Everything about the look of Mary Risavi’s Wise Goat Organics fermented products telegraphs their freshness and taste before you even open a jar. From the brilliantly colored coarse-chopped vegetables to the ingredients list, heavy on the word “organic” and lacking any trace of artificial ingredients, the foods look clean, pure, inviting—and nourishing.
“Fermented foods are one of the foundations of having a healthy body,” she said. “The bacteria in the fermented foods feed your gut microbes which affect everything in your system. It helps your immune system and your cognitive functions and acts as an anti-inflammatory.”
Hollister-based Wise Goat, founded in 2013, is an outgrowth of Risavi’s training as a nutritionist and her search for solutions to the health problems of the people who came to her for help.
“Most of my clients had gut issues,” she said. “Fermented foods are the best way to treat them so I wanted them to eat things like sauerkraut or kimchi. There was nobody out there that I knew of making them properly so I started making it for my clients. My emphasis is on clean foods—something that would have been on the planet 500 years ago. My clients like them and the business grew from there.”
Risavi processes about 800 pounds of cabbage a week for her sauerkrauts and for her, freshness is the key to both taste and health. Everything is cut, processed and mixed by hand.
“I get all the ingredients sourced locally,” she said. “The furthest I go is Watsonville, but I am getting things from Coke Farms, Pinnacle, Lakeside. They harvest the day before I pick it up and we process the food immediately. The quicker you eat something after it has been harvested, the more nutrients you are getting out of it. If you are eating cabbage that has been shipped across the state, it has lost most of its nutritional value once it has reached you.”
The Good Foods Foundation, a national organization dedicated to promoting healthy foods and local growers and producers, has awarded top honors to Wise Goat in back-to-back competitions. Risavi won the Good Foods Award in 2020 for the Supergreen Sauerkraut and in 2021 for the Spicy Garlic Sauerkraut.
“When you submit your product,” she said, “you have to list all your ingredients to make sure they fit their standard. They do a blind tasting out of all of the entries and we have won twice out of three attempts.”
While Risavi makes a wide variety of foods, including tahini, kvass, almond butter, and hot sauces, the sauerkrauts are her signature products. Besides the Supergreen and Spicy Garlic, she also makes sauerkrauts flavored with turmeric and ginger, kale and spinach, and jalapenos, as well as one made from red cabbage. About a pound of cabbage goes into every jar of sauerkraut.
I had tried the Red Cabbage Sauerkraut before, which she makes by adding juniper berries and caraway seeds to the red cabbage base, and I really enjoyed the sour snap and complex flavors. We tasted five more of her products, which were uniformly colorful, fresh-tasting, and packed with flavor.
The foods of Wise Goat Organics
Fermented Spicy Mustard (4 oz) – $9.99 In terms of ingredients, this is the least complicated of the products she brought in. It’s made from organic mustard seed, apple cider vinegar, and serrano peppers, with a bit of cabbage added in for good measure. The mustard seeds are left whole with some crunch, with the taste being similar to a strong German mustard with a little bit of a burn in the finish. The flavor is big and bold, perfect for grilled hot sausages. A heaping spoonful added to a charcuterie board would be a welcome addition, and it would help make a great salad dressing with a little oil and balsamic vinegar added. Risavi suggested using it as a marinade by mixing it with some soy sauce. I really love fine mustards, so a jar of this and a bag of pretzels would be a treat for me.
Supergreen Sauerkraut (16 oz) – $10.99 The aroma of this reminds me of new-mown grass on a hot day. Risavi calls this “supergreen” because she has packed it with what she describes as “more medicinal herbs” including chickweed, nettles, spinach and dandelion. She considers this her healthiest sauerkraut. She originally made it using spirulina but stopped after having concerns about heavy metals in the algae. There is a lingering sourness to it that is appealing and lures you into eating more, but the sourness is secondary to the fresh taste of the ingredients. This is good on its own, but Risavi believes it works better paired with warm foods, like rice or omelets.
Fermented Salsa (16 oz) I honestly could not get enough of this salsa. It was the first thing we tasted but I kept going back to it between sampling the other products. Made up of the usual tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, it has an appealing crunch factor coming from finely diced carrots. A strong note of lime juice combines with apple cider vinegar and lemon to give it a little bit of sourness and the jalapeno adds some heat that lingers for a while. Risavi also adds nopales and chia seeds. I quite honestly could—and did—eat this straight out of the jar with no accompaniment, but it would be the star of the show no matter what you served it with. The obvious choice would be any Mexican food but I happily would spoon it over steamed cod or grilled flank steak as well.
Pickle Relish (16 oz) – $11.99 While it is labeled a pickle relish, it’s more a deft combination of coarsely chopped cucumbers and carrots with a couple of spoonfuls of onion and a dash of mustard seeds. The dill is understated; you can smell it more than you can taste it. Risavi and I tossed suggestions back and forth as to what would go well with this, and hot dogs and burgers were far from my thoughts. I think it would go well on top of fresh steamed green beans, mixed with some chopped spinach for an easy and flavor-packed salad, or spooned onto a plate as a lagniappe to go with a baked ham dinner. She suggested mixing this with mashed potatoes, adding it to tuna salad, or serving it on top of salmon.
Vegan Kimchi (16 oz) – $12.99 At first glance, this kimchi looked a little daunting, with dashes of red running through it suggesting a lot more heat than it actually has. With a base of Napa cabbage and shredded carrots, along with daikon radishes and green onions, the punch in this kimchi comes from ginger, garlic and a modest amount of red peppers. There is more sourness than heat and both are balanced by the bright ginger notes that make themselves known here and there. Keeping in mind the nutrient-dense and organic nature of this kimchi, it might be anathema to say it would go well on a common hot dog but I think it’s a fun match. It would also go well with an omelet or roasted pork. Risavi also makes a kimchi chili paste, which I did not sample, for those who want a little more heat.
Wise Goat Organics are available at the Morgan Hill Farmers Market, Bertuccio’s (2410 Airline Hwy.) in Hollister and online.
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