Food media has been circling two ideas at once this year: zero waste and fermentation.
We have seen a no-waste guide to using the parts of an ingredient most people bin, and a feature on making fermented hot sauce, in which the fermentation expert interviewed makes a point of saying fermentation isn't a trend at all, but one of the oldest food techniques there is. He's right, and the same is true of zero waste. Neither of these is new. They're just being noticed again.
The trend that isn't a trend
The fermentation article opens with a good reminder: most of us eat fermented food every day without registering it. Yoghurt, bread, cheese, coffee, beer - all of it shaped by microbes doing the same basic job fermentation has always done, which is turn something into a more complex, longer-lasting version of itself.
The article's actual subject is one that is close to home: fermented hot sauce. At its most basic, hot sauce is chillies, salt, water, time. What you get from this fermentation is depth and roundedness: more umami, more complexity, and the heat of the chilli rounded and more manageable. It's a flavour that a fresh chilli alone doesn't have.
While fermentation can be a fun hobby nowadays, it was developed, everywhere it appears, for a practical reason: to keep food edible past the point it would otherwise spoil.
Zero waste, before it had a name
'Zero waste' tackles things like what to do with spring onion and leek greens most people throw out, potato skins turned into crisps, cauliflower and broccoli stalks blitzed into a dip, chicken carcasses simmered into stock. It's the idea that an ingredient isn't finished being useful once you've taken the obvious part off it.
However this idea was a way of life for generations. It's how most households cooked before waste was something you could afford. Fermenting, pickling, drying, preserving in oil or sugar or salt. These aren't separate techniques from "using the whole thing", which is what is often heard with relation to meat. They're the same instinct pointed at time instead of at the vegetable: if you can't eat all of it now, keep it so you can eat it later.
The kitchens where this was never optional
Palestinian culinary tradition, like many other agrarian societies throughout history, sit squarely in that tradition. Pickled vegetables, surplus fruit turned into jam, and even dehydrated labneh balls stored in oil. These are everyday fixtures of a kitchen shaped by land, season and harvest, not by trend cycles. Nothing about it was framed as sustainability. It was just what you did with what you had, and it produced some of the most interesting flavours in the cooking — sourness, funk, depth — as a side effect of practicality rather than the goal.
Made with intention
This is where it connects back to how we make Shatta. Fresh, bright, tangy, fermented. The fermentation is what gives Shatta its depth, and what helps it stay on the shelf for longer. We ferment because it's the right process for the result we want; to create Shatta that tastes like the real deal.
But intentional doesn't stop there, because a cornerstone of our Shatta range is how we use the fermentation brine. This is the byproduct of the Shatta fermentation; a sweet, sour, slightly spicy liquid with fermented depth. While other producers might throw this away, we keep it.
Our Shatta Jam, Shatta Hot Sauce, and Shatta Verde are all born from the brine of our classic Shatta's. This allowed us to take Shatta and reimagine it into different formats that are more familiar to people, and also reflect our own identity as Palestinians of diaspora; who grew up eating classic Shatta, but also chilli jam, hot sauce, salsa verde, and many other global foods.
And just last week, two of those products - our Shatta Jam and Shatta Hot Sauce - won 2 Stars at this year's Great Taste Awards. Zero-waste heroes, turned into award winners.
Zero waste, fermentation, and Fil's own process are really the same idea wearing different labels: use what you have properly, and don't waste the process either. Open a jar (or bottle), add a spoonful, make any meal feel more alive 🔥
Shop below and taste for yourself 👇
