a simple {real food} recipe :: strawberry lemonade kvass

So how did the yogurt dripping go?!

(If you missed Monday’s post on the easiest yogurt dripping for cream cheese and whey, check this out! Includes a dairy free option!)

Here is a great way to have a fun summer drink with the added benefit of a load of probiotics for your gut health!

Super simple, delicious, and you can feel good about giving a sweet drink to your kids without the refined sugar and other additives. The probiotics will benefit their little bellies and digestion 🙂

This recipe is my take on a variety of different ways I’ve seen this lacto-fermented/kvass types of drink made. You can skip the berries and have just straight up lemonade too!

Here’s what you’ll need:

½ cup lemon juice (Not from concentrate. Either real from lemons or this real lemon juice.)

½  cup strawberries (raspberries work good too!)

3 TB sunacat (I use the bulk sunacat our local health food store provides)

1/2 cup homemade whey

Filtered water

1. Put the lemon juice, strawberries, sunacat, and whey in a quart mason jar or something similar (even an empty jar of spaghetti sauce!)
2. Add filtered water to fill the rest of the quart mason jar to a ½ inch or so below the lid.
3. Put the lid on tightly, give it a gentle shake for a minute, and set on the counter for 2 days.
4. After 2 days, refrigerate and serve. It gets better with time and lasts months in the fridge 🙂

Kitchen Tips:

1. I usually make a couple quart jars at a time. You can do this recipe x4 and it will make a gallon size container.
2. Sunacat is unrefined/untouched sugar. It is brown in color and maple-y in taste. Do NOT use raw honey, maple syrup, or stevia instead of the sunacat – the probiotic bugs need the real sugar to feed on grow. It does not turn out as sweet as you think it is going to be since the probiotic buggies eat up all the sugar 🙂
3. This also works with other fruit – add apples or berries to the jar and have a fun new fruit drink full of probiotic goodness! If you do apples or berries you can get away with not needing the sunacat for the probiotic bugs to feed on. Lemons just don’t have enough sugar to feed the buggies so I add the sunacat 🙂
4. If you want just straight up lemonade, just leave out the berries but add 1/4 cup sunacat versus the 3 TB.
5. You will note some fizziness to the drink if it really gets to feed well! You can improve this with more fruit to feed on and a warmer environment to ferment.
6. Freezes into popsicle molds nicely! YUM 🙂

YOUR TURN!

Let me know what you think if you have never tried this before! If you make this type of drink often tell me your favorite fruit combo!

Hit up your farmer’s market or your garden this week and gather up whatever yummy summer veggies you can find – then come back on Thursday to see how I do the quickest summer veggie skillet for dinner!