People ask this more than you'd think.
Not because fermented vegetables are complicated to eat. But because most people have been taught, implicitly, that condiments have a fixed place and a fixed quantity. A small amount, on the side, with specific foods. A supporting role. An afterthought.
That's not how we eat ours. And after watching a lot of people encounter these products for the first time, we've noticed that the question "what do I do with this?" almost always gets answered the same way: open it, taste it, then start putting it on everything.
Here's where we've ended up.
Eggs
The combination of fermented vegetable and egg is older than most food cultures. There's a reason pickled things appear on breakfast tables across the world — the acidity cuts through the richness of the yolk in a way that makes both things better.
Adana Kraut on a fried egg is one of the better breakfasts you can make in under three minutes. The heat builds slowly, the earthiness of the cumin sits underneath, and the acid from the fermentation does something structural to the egg — it sharpens it, makes it taste more like itself.
Ferment Blue on scrambled eggs sounds wrong. It is not wrong. The tartness of the blueberry against the soft fat of the eggs is the kind of combination that sounds like a mistake until you've eaten it twice and started doing it on purpose.
Xalapa Kraut with a soft-boiled egg, a piece of good bread, some butter. This is a meal. It doesn't need to be anything else.
Grilled things
Fat and acid are one of the oldest flavour pairings in cooking. The ferment provides the acid. The grill provides the fat, the char, the smokiness. They complete each other.
Adana Kraut alongside lamb. The heat in the kraut echoes the char on the meat. The fermentation adds a depth that sits differently from a sauce — it doesn't coat, it contrasts. The lamb tastes more like lamb. The kraut tastes more like itself. Nothing is competing.
Xalapa Kraut with grilled halloumi. The squeakiness of the halloumi, the brightness of the jalapeño ferment, the slight funk of the dill. This is a plate you can eat in five minutes and think about for the rest of the day.
Ferment Blue with duck. If you haven't done this, do this. The fruit acid against the fat of the duck is the kind of thing that makes you understand why people have been pairing fruit with game for centuries.
Grain bowls and composed things
This is where the versatility of fermented vegetables becomes most obvious. A grain bowl — farro, quinoa, brown rice, whatever you have — with roasted vegetables, a protein if you want one, some fresh herbs, and a spoonful of kraut on top is a complete meal that takes the brine into every component as you eat.
The brine is the secret. As you eat, the liquid from the ferment runs into the grains, seasons them, adds acidity to what might otherwise be a flat composition. A bowl with kraut has a different structure than a bowl without it. Everything is more awake.
We've seen people make a version of this with leftover rice, a fried egg, and Adana Kraut at midnight. There are worse things to eat at midnight.
With cheese
Fermented things and aged things have an affinity that is not accidental. Both are the result of microbial transformation. Both develop complexity over time. Both taste like they contain more than their ingredients suggest.
Ferment Blue with a sharp cheddar. The tartness of the blueberry, the sweetness that sits underneath it, against the sharpness and fat of a well-aged cheese. You can serve this as a starter, or eat it standing at the fridge at 11pm. Both are correct.
Adana Kraut with manchego. The nuttiness of the manchego, the heat and smoke of the Adana — this is a cheese board that does something.
Xalapa Kraut with a fresh soft cheese, some good bread. The brightness of the jalapeño ferment against the mild richness of something like ricotta or burrata. Simple, fast, better than it has any right to be.
The brine
We said this in the wet brine post and we'll say it again here because it keeps coming up.
The brine is not packaging liquid. It is a product.
After fermentation, the brine carries everything — the salt, the acidity, the bacterial activity, the flavour compounds from the vegetable. It is complex in a way that took seven days to produce and should not go down the sink.
Cook with it. Add it to dressings. Stir it into soups at the end of cooking, the way you'd add a squeeze of lemon. Use it to deglaze a pan after cooking something fatty. Make a quick pickle with it — pour it over thinly sliced cucumber or radish and leave it for twenty minutes.
And yes, some people drink it straight. From the jar, or poured into a small glass, or added to sparkling water. The Xalapa brine in particular — bright and clean and sharp — is one of the better things you can drink after a long day if you're not drinking alcohol.
We don't judge. We encourage.
The rule
There isn't one, really. The only thing we'd say is this: good food deserves it. If the meal is worth eating, it probably earns a Canbo alongside it.
The products are designed to make whatever they're next to taste more like itself. More alive, more interesting, more worth paying attention to. That's the whole point. Put them next to things you care about eating.