chronological posts

I spent two years trying to independently breed a north american tempeh culture, and honestly that is not enough time for a project like that but I gave up. Tempeh is a humid, hot weather mold ferment from Indonesia, with related foods in surrounding areas. Unless you live in a subtropical or tropical area, make or buy an incubator or give up now. I was pissed off at the idea of having to keep buying an overpriced pure culture from the internet, it’s  counter to my whole philosophy. So I thought, hey, I’ve made tempeh in New Orleans without an incubator, why couldn’t I breed a wild strain myself? It’s the right climate! Do you know the lengths I went in the name of tempeh? I registered for a microbiology class at community college, was firmly told I needed to take chemistry first, found a very obscure rule that said I could test out of it and was begrudgingly given the ok. I failed high school chemistry and dropped out shortly after, never to take it again. I was intimidated. But I checked out “Chemistry for Dummies” from the library and crammed it for two weeks and I got a 55% percent on that test, (50% was passing) and they grumblingly let me in. The teacher was an old punk who made jokes like “Stromatolites? Sounds like a ska band you’d catch at the Gilman!,” said “you’re a real DEEP THINKER Gunhilld!” and told me I’d “go far in biotech.”  He wore an “I <3 GMOs” T-shirt to class, preached against conflict minerals, claimed to have an unidentified skin infection from a leak in his rent-controlled downtown Berkeley apartment, and revealed his sad alcoholic side at post-finals drinks night. I was amused, and a little worried for him. When we got into annoying and overly hard nursing stuff, he let me take the class pass-fail and use the lab after hours for my tempeh experiments. My not-boyfriend and I stayed up late in his shop building incubator out of an old mini fridge, leading to our only ever argument (frustration over shelving bracket alignment) but it worked well in the end. Once, on a tip from a burner i went on an internet date with, we drove to UC Davis in the middle of the night to load up my van with free equipment from a recently evacuated biology lab (legal? maybe?). I would surreptitiously cut down banana leaves from various spots for the tempeh, preferring the leaves to plastic. I did months of trials using a combination of modern lab technique and traditional indonesian tempeh propagation methods and…failed. But I got pretty dang good at making tempeh using lab cultures.

In early 2020 I started talking to people in Berkeley about a tempeh co-op (I make large amounts, they buy it, we dont tell the government), and got a good amount of interest. I was living off pell grants and needed to make some money. Covid started, i packed 9 boxes of the lab equipment along with the rest of my stuff into the van and drove to Portland. I had a vague idea to do the tempeh co-op but just give it away, anticipating possible food shortages. I ordered 2 kilos of starter from Indonesia, which got lost in the mail, leading to an email exchange with a very distressed tech support person. I wished him luck with the political and medical situation there. I made large batches of tempeh for a few months while living on my friend’s couch. I didn’t know enough people in portland to restart the co-op idea, got tired of tempeh, and stopped making it. I put most of the lab equipment on craigslist at a deep discount. An ambiguously 30-50 year old guy and his ambiguously 50-70 year old mom came to get it. They said they were extracting gold. I hung onto two boxes of glassware and they left me with a glossy pamphlet of the US constitution. I tore the wiring out of the fridge incubator and put it on the curb. A few years later I tried to make a batch of okara tempeh with the indonesian ragi, it was expired. I dumped the 2 kilos in the trash.

Process and historical notes:

In indonesia, ragi (the tempeh mold) is propagated by sandwiching a single layer of soybeans between hibiscus leaves, which are hairy and I assume catch wild molds on their hairs and tranmit them to the soybeans. Those beans are used as starters. I found hibiscus leaves growing locally to use, but I think another hairy leaf that’s locally available could work, like hazelnut or maybe mullein. The climate is very hot and humid, which is important for the mold growth. Banana leaves are traditionally used as wrappers, though plastic is used in Indonesia for large scale production. Banana leaves are amazing because they’re both non-stick (nature’s teflon!) and porous somehow. Like everything, they carry their own microflora which I assume impacts the tempeh. There’s a huge diversity of tempeh cultures throughout Indonesia, but a particularly strong and reliable version was isolated in the 60s and now used in powdered form as a starter both in and outside of Indonesia. Obviously I prefer a more diverse culture, and a free one, which was part of my motivation for the project. I successfully grew some kind of rhizopus on hibiscus/soybean sandwiches, however, when I used them as a starter in  trials, they repeatedly produced something rotten and slimey that smelled like a diaper. Bad. This was also after I’d moved to Oakland, I think it’s possible I would have had better success in the gulf south or other sub/tropical climate. I really wanted to make a new orleans red beans and rice tempeh, alas.

I concluded that, for this project to work, I’d need a lot more time and resources and patience than I have. And to live in a subtropical place again. The tempeh cultures are native to southeast asia, but I still believe it’s possible to create the right conditions in a different area without special equipment or imported starters, it’s just not commercially relevant so hasn’t been done. It became clear that, while Rhizopus molds are very common worldwide (the white mold on strawberries, black mold on bread, etc), and while not every tempeh culture is even a Rhizopus, only certain strains will work, and that there is some mechanism that I have not grasped necessary to select or create the correct ones. It may be as simple as the correct climate, or complex as selective breeding over many generations. I got familiar with the academic literature and research on tempeh, and how much more imaginative, expansive and interesting food science and scientific research in general is outside of the US, especially in non-western and poorer countries.

Sometime in late 2019 or early 2020 I called the Soyfood Info center, a major early promoter of soy-based foods as like saviors of the world or whatever starting in the 70s (ok I  mostly agree with their premise and have their books). I was like “Hey Bill Shurtlieff I’m trying to breed a wild tempeh culture bc I think it’s ridiculous to have to buy it, do you have any thoughts on the matter?” and he said something like “Why are you doing that? The world is literally on fire, you should be promoting vegetarianism not wasting your time on shit like that” and hung up on me. Lol?

The 20th century techno-fication of tempeh, namely the isolation of a pure-culture strain which you can buy at a store or use at an industrial level, was part of a larger effort to “combat world hunger” starting in the 50s. Like many projects I’m drawn towards, this one made me think about how technical solutions are often a part of anticommunist/anti-political approaches to political problems like genocide of indigenous people (including land grabbing, cultural destruction), forced dependence on industrial and centralized food systems, forced migration of peasants into industrial areas, loss of farming and food knowledge, and the resulting famine and malnutrition from all of the above. Like, I agree that the meat industry is evil and that soy-based foods are actually an incredible alternative (a lot of the counter arguments are meat industry propaganda!), though not the only one, but the problem is rich people that are stealing the land and created the meat industry as such. Not even meat consumption itself, but the way it’s done. Point being, yeah technology (including low-tech food technology) can be part of making things better, just as easily be a distraction from the actual problem at hand: rich ppl stealing all the stuff and flushing the world down the toilet. Guillotine plz.

Anyway, if you get a chance, homemade tempeh (especially made in fresh banana leaves, don’t use frozen) is soooo good. It’s the biggest contrast between store and homemade ferment I’ve encountered thus far. Fresh tempeh is dank af.

Tempeh tips (if you really must)

The process itself takes about 3 days, and simple instructions are included in any tempeh starter you buy. I’m too lazy to reiterate them, but here’s my additions:

If you can regularly rely on ambient temperatures between 85 and 95 and preferably high humidity fo 3 days straight, no need for any incubator setup. I would make tempeh seasonally, when the weather was right.

I REALLY prefer banana leaves over plastic. Better flavor, better results, just nicer. Keep an eye out and you’ll start spotting the plants around, they grow like a weed even in the northwest. I cut them into squares with a kitchen knife and make little folded packets about 4×3″, there’s technique to folding that you’ll pick up working with instead of against the natural folds to avoid ripping. I tape them closed with blue kitchen/painters tape. Poke some holes in the packets with a fork once they’re closed. Short of that, I’d use a glass or ceramic baking dish instead of bags.