10-05-2024, 04:17 PM
Put up some sauerkraut a couple weeks back and tried it today. Wow! Delicious!
Had a friend give us a couple giant cabbages, like basketball sized. Contemplated doing to corned beef and cabbage but opted instead for a big batch of sauerkraut. The cabbage was just too good to use it up on a single dish. Sauerkraut is the easiest thing in the world to make. Just cabbage and salt (and some spices). Hardest part is just tamping it down daily to keep all the leaves below the brine.
Today was about day #9 so we decided to give it a taste...fantastic! (and I love sauerkraut)
For those interested, recipe as follows:
2 lb Cabbage, grated
1 Tbsp Canning salt
1/2 tsp Caraway seed
(note - You can scale this recipe accordingly. We did about 3x this much).
Mix salt into shredded cabbage and place in a glass bowl covered with a towel for 6-8 hours. The salt will draw the moisture out of the cabbage to give you a brine. Once you have a good amount of brine, transfer to canning cars (or a sauerkraut crock if you have one) and cover with the outer leaves of the cabbage. Mash it down really good so everything is below the level of the brine (and repeat this daily) and put those bad boys in a cool dark storage area to age. Age for however long you like to taste. The longer you age it, the more it ferments and becomes 'sauer'. You can eat it as soon as 3 days if you like it really mild, or let it age for weeks or even months for more robust flavors.
Note - Some people get all weird about putting vapor locks on their sauerkraut but we don't mess with that. We just use a canning lid lightly placed on the jar and the ring threaded on very loosely (so it can vent). We then set the sauerkraut jars in a aluminum tray to catch the overflow juices as it bubbles and ferments. The lids keep out critters and foreign debris like dust.
Enjoy!
Had a friend give us a couple giant cabbages, like basketball sized. Contemplated doing to corned beef and cabbage but opted instead for a big batch of sauerkraut. The cabbage was just too good to use it up on a single dish. Sauerkraut is the easiest thing in the world to make. Just cabbage and salt (and some spices). Hardest part is just tamping it down daily to keep all the leaves below the brine.
Today was about day #9 so we decided to give it a taste...fantastic! (and I love sauerkraut)
For those interested, recipe as follows:
2 lb Cabbage, grated
1 Tbsp Canning salt
1/2 tsp Caraway seed
(note - You can scale this recipe accordingly. We did about 3x this much).
Mix salt into shredded cabbage and place in a glass bowl covered with a towel for 6-8 hours. The salt will draw the moisture out of the cabbage to give you a brine. Once you have a good amount of brine, transfer to canning cars (or a sauerkraut crock if you have one) and cover with the outer leaves of the cabbage. Mash it down really good so everything is below the level of the brine (and repeat this daily) and put those bad boys in a cool dark storage area to age. Age for however long you like to taste. The longer you age it, the more it ferments and becomes 'sauer'. You can eat it as soon as 3 days if you like it really mild, or let it age for weeks or even months for more robust flavors.
Note - Some people get all weird about putting vapor locks on their sauerkraut but we don't mess with that. We just use a canning lid lightly placed on the jar and the ring threaded on very loosely (so it can vent). We then set the sauerkraut jars in a aluminum tray to catch the overflow juices as it bubbles and ferments. The lids keep out critters and foreign debris like dust.
Enjoy!
