Chilled Category: 2021 Supreme Winner The Wild Fermentary – Smoky Kāpeti
The Wild Fermentary took out both the Chilled category and the Supreme Winner award in 2021 with their Smoky Kāpeti sauerkraut.
The Wild Fermentary recognises that food choices play a significant role in the environmental challenges of our time, and they are dedicated to being part of the solution.
The ethics of permaculture - earth care, people care and fair share – are at the heart of everything they do. In the development of Smoky Kāpeti, The Wild Fermentary fused ancient fermentation practices with modern technology and created a product to add barbecue flavour and billions of gut-loving bacteria to kai.
Smoky Kāpeti is intrinsically unique to New Zealand, being the first sauerkraut of its kind to be available on the market. It’s also the only ferment in the world to contain pūhā and New Zealand seasalt.
“We love how the New Zealand Food Awards brings together so many great local brands and gives new products a platform to shine. The Awards dinner was so much fun and a fabulous opportunity to rub shoulders with so many of our food heroes.”
Entry (extracts):
1. Product Name
The Wild Fermentary Smoky Kāpeti
2. Product Description
Smoky Kāpeti with wild-foraged pūhā is a wild fermented sauerkraut designed to add BBQ flavour and billions of gut-loving bacteria to kai... for the health of our whenua and our tangata whenua. This is 'kraut' done our way, NZ.
Innovation
3. Where did the idea for this product come from?
Smoky Kāpeti was inspired by the whenua (land) and traditions of Aotearoa. Wild foraged pūhā whispers the story of our food gathering places and the tales of our foraging ancestors; while smoky notes pay homage to the hāngi and umu earth oven where cabbage (kāpeti) has long been cooked in the belly of Papatuānuku. We believe in ka mua, ka muri 'walking backwards into the future'. We are passionate about the stories our kai tells about us and creating NZ ferments for the health of our whenua and the health of our tangata whenua (people of the land). Smoky Kāpeti is a celebration of NZ fermentation, and a shift away from European-style sauerkraut. It heralds a new range of ferments for The Wild Fermentary...
4. How did you determine the product originality?
The Wild Fermentary is passionate about launching new, innovative ferments and sharing our knowledge and passion of wild fermentation with NZ. Smoky Kāpeti is a new living food for a new way of living because we believe our people, our land, and our food system need fermented food more than ever. Smoky Kāpeti is the first NZ-style sauerkraut ferment on the local market – and the only one we can find with pūhā and NZ sea salt anywhere in the world. Our practice of natural wild fermentation (not using engineered starter cultures) is a further point of difference which we believes adds to the local terroir in every jar.
5. Did you consider any new technology to your company in the development of this product?
Fusing ancient fermentation practices with modern technology has revolutionised the fermentation process for us! Today, we balance the art and science of fermentation by using technology to control the fermentation environment to ensure we deliver bold flavours and minimal variances. We ferment Smoky Kāpeti in modern stainless-steel vats which replaced our traditional ceramic fermentation crocks, to give us greater volume. Our ‘machinery technology’ includes specialist commercial cabbage shredders (which have been essential in the development process) and dehydrators to extend the seasons harvest of pūhā . And we ferment in a purpose-built temperature-controlled room which utilises a heating and cooling system developed to control the speed of the ferment and deliver desired flavour and textures.
6. What were some of the challenges in developing your product and how did you overcome them?
Balancing the art and science of natural, wild fermentation is always a constant challenge. The locally sourced fresh ingredients like cabbage and jalapeno in our Smoky Kāpeti are impacted by the weather and often change in size/shape/volume/flavour in accordance with the seasons. This can present challenges to the ordering, along with the proportions and ratios required deliver a consistent product. To overcome this we work closely with our growers and suppliers and stay well connected to our ingredients - always discussing, testing, tasting, weighing etc before we even start thinking about fermenting them! We have worked long and hard to understand what flavour profile we need to achieve prior to fermentation in order to achieve the desired outcome.
In addition to the challenges that come with fresh produce, there is also constant challenges with wild fermentation. Micro-organisms like lactic acid bacteria are influenced by their environment, variables such as ingredients, temperature and time. Although there is plenty of science behind our wild fermentation processes, there is no exact science so we are always monitoring and reacting to the variables and fine-tuning as we go to achieve quality and consistency. To overcome these we have a robust system in pace and plenty of knowledge thanks to a lot of research, product testing and consultation with growers, fermenters and other specialists (including the microbiology team at Massey University) to mitigate these challenges.
7. In your food technologist’s words, what was the proudest moment in the product’s journey?
The development of Smoky Kāpeti was an exploration of the senses, testing and trialling ingredients and combinations. Great consideration was given to local resources, limiting our footprint and the viability of ongoing, reliable supply. The heroes of Smoky Kāpeti quickly emerged - sweet locally grown cabbages, award-winning jalapenos from ‘Orcona' in Hawkes Bay, smoky paprika, and wild foraged pūhā whose bitterness is somewhat tamed in the fermentation process. The end result was the unanimous agreement of our tasting panel that we had created "hangi flavour in a jar" and the new flavour will help New Zealanders enjoy the health benefits of this fermented food. We love how Smoky Kāpeti tells a powerful NZ food story, connects our people back to the land and traditions of Aotearoa, and is ultimately living food for a new way of living. The proudest moment of this journey is doing kraut our way!
Sustainability
8. Describe how environmental outcomes have been maximized across the entire life cycle of the product and your company processed for achieving these outcomes?
We recognise our food choices play a significant role in the environmental challenges of our time and are dedicated to being part of the solution. The ethics of Permaculture - earth care, people care and fair share – are at the heart of everything we do.
Smoky Kāpeti is low carbon eating and champions wild food and sustainable foraging, because knowing where our ingredients come from and reducing our carbon footprint is important to us. We support local growers, with over 90% of our ingredients sourced from within a 50km radius. And we select ingredients like pūhā for its flavour, nutrient profile, carbon footprint AND the important role it plays in our wider ecosystem.
We use traditional ceramic crocks and stainless-steel vats (no plastic) designed to handle acid environments. We choose sustainable NZ sea salt to kickstart the wild fermentation process (no packet starter cultures are used) and glass packaging made in NZ which doesn’t leach chemicals and is 100% recyclable. We also use all eco-friendly cleaning products in the Fermentary, employ low-environmental impact pest control policies, source renewable resources wherever we can and say no to single-use plastic. We handcraft our ferments, using machinery only where necessary; conserve our rainwater collection water - using wastewater to sustain our Fermentary garden; and employ a local workforce (our environmental champions) to keep carbon emissions low and maintain a pride in what comes from our local lands. We believe this makes a difference to the quality of our ferments and to Mother Earth.
9. Provide a specific example of environmental sustainability initiatives related to the product you have entered.
In producing Smoky Kāpeti, we use every edible part of the ingredients possible and distribute what we can't use in the ferment (cabbage cores, carrot ends etc) around our community feeding pigs, chooks, cattle, and worm farms. We also have a compost system at The Fermentary which is well used and constantly converts waste to a valuable source of compost nourishing our local soils and in turn providing fuel for ingredients that will be harvested in future ferments...
10. Describe how your company consciously addresses social sustainability across the entire life cycle of its products and your company process for achieving these outcomes.
We believe wild fermentation is a powerful way to help build more sustainable and resilient communities and are passionate about sharing, caring, and punching above our weight.
The Wild Fermentary is a living-wage employer which provides a flexible opportunity to re-enter the workforce, and a nourishing shared lunch every day. Our casual staff is predominantly local mums/dads with kids at the kindy and surrounding schools - a relationship that has a flow-on effect through our community, financially and socially. The shared lunch initiative is an investment in our people, the foundation of our business culture.
We love how food can help bring a small community together. We support our local Farmers Market, donate any excess to our community groups (kindy, school, church, Marae) and Kiwi Harvest; and welcome any surplus from local trees and gardens for those wanting to be part of the small food movement happening in their community - in exchange for ferments. We also distribute Fermentary waste to local pigs and have our own Fermentary compost system and recycling program.
As fermentation revivalists we are passionate about research and are working with Dr Tony Mutukumira and his microbiology team at Massey University to support a senior student on her PhD project.
We are also working hard to build a financially sound business model, so we can practice more ‘fair share’ which is paramount to our business philosophy.
11. Provide a specific example of social sustainability initiatives related to the product you have entered.
We believe investment in our employees is an investment in our community and products. We focus on flexibility, teamwork and job satisfaction. Our team is predominantly made up of local mums/dads with kids at the local kindy and schools. For these parents, our fermenting schedule enables them to finish at ‘school o’clock’ providing them with a flexible opportunity to re-enter the workforce, while we reap the benefits of their gardening, foraging and fermenting talents. We also supply a shared lunch on production days, with a tools-down policy so we can spend an hour interacting and connecting over a nutritious fermented lunch with our latest ferments. The hour we invest in nourishing our team, refuelling and reconnecting is an investment in our people, the foundation of our business culture.
Excellence
12. Briefly outline your product process.
The ethics of permaculture also provides a meaningful lens for all of our product development. The Smoky Kāpeti journey focused on two key and equally important parts. Firstly, selecting the right combination of quality ingredients based on the grower, flavor, carbon footprint, nutrient profile and its compatibility with our amazing microbes during lactic acid fermentation. And secondly to ensure that our systems, processes and outcomes help make NZ a better place. Consideration was given to utilising local resources (growers, suppliers) and the viability of ongoing, reliable supply. The development of Smoky Kāpeti was a collaboration of our whanau ideas... an adventure of testing and measuring the effects of various combinations (ie. ingredients and their ratios), techniques (preparation and fermentation) and environments (time and temperature). The results of which would be analysed during our shared Fermentary lunches where each new experiment is revealed and reviewed together. This project was a fun and invigorating experience which galvanized our team and bought us closer together. We believe this shines through in every jar making a difference to the quality of our small-batch ferments and to Mother Earth.
13. How did you determine the product’s likely success in the market?
With more research into gut-health and more information available on the role the gut microbiome plays in delivering better health and wellbeing, we're seeing a rise in the popularity of fermented foods like kraut, kefir and kvass. The research shows us that sauerkraut is low in calories and high in calcium and magnesium, and it is a great source of fibre, iron and potassium, which can assist with the digestion of food, assimilation of nutrients and the stimulation of immune responses. Over the past few years we have seen an increase in awareness and knowledge of fermented foods and an increasing demand for both our sauerkraut and our water kefir soda.
Smoky Kāpeti is an exciting shift in direction for the future of our wild ferments. As well as appealing to the health and wellness movement (it is a marketer dream - probiotic, plant-based, vegan-friendly, cultured, wild foraged, sugar-free, gluten-free etc) it is the first NZ inspired sauerkraut in NZ at a time when modern Maori cuisine is on the rise (just try and get a reservation at Hia Kai). We also tested Smoky Kāpeti at the Clevedon Farmers Market prior to widening the distribution where it quickly became the most popular flavour!
