How to Eat Canbo

How to Eat Canbo
How to Eat Canbo — Canbo
How to Eat It

What do I do
with this?

Canbo All products 5 min read

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.

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 — 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 sharpens the egg, makes it taste more like itself.
Ferment
Blue
On scrambled eggs. This 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.
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 &
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.

The secret

The brine is what changes the structure of the bowl.

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 — ricotta, burrata — and some good bread. The brightness of the jalapeño ferment against the mild richness. Simple, fast, better than it has any right to be.

The brine

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
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.
Quick
pickle
Pour it over thinly sliced cucumber or radish and leave it for twenty minutes. Done.
Drink it
Some people drink it straight. From the jar, 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.

There isn't a rule, 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. Put them next to things you care about eating.

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