Earlier today I made a cabbage salad to take to a picnic. I'm left with half a
cabbage left over so I'm gonna make a really simple sauerkraut. First up I'm
gonna weigh the half of cabbage. I have 900 grams of cabbage here and we're
gonna do a 2 percent salt ratio, or so 2% of the weight of the cabbage we're gonna
add as salt. So 900 grams 2% of 900 grams is 18 grams of salt. And I'm just using
pickling salt so I'm gonna weigh that at first
cuz I'll forget 18g. So this is just coarse pickling salt, you don't need to
use any sort of special salt, you do want to make sure that you you use non
iodized salt you don't want the iodine in it. You also want to avoid salts that
have anti-caking or so on and so on and so on and so forth... it should just say
salt on the box. And I weigh it out for accuracy really, a lot of all of the
different salt manufacturers have different grain sizes so if I was to say
to you you know put it in a tablespoon of salt and you were using a different
brand of salt than I was using you would have a different amount of salt. Weighing
it you get consistent result every time, and you can really nail your recipe. So I
cut out the core, I don't always do that but when I do I usually end up
munching on that a little bit. Then you just want to slice your cabbage thick or
thin doesn't matter. I don't really care, I'm not eating yours so you cut it however you
want it. Of course you could use a mandolin, I find for this amount of
cabbage though it would take me longer to clean the mandolin than it would to
chop it with a knife. So I've got this measuring cup, and I stick
it in there and while I cut the other quarter I'm just gonna put some of the
salt in here just to get the whole process started. As you can see I've
saved two cabbage leaves we're gonna use those a little bit later in the recipe.
And they make me giggle because I think of John Candy from Second City wearing a
cabbage leaf on the back of his head. Probably only funny to me. So I've got the
cabbage in here, and what you want to do is you want to break the cabbage down
with the salt. You want to break the cell walls allow the moisture in the cabbage
to come out. The salt will help pull out that moisture. I can already feel it.
And I'm gonna start with the first quarter to get it going, then I'll
slowly add the rest of the cabbage and the rest of the salt. So as you can see
as you continue to massage it and break down the cabbage it creates its own
brine. I think we're in a pretty good space, so the next thing is what are you
going to ferment this in? And you could do it in a mason jar, you can do it in a
crock, you could do it I don't know you could probably just do it right in this
measuring cup. I think a crock is definitely too big for this amount of
cabbage, there's not much here and you know I don't really want to put into
mason jar because kind of like a straight sided vessel. So I'm just gonna
use this beaker. We've got these here, we use them for a whole bunch of different
things around the kitchen. So in goes the cabbage and now you just want to push
that down and hopefully there's enough brine to cover the
cabbage. And look there is! So I'm just using my hand, there there are a lot of
people out there that are trying to sell you something to tamp this down. I mean
if you really wanted to tamp it down...
look at that I've got a cocktail muddler. A cocktail muddler would do exactly the
same thing. So remember the mantra of lacto-fermented if it's under the brine
it'll be just fine! So our next step is to try and keep it under the brine and
that's where these two cabbage leaves come in. So you want to cut it somehow
that it fits into the vessel and will push down the cabbage. So there's one
and
yeah! fermenting is an art and craft. So there
you go that's the initial follower. Those will
be below the brine, and then I also just because I've got this food safe lid top
of some sort of food container I've drilled a bunch of holes in it but you
don't have to do that. Put that in it fits nicely inside and then I've got a
mason jar just filled with salty water just to hold the whole thing down. Now
the cabbage will be beneath the brine I'll probably just throw a tea towel
over this and I'll let it go for maybe four or five days and then we'll give it
a taste.
So after four or five days the the sauerkraut reached the point that I like
it for flavour and I didn't have time to get back to do any filming, so I stuck it
in the fridge which essentially shuts the whole process down. And speaking of
process there's probably a lot of people out there asking how is this safe? How is
it safe that you left cabbage on the counter for a week and it's fine? Here's
what happened; when we first added the salt the salt sort of broke down the
cabbage and drew out a lot of liquid and that liquid essentially created a brine.
That salty brine is something that the bad organisms that we don't want can't
live in, or they find it very difficult to live in, but the lactobacillus that
we're looking for do like that salty environment they start to thrive and as
they thrive and grow and multiply one of the things that they leave behind is
lactic acid that very quickly lowers the pH and that low pH or high acid
environment means that the bad organisms, the ones that we definitely don't want,
they cannot survive. They can't live in that. So remember this: as long as the
cabbage is below the brine everything's fine.
if you're using an open and vessel like this, you might get a
little bit of mold growing on top like we have, but the cabbage is fine it's
under the brine. And yes I hear you you're out there you're tippity tapping
on your keyboard saying that's not sour kraut! Sauerkraut needs this, and this, and
this, and this, and this, and this. That's not the way my grandmother makes
it! I hear ya this is just a simple introduction to how easy the process is.
From here you can add all kinds of different flavourings, you could add
different vegetables, and spices. Make it what you want, and in the coming months we're
going to give a whole bunch of those a try. And we'll show you which ones we
like which ones we don't, because I'm sure we'll come across a few. And you
can pick and choose at that point which ones you want to make. This is a pretty
good starting point though. So I'm not ready to eat this yet, I can pop it back
in the fridge and it will keep in the fridge; I don't know four or five months,
six months, probably longer? We're gonna eat this on Friday and and have it with
some sausages. I hope you come back and see that. Thanks for stopping by
see you again soon! How to make a basic saurkraut.