Trials of Tempeh
May. 6th, 2026 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
degringolade
I make my own tempeh because the cost of this simple staple in the store is astonishingly stupid high. My methodology is pretty simple and I wanted to simplify it even further by seeing if I could go to a system where everything was done in an instant pot, but it just doesn’t seem to be panning out.
Tempeh is pretty simple: boil some beans, strain and cool, add some starter and put in a warm place for a couple of days. The folks who invented it usually wrapped it in banana leaves and left it around, but Oregon doesn’t quite have that kind of climate. So I needed to figure out a kitchen style “incubator” that could control the temperature around 85℉ ∓ 5℉
I started the process a couple of years ago using ziplock bags with holes punched in them with a toothpick to incubate the cooked beans. My system for incubation was a cooling rack used for baking, a mat normally used for starting seedlings, a temperature controller highly recommended by an acquaintance who grows both pot and magic mushrooms, a big roasting pan, and a big towel (for some reason, I always used a “Star Wars” themed bath towel for this, it seemed to help). No failures here, but I wasn’t super fond of using ziplocs for the incubation so I tried something else.
Something else was an beat up old casserole style crockpot and the temperature controller mentioned above. The inoculated beans went into the crock pot and a wet towel went over the top (I cannot remember why I did this) and the lid loosely placed over the towel. This worked quite well, a pound of dried beans, a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of my homemade tempeh starter and I was off and running.
But then, being an inveterate “improver” who finds it difficult to say “good enough”. I tried using my instantpot for the entire process and I had my first batch failure. For some reason, the batch started off just fine but then got stuck halfway and then petered out.
Right now my problem (and it is my problem), do I go all hard headed and try to figure out why the failure occurred, or should I write off the lesson and go back to my tried and true?
