I’m curious what you like and how you use them in food.
Canada, Mostly imports. We do a lot of sauerkraut which is used as topping (sauce adjacent), same with kimchi.
For true sauces it’s a lot of fermented hot sauces, or sauces with butter milk.
Most sauerkraut is pasteurized which, as I understand it, makes it not fermented anymore.
Fermentation is the process, right? Having undergone fermentation, you can’t really be un-fermented, right?
My understanding is fermented foods have good microbes in them. They are, essentially, alive.
If you pasteurize them, it kills off those communities. The heat won’t distinguish between good and bad microbes so it’s all dead after fermentation.
We pasteurize milk to kill the bad microbes (feacal colliforms, food poisoning, etc.) for mass production. It works well, …very well. It’s needed at that scale, period. But if you are looking for the living microbes, it can’t be pasteurized.
Buttermilk sauces, sounds good. I am Dutch and never heard or thought of using buttermilk for a sauce. Any Canadian sauce recipe you like to share?
Not Canada specific but here is a good example https://www.seriouseats.com/buttermilk-ranch-dipping-sauce-for-fried-chicken-recipe
