If you’re longing to be one of “those” people who enjoys eating wilted fizzy cabbage and want to make it yourself, you’ve come to the right place. (Don’t listen to those haters, sauerkraut is delicious and a party for your gut).
Basic sauerkraut recipe:
- Start with a whole, fresh and pretty cabbage
- Remove the outer leaves and set some of the cleaner ones aside for your sacrificial leaves for the end of the recipe
- Remove the core of the cabbage and chop the cabbage finely, and put it all in a big bowl
- Add about a tablespoon of salt, and massage it all with your hands until the cabbage wilts and gets all juicy. Sometimes it helps to beat it with the end of a rolling pin to help it wilt.
- Stuff it in a clean jar. Press it down as you go with the end of a rolling pin to pack it all in. There should be juice covering it all at the top of the jar – if there’s not, add a bit of salty water (you want about a 3% salt content, they call this a 3% brine).
- On top, stuff in your sacrificial leaves to weigh it down. Put the lid on the jar, but not too tight. Set it on a plate and leave it on the bench for 5-7 days. It may leak during this time, hence the plate.
- It will be ready when it tastes fizzy and fermented. Remove the sacrificial leaves and keep it in the fridge, and enjoy!
This recipe, frankly, is a basic lacto fermentation recipe for any veg. Generally if you stick with a 3% salt content it should work. Warmth helps with the speed of the fermentation, so it’s slower in the cool months than in the warmer times.
If it gets hectic fuzzy mould on top or like greeny goupy purpley yucky mould, it’s no good. Sometimes it can get a white fragile film and this is a certain yeast culture on top, that’s still safe and you can just skim it off the top. But with other moulds it’s probably better safe than sorry.
Veggies fermented this way can last almost for ever in your fridge. I think we’ve found 12 month old pickled radishes or cucumber in our fridge and it was still good to go. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend… but there are stories of people making huge batches of this stuff and that’s their go-to ferment for the year.
We love doing this with radish also, and adding in ginger and chilli and garlic and deliciousness. Have a play and enjoy getting even more nourishment out of your veggies. 😁
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