Filling your Thanksgiving menu with fermented foods unlocks delicious flavor combinations and unleashes feel-good flora in your gut.

Such a strategy may be especially helpful for those concerned that holiday meals could bring on uncomfortable or embarrassing digestive woes like gas and bloating.

Fermenting—often associated with a traditional process that lengthens the shelf life of food—adds probiotics, or live microorganisms, to food that eventually finds its way into our bodies. Probiotics assist us digestively with a number of other benefits, like improved immunity, gut microbial diversity, and nutrient absorption, to name a few.

Incorporating fermented foods into your diet doesn’t have to be complicated. You can buy them ready-made or make your own easy, at-home cultures that take only a few days.

Easy on Digestion

Though both fiber and fermented food are good for us, fermented foods aid digestion. That’s because these foods have undergone a form of predigestion. It’s the same process that happens in our large intestine when we eat fiber-rich carbohydrates, except it’s happening within the food itself.

Yogurt—one of the most heavily researched fermented foods that’s easy to find in stores—reduces the natural sugars found in milk. That makes it more tolerable to digest than other dairy products for those who don’t have a true allergy.

Eating yogurt regularly may play a role in lowering body mass index, as well as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Yogurt’s familiarity makes adding fermented food to a family meal plan an easy option, according to Dr. David S. Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“But I encourage people to extend their range a little bit,” Ludwig said in a Harvard article. Additional fermented options include sauerkraut or fermented soybeans.

Creative Concoctions

Donna Schwenk consistently comes up with creative fermented foods—to keep them on the table for her family’s health and to inspire members who subscribe to her business, Cultured Food Life, for recipes.

She’s proven that just about any dish can incorporate a cultured food. This improves the likelihood that more people can find fermented food pleasing to their palates.

In addition to bringing interesting and sometimes unexpected flavors to the table, Schwenk’s recipes also make for a great conversation starter.

“When I make these foods in my dinners, it really makes my guests wonder and appreciate what’s going on in these foods,” she told The Epoch Times. “I explain to them what they do, and they like the taste of them.”

Some of her ideas for incorporating fermented foods into Thanksgiving meals are:

• Using yogurt mixed with cinnamon, spices, and toasted pecans as a topping for roasted squash
• Sourdough bread, which can also be used in traditional stuffing
• Whipped topping made from milk kefir to go with any dessert
• Fermented garlic and honey added to roasted vegetables
• Turkey brined in apple cider vinegar
• Ginger kefir soda

“I make these foods because they make me and my family feel better. There’s a lot of love that goes into creating them. It helps you bring mindfulness to the food you’re eating. Sometimes we forget food creates the body we live in,” Schwenk said.

A diverse and rich community of gut microbes helps keep our immune system operating effectively, protecting us from chronic inflammation that is linked to digestive disorders, diabetes, obesity, and diseases that are damaging to the brain.

Probiotic Health Boost

While Schwenk is more a culinary artist than a food scientist, she’s done a fair amount of research on using fermented food to overcome personal health issues like imbalanced blood sugar and high blood pressure. She’s also used them to improve the health of her children.

She touts probiotic foods with and in between our meals to help absorb more nutrients, balance appetite, boost immunity, and maintain energy levels. Research backs it up.

A 2024 review in Microbial Biotechnology noted that fermentation of foods boosts nutritional benefits and reduces toxins, such as mycotoxins, that are often in foods like grains, nuts, and coffee.

Turning milk into yogurt through fermentation improves the amount of calcium and potassium in the food, and how readily we can absorb them, the authors wrote.

The study noted that other probiotics found in common fermented foods help synthesize vitamins B2 and B12. B vitamins help with red blood cell production and the conversion of food into energy.

A 2023 review in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology highlighted several ways in which beneficial microorganisms protect gastrointestinal health.

Fermented foods can help the body process certain foods that are hard to digest—including gluten and FODMAPS, which stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. FODMAPS are carbohydrates that people can sometimes become intolerant of.

Doctors often recommend low-FODMAP diets to root out problematic foods for patients with irritable bowel syndrome and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). The low-FODMAP is a highly restrictive diet that should be followed under the supervision of a health care professional.

IBS symptoms include constipation, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, and bloating. SIBO can cause abdominal fullness, stomach pain or cramps, bloating, diarrhea, and gas.

While more high-quality trials of probiotic foods are needed, eating them is a safe way to increase the good bugs in our gut, improve our gut health, and potentially lower the risk of chronic gastrointestinal diseases.

Let’s Talk Leftovers

Let’s say you didn’t have a chance to set out fermented food at your Thanksgiving feast. You can always turn leftover cranberries into lacto-fermented cranberries or grab some sauerkraut and leftover turkey to make a Reuben sandwich.

Ludwig noted that it’s best to introduce probiotic food to children when they are young and can acquire a taste for them. However, you’re never too old to start. They’re beneficial for adults, too, and help replace microbes as they die.

There are no special instructions for how to incorporate fermented foods into your diet. Schwenk eats them with a meal but also enjoys them any time of day.

“You can really do it anytime,” she said. “I like kombucha and kefir sodas between meals. It helps pick me up.”

2 Recipes From Donna Schwenk’s Kitchen

1. Apple Cider Vinegar Brined Turkey

Apple Cider Brine

• 1 gallon water, or as needed, divided
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar, with the mother
• 1 cup Kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons peppercorns
• 2 oranges, quartered
• 4 whole bay leaves

Turkey

• 10–12 pound turkey
• Celtic sea salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 bunch fresh or dried thyme
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 whole onion, peeled and quartered
• 4 tablespoons butter

Apple Cider Brine

1. Combine 4 cups water, kosher salt, oranges, and peppercorns together in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir brine until the salt is just dissolved. Remove from heat, and let cool. Once cooled, add the rest of the water and apple cider vinegar.
2. To use the brine, rinse your turkey inside and out. Submerge it into the cooled brine, then add water until the turkey is completely covered and all cavities are filled. Stir around the edges to mix the water with the brine. Refrigerate for a minimum of 12 hours, then remove the turkey from the pot and pat dry with paper towels. Discard the brine and cook the turkey as desired.

Turkey

1. Place the turkey in a large roasting pan. Salt and pepper the inside of the turkey cavity. Mix the butter and thyme together with a spoon. Stuff the cavity with the lemon and onion.
2. Loosen the skin: Starting at the neck, gently pull the skin away from the meat, being careful not to tear it. This creates pockets for the butter to spread into.
3. Use your hands to massage half of the softened butter and thyme mixture under the breast of the skin.
4. Brush the outside of the turkey with the rest of the butter mixture and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the turkey.
5. Roast the turkey for 2 ½ to 3 hours, basting from time to time with pan juices or until the juices run clear when you cut between the leg and the thigh. A cooked turkey is considered done when it reaches a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees F.
6. Remove the turkey to a cutting board and cover with foil. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Slice the turkey and serve hot.

2. Einkorn Sourdough Stuffing

Ingredients

• ½ cup butter
• 2 cups celery, chopped
• 1½ cups onion, chopped
• 8 cups einkorn sourdough bread, day old, diced into 1/2 inch cubes
• ¼ cup fresh sage, chopped finely
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped finely
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped finely
• 3 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped finely, stems discarded
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2½ cups chicken bone broth
• 1 teaspoon coarse Celtic sea salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, ground

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13 baking dish.
2. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat.
3. Add the leeks, onions, and celery and cook until the onions are softened and the leeks start to become soft, about 7 minutes.
4. In a large bowl, mix together bread, onions, celery, and fresh herbs.
5. Add half of the chicken broth to the mixture and stir until combined.
6. In a small bowl, beat together the eggs and the rest of the chicken broth.
7. Add into the mixture a pinch of salt and pepper, and stir until completely combined.
8. Pour the stuffing into the prepared baking dish. Add a little more chicken broth, about 1/4 cup, to keep it moist. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and cook for another 5 minutes until top is slightly browned at the edges.
9. Let cool for 5–10 minutes before serving.