While some foods will spoil after a few days, let alone a few months or years, long maturation processes like fermenting or dry-aging can give other products a richer flavor and more pleasing texture. From sharp cheeses to earthy teas and fine wines, time makes these delicacies from around the world all the more delicious.

There are two ways that pickles are made: either by pickling, which involves a vinegar brine, or by old-fashioned fermentation. The latter method uses lactic acid that’s produced by the cucumbers’ natural sugars as they’re drawn out by a simple salt water brine. After just a week the brine will be bubbling and the pickles will take on a delightfully sour taste. Half-sour pickles are fermented for a shorter time to cut the pucker effect.

Kimchi, the spicy Korean fermented vegetable dish, changes significantly with time. Some people like to eat kimchi fresh before it’s had much of a chance to ferment, but even after a day the fermentation process starts to ripen it into something tangier. Kimchi transforms through lacto-fermentation which also acts to preserve the vegetables in the mix.

The fermentation time varies depending on temperature (it ripens more quickly if it’s warm) and personal taste, with most home kimchi makers resting their jars anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Traditionally, kimchi is made in the winter when it benefits from a long and slow ferment. The low temperatures keep vegetables like cabbage and radish crispy, with a deeply funky fermented flavor. 

Kombucha is a sweet and tangy fermented tea that can either be purchased commercially or made at home. Making kombucha starts with a slimy mass called a scoby (an acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) that makes all of that magical fermentation happen. The longer it brews the bolder the flavor and the fizzier the bubbles. First-time home brewers should add another week or two onto the production time if making a scoby from scratch. 

Like kimchi, sauerkraut is a cabbage dish made with lacto-fermentation that both preserves the cabbage and turns it into a zingy condiment full of probiotics. It’s a simple dish, made with just salt, cabbage and the cabbage’s own natural juices which form a brine. The trick is to keep the cabbage fully submerged under the brine which is why traditional sauerkraut crocks are fitted with weights to keep the cabbage below the liquid.

Dry-aged beef has been all the rage in butcher shops and meat-focused restaurants for a number of years now. The dry-aging process, which essentially consists of leaving cuts of beef in a climate-controlled chamber for a number of weeks or even months, lets the moisture slowly evaporate, concentrating flavors and breaking down enzymes to make the meat more tender.

Dry-aged beef is typically aged for 15 to 40 days but some enthusiasts go for 100 days or more, which leaves the meat with a funky, almost cheese-like quality. If it sounds like the beef is rotting, it pretty much is, which is why you should buy dry-aged beef from a reputable butcher rather than trying to age it at home.

Salami and its cousins like French saucisson and Spanish chorizo are fermented sausages – fermentation both preserves the meat and gives it depth of flavor. A lot of mass-produced salami is helped along with fast-fermentation methods but traditional European salami ferments the slow, old-fashioned way. Salami only needs to ferment for a few days but after that the meat needs to be dried for several weeks or months, depending on the size of the sausage.

Preserved lemons are a staple in Moroccan and Middle Eastern cooking. They’re less tart than fresh lemons, making them a perfect ingredient for any dish that needs some citrusy flavor without a lot of pucker. Pickled in salt and their own juices, preserved lemons are easy to make at home but if you can’t wait the 30 days it takes to make them, they’re also widely available at many specialty food stores.

Few cheeses need a full decade to age and the aging process varies greatly for different types. The ripening process plays a huge factor in what makes the flavor of cheese different from another. Fresh cheeses like queso fresco or ricotta don’t need to age, and mozzarella only ages for about a month, which is why those varieties have such mild flavors.

Once cheese has aged for a year or more, you start to get real changes in flavor and texture. Parmigiano Reggiano only forms its signature grainy texture after it has aged for at least two years. Gouda that’s aged for five years develops crystals of calcium lactate that give the cheese extra tang and a strangely alluring crunch. Cheddar is a cheese that seems to benefit from almost endless aging – 10 or 15 years is hardly unheard of for Cheddar aging.

Love it or hate it, fruitcake is a tradition in many families, especially around the festive season. Some fruitcakes can be eaten immediately after baking but most purists swear by aging their cakes, either for a few weeks or for a number of years. As a cake ages, the dried fruit releases tannins to deepen the flavor. Over time, alcohol is added to "feed" the cake and keep it moist. The longer it ages, the more chance it has to absorb that brandy, whiskey or rum.

Century eggs, or pídàn, aren’t actually preserved for 100 years but these Chinese delicacies look like they’ve been left to rot forever. Essentially, they’re chicken or duck eggs that have been aged in quicklime, salt and ash, and coated in rice chaff. The process turns the egg white into black jello and the yolk into a custardy green substance. They taste as funky as they look and are often served with congee or just eaten on their own.

Gochujang is a fermented sweet, savory and hot chili paste that is ubiquitous in Korean cuisine. It’s been used in Korea for centuries and adds flavor to everything from bulgogi to kimchi, since it packs some heat but also lends some of that elusive umami. The thick paste is fairly intense so it’s typically used as a recipe ingredient rather than a condiment, unless it’s thinned into a sauce. Traditionally, gochujang ferments for four to six months in a specialized clay pot.

Commercially produced soy sauce is usually helped along by some chemical processing but soy sauce made in the traditional method requires a fermentation period that takes a number of months. Traditional soy sauce is aged in barrels that aren’t cleaned between batches and the bacteria that lives in the barrels helps with fermentation. Dark soy sauce is aged longer than light soy sauce and tends to be both thicker and more flavorful.

Miso is a salty fermented soybean paste which is used as a base for soups and to flavor dressings, marinades and glazes. It's graded by color and that color is determined by how long the paste is left to ferment. White or yellow miso paste is the most common and likely what you’ll find in your sushi combo soup, whereas red or more heavily aged miso has a more aggressive flavor. 

Unlike other wines, sake does not benefit from super-long aging but it still takes time to make. The Japanese rice wine needs to brew for a month then age for six months before it’s sold to the public. That’s where the aging process ends and experts recommend drinking sake within six months of purchase.

The word prosciutto just means ham in Italian but most of us use it to refer to prosciutto crudo, a specific kind of thinly sliced dry-cured ham. Standard prosciutto is generally cured for under salt for two months then dry-aged for another seven to 18 months. Premium Prosciutto di Parma is made exclusively in the town of Parma through a much longer aging process, curing in salt for 60 to 90 days and dry-aging for anywhere from 400 days to three years.

Most commercial vanilla extract is made within a matter of days but the process of growing, drying and curing the beans before they’re submerged in alcohol to draw out their flavor takes a year or more. Most of the world’s vanilla comes from Madagascar, although there are well over 100 different varieties of vanilla grown worldwide. For a fresher take, vanilla extract is easy to make at home by soaking vanilla pods in the spirit of your choice for about eight weeks.

Many a winemaker has dedicated their career to figuring out both the right amount of time to keep wine in the barrel and how long it should linger in the bottle before being opened. The amount of time wine should be aged in the bottle depends greatly on the grape varietal. Generally, red wines do better with age but white and even sparkling wines, which can be ready in a year, can deepen and mature with time.

To the untrained eye, Jamón Ibérico, a cured ham from Spain, may look like prosciutto but the two are different for a number of reasons, including price (it is one of the most expensive meats in the world). The ham is sourced solely from the legs of rare black Iberian pigs who feast on a diet of acorns. The legs are packed in salt for a few weeks then left to cure for anywhere from two to four years. As the ham cures, the fat breaks down and becomes melt-in-the-mouth tender.

Hot sauce can be made fairly quickly but it takes on a new quality when it rests in a barrel for a few years. Tabasco, one of the most well-known hot sauce brands, is aged in oak barrels for up to three years. The aging ferments the sauce and also allows it to take on the flavor of the barrel, much like a whiskey would. Over the last decade, barrel-aged sauces have become more fashionable, with artisan hot sauce makers expanding on Tabasco’s relatively simple recipe.

The rules relating to how long a spirit must age to be considered whiskey varies from region to region, but products like Scotch need to age in a barrel for at least three years. Much of a whiskey’s flavor and color comes from the barrel, with the qualities changing if the wood has been charred or used for previous batches.

Barreling can be an expensive proposition as distilleries can’t sell a spirit until it’s in the bottle. Keeping hundreds of barrels in a warehouse isn’t cheap, which is why very old whiskey is so expensive. But unlike wine, whiskey does not continue to age once in the bottle so there’s no point in saving it once you've bought it.

Aging tea has been a common practice in China for at least 600 years but the rest of the world is just catching on. Aging tea deepens its flavor and gives it an earthier quality. Black tea can be aged if it's of the right quality but the technique works particularly well on roasted oolongs, which can successfully age for up to 40 years. Pu’er (or dark tea) is a traditional fermented and aged tea that’s especially prized among tea lovers.

Not all vinegars with the word balsamic on the bottle are created equally. Many of the cheaper supermarket brands are simply regular vinegars made to mimic traditional balsamic vinegar from Modena, Italy. The proper stuff is rich and syrupy, thanks to a barreling process that involves the vinegar being moved through a series of increasingly smaller barrels over the course of at least 12 years, allowing the moisture content to slowly reduce.

Traditional balsamic is often barreled for up to 25 years. It can be identified with the words Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale on the label and a Protected Designation of Origin stamp, as well as a fairly hefty price tag. Unlike the faux grocery store brands, it should never be wasted in a salad dressing or as a cooking ingredient. Use it sparingly as a condiment over everything from grilled meat to fresh berries. 

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