some more, until the greens are well coated in dressing. (Start with 2-3 tablespoons of dressing first, then add more to taste.)

  5. Serve and eat: Top the salad with the sesame seeds, and eat immediately.



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