The Taste of Time

By Cortney Burns

Fermentation is where I learned to listen.

It’s where I first understood time not as something to conquer or control, but as something to collaborate with — to be in relationship with.

In the kitchen, we’re taught to move fast. To master, to control. But fermentation asks for something else entirely: to slow down. To watch. To trust.

I’ve spent over two decades as a chef — writing, cooking, preserving, feeding. I’ve written books, crafted menus, built larders filled with jars that hum and breathe. But fermentation has taught me more than any recipe or technique: that the best things — the most flavorful, the most nourishing, the most alive — take time.

Fermentation is patience made visible. A quiet, slow unfolding. It asks for humility, because no matter how much you know, the microbes will always have the last word.

I return to fermentation not for novelty, but for grounding. It reminds me that transformation — real transformation — is never instant. It’s gradual. It sneaks up on you. One day you taste something and realize it’s become entirely new.

This is the rhythm I want to live by — in the kitchen and beyond. The rhythm of slowness, of attentiveness, of trust in process. Of knowing that every bubble, every bloom of mold, every shift in scent or color is a sign that life is happening. That change is happening.

I’ve always believed that food is the soft entry point to culture — an invitation to connection that asks little more of us than to sit, to taste, to share. And if food is the doorway, fermentation feels like a window into its soul. It reveals how a culture cares for its ingredients, its history, its land — and its future.

Every culture ferments differently — guided by climate, ingredient, tradition, intuition. Techniques may vary, but the heart of it is the same: preservation not just of food, but of memory, place, and identity.

I think of preservation as a form of culture midwifery — a way of carrying forward what might otherwise be lost. It’s not just about saving ingredients. It’s about ushering tradition into the present, helping old knowledge meet new hands. It’s about letting memory take form, again and again, in ways that nourish.

In that sense, fermentation isn’t just a method — it’s a responsibility. A creative act rooted in respect. You’re shaping something, yes, but you’re also being shaped by it.

Whenever I make kimchi — and I’ve made it in kitchens all over the world — I think about this. About Korean grandmothers gathering in the fall for kimjang, making enough to last the winter. Kimchi wasn’t born of trend or experimentation — it was born of necessity. Long winters demanded it. Cabbage, salt, time — that was survival.

But within that necessity, there’s so much creativity. Every household’s kimchi tastes a little different — spicier, funkier, sweeter — shaped by region, memory, the maker’s hand. And the act of making it was never solitary. It was shared labor. It built community. It turned preservation into celebration.

Today, most of us ferment because we want to, not because we have to. But maybe that’s exactly what makes it powerful now. Fermentation reconnects us to another place in time — to seasonality, to patience, to care. It gives us a reason to gather — to create, to share, to remember.

Fermentation holds memory. It is ancestral — a lineage of technique and preservation passed hand to hand, culture to culture, generation to generation. But it’s also deeply present. It only works when you’re paying attention to what’s right in front of you: the temperature of the room, the sweetness of a late-summer peach, the wild yeast floating unseen through the air.

In this way, fermentation feels like love to me. It’s tending. It’s care. It’s making space for change to happen on its own timeline. It’s holding the conditions steady so that life can do what it does best: transform.

The jars in my kitchen are never still. They are always becoming. So am I.

This is the time I trust most — not the time of clocks and deadlines, but the slow, wild, wondrous time of becoming.

Fermentation in Practice

In my kitchen, fermentation always starts with curiosity. I taste often, I watch closely, but I try not to force anything. Fermentation reminds me to respond, not control.

Flavors shift slowly at first — a little more acidity, a deepening funk, a sweetness that starts to dry out. Over time, things become layered, more complex, more alive — and then calm again.

And that’s the heart of it for me: fermentation is a practice of attention. Of patience. Of surrendering to time.

The specifics — the ingredient, the brine, the method — they change. But the mindset stays the same.

Pay attention. Taste often. Trust the process.

That’s what I’m always chasing in fermentation: not perfection, but presence. Responding in real time to what’s happening — not what I think should happen.

Fermentation, like time, is always moving — always changing what we thought we knew into something new, surprising, and alive.

This is the taste of time.

cortneyburns.com
@chefcortneyburns