{"id":32308,"date":"2024-05-27T19:30:43","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T23:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=32308"},"modified":"2024-05-28T13:52:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T17:52:40","slug":"microbes-make-a-mayx-delicious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/microbes-make-a-mayx-delicious\/","title":{"rendered":"Microbes make a MayX delicious"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your first thought when you hear \u201cmicrobes\u201d is pestilence and disease, Min-Ken Liao has a MayX class for you.<\/p>\n

Pathogenic microbes \u2013 bacteria, fungi, viruses \u2013 are a very small percentage of the microbe world. \u201cThey\u2019re actually rare,\u201d said Liao, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Biology, who\u2019s leading \u201cMicrobes and Food\u201d this May.<\/p>\n

Through fermentation, a lot of beneficial microbes help us make very tasty food and drink. \u201cI\u2019m a microbiologist and I\u2019ve always loved fermented food. One-third of our food is from fermentation \u2013 coffee, chocolate, sour dough bread, beer.\u201d She could go on. Wine, cheese, yogurt, kombucha, beans and bean curds, sauerkraut, sausages, olives, pickled cucumbers, pickled beets, pickled carrots, mango pickles, pickled \u2026 you get the idea.<\/p>\n

\"A

Clara Moon teaches students how to make kimchi.<\/p><\/div>\n

On a recent Tuesday, in a Plyler biology lab, Andrew La \u201927 has his plastic-gloved hands full of microbe-covered yumminess \u2013 Napa cabbage, carrots, onions and other vegetables that will eventually become kimchi.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to take a bio course that was hands-on and outside of the typical classroom style,\u201d La said. \u201cI thought it\u2019d be really fun to take this class and expand my knowledge in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liao was also aiming to provide something different. \u201cMayX is when we can be creative,\u201d she said, clearly having fun with the kimchi making, cutting vegetables, urging students to get their hands dirty \u2013 or, clean.<\/p>\n

Clara Moon, an expert kimchi maker who is married to Francis Kim, associate professor of finance, shows La and his classmates how to shake salt between layers of Napa cabbage leaves, which are loaded with microbes, before marinating them with homemade sauces. The salt, Liao says, kills the bad microbes and helps promote the good ones. It also helps leach liquid from the vegetables that the good microbes feed on. \u201cIt\u2019s an ecosystem right there!And the salt undoubtedly adds flavors.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the beginning of class, Moon gave the students a presentation about kimchi, which developed in her native Korea. Among other facts, the students learn there are more than 1,000 varieties of the fermented vegetables. They vary regionally; some Koreans use flat fish (think flounder) and squid to help the fermentation along. Moon also prepared a feast made from kimchi for students to enjoy.<\/p>\n

Fermentation helps preserve foods for winter. But the process also helps break food down so it\u2019s more digestible and nutritious, Liao said.<\/p>\n

Throughout the MayX, students learn the names and characteristics of microbes found in foods, how foods contribute to microbial growth and how microbes spoil foods, the methods that control and manipulate microbial metabolisms in food production and preservation, government food safety rules, how foodborne diseases are investigated, the roles of normal gut microbiota and how to make their own fermented foods.<\/p>\n

They made trips to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and French Broad Chocolates, both in Asheville, North Carolina, to learn more, and consume, fermentation of those fine foods. And they learned how to make sourdough bread, natto, yogurt, ginger ale, black garlic, cheese and more foods.<\/p>\n

By the end of the course, Liao hopes students have a different relationship with microbes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can be beneficial, and yummy, too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microbes are fundamental to fermentation, a process used to prepare one-third of the food we eat, from coffee to sauerkraut. A MayX introduces students to fermentation through kimchi, beer, chocolate and other deliciousness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":32307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,53,54],"tags":[2802,2801,2761],"class_list":["post-32308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-chemistry","category-may-experience","tag-may-experience","tag-mayx","tag-microbes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32308"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32340,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32308\/revisions\/32340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}