Today you're in Steve's kitchen and it is all about the humble cabbage, which
appears around the world in all sorts of gastronomy. Particularly you see it in
Korea a by way of kimchi, which is absolutely delicious.
In France we used to have this, it was a Choucroute which is a very similar, it's a
derivative from the German super famous sauerkraut. The sauerkraut is a fermented
cabbage and it is so delicious and not very difficult to make. I wanted to make
this for a long time, I actually have some nice sauerkraut making equipment
but it's all back home. So today we're going to be making it just with our
hands and I'll show you how simple it is to make.Ffirst of all we have to take
this rather huge head of cabbage. I'm going to divide it up into quarters and
just take the core out. Now slice your cabbage as thin as you like. If you like
it super fine, then go ahead. I like a little extra
texture to my sauerkraut. Now we'll slice it up, a little similar to you would a
coleslaw. You could put this into a big silver bowl like I've got here,
actually those washing bowls, you know the sort of washing up bowls work really
well. I haven't got one with me, that's what I tended to use in the past. We're
going to need to salt our cabbage. Now I've got about four kilos which is a
little bit over eight pounds of cabbage, so I'm going to use about ten grams of
salt per pound of cabbage. So you can see even from just a quarter of a cabbage we
get this huge volume of shredded cabbage. So we can now take our cabbage and pop
it into a bowl. Rather than put all of the salt in at once, I'm going to sprinkle a
quarter of my salt over the cabbage and I'm just going to massage the salt in
with the cabbage. Now there's the second quarter into the bowl, a little extra
salt.
Just going to massage this through a little bit. Now the last of the head of
cabbage is going in, I'm going to sprinkle the remainder of my salt over
the cabbage and again we want to massage the salt into the cabbage, just turning
it as we go. Now at this point as well it's time to add any flavors into the
sauerkraut you want. A little bit of garlic crushed up goes in really well.
I've also got some mustard seeds, about two tablespoons. I'm actually going to
add that in there and a typical herb is caraway seeds which gives a lovely
flavor to the sauerkraut. So I'm going to put about a tablespoon of caraway seeds
in. Now it looks like a mound of cabbage I know but we're going to leave this now
for an hour maybe two hours to let the salt do its work and start to draw the
moisture out of the cabbage. By leaving the cabbage in the salt for about an
hour, hour and a half what we've actually done is let it do the work for us. Now
when I talked about tools, I have actually a German sauerkraut, sort of
stick, it's a plunger of sorts and when I used to make it before I would quite
tenderize the cabbage down by using this thing virtually sort of pulverizing it
till it was very soft. I've decided lately that I prefer my
sauerkraut to have a little more texture, So I'm going to let the salt do the work
for me and you can see in the bottom of the bowl now just how much water has
been drained out of the sauerkraut and you can also see a lovely glistening on
the surface of the cabbage as the waters been drawn out. So that's pretty much
ready now. I'm going to put this into a jar, now I have this tall jar here, it's
the sort that you would maybe keep pasta in but I think it will look
really good for the fermentation process of the cabbage. Of course a shorter squat
Kilner jar would do the job just as well. Now I'm going to take my cabbage and I'm
going to start putting it into the jar. Now it's looking pretty full but if I
get a wooden spoon and I start to push this down and compress the cabbage, I've got
a lot more space yet in the jar. I'm going to continue to top up the jar and
get a little bit on the outside and we've all this beautiful liquid
which I'm just going to pour over the cabbage, get all those mustard seeds in
there as well. Now in order for this to ferment properly we need to completely
submerge all our cabbage under the water whilst our sauerkraut is fermenting. We
don't want to store it in direct sunlight, so a nice cool larder is
perfect. Years ago I used to have a nice earthenware pot we used to do this in
and it was ideal because the lid didn't fit tight so it meant that the air could
escape as the sauerkraut was fermenting. You do need the sauerkraut to stay below
the water level, we've got a nice amount of brine in here. Now you could either
take a glass, this one here I've just sterilized and you could use the base of
the glass just to push the cabbage underneath the brine and then cover that
with a loose-fitting cloth just to keep any debris out. The idea is just to weight
the sauerkraut below the water. A little ziplock bag like this, filled with clear
water and we could just pop that in. That's another great way of just keeping
the air away from the cabbage. I'm not actually going to put this lid on tight,
I don't want to seal the air, you can get certain jars that have a little
fermentation valve in the top but this is perfectly good. I'm just going to store
this now in my larder where it's nice and cool and the sauerkraut will start
to become ready after about three weeks. Actually the longer you keep it the
better, it will improve with age. Just keep an eye on it ,the smells coming off it
should be fresh and clean and as long as you've kept everything fairly sterilized,
you should have absolutely no problem creating the most delicious sauerkraut.
So we'll take a look at this in three weeks time and a little taste and I'll
let you know how we're getting on. Now I thought it might be interesting to look
at the sauerkraut or the cabbage, how it's fermenting after just one week. If
you come in closely you're going to see the bubbles have started to ferment
right from the bottom of the sauerkraut. So that's not trapped bubbles, that's
actually fermentation of the cabbage and those bubbles are going to percolate up
through the liquid and you're going to notice a bit of a change in the color of
the cabbage. It's gone from that sort of bright crisp white, to a bruised
fermented looking colour. Now the smell coming off of it here should be fresh.
If I smell there now, it's fresh and crisp. It's starting to smell just like
sauerkraut, that's perfect. I'm going to pop this back in the cupboard, I'm just going to
cover it over again, not put the lid on tight and let this continue to ferment
for another couple of weeks. Now my sauerkraut is ready, it's been about
three weeks, if I'm honest with you it's a little over three weeks. It's smelling
fresh, it's delicious I can't wait to tuck in. I will say to you that the
liquid levels will drop during the fermentation and you may need to top it
up. If you take about a cup of water and dissolve about half a tablespoon of salt
in there you're getting still about a 2% solution and just top it up. Make sure
the cabbage is kept below the water and you're going to end up with this
gorgeous delicious sauerkraut. I'm just going to take that little bag out that was
holding it down. Now sauerkraut made this way will last for months and months. I
tend to prefer to keep it in the fridge once I've started using it but you can
keep it out on the side for several days at least and it won't spoil and just
come in here look, I'm going to pull this cabbage up, it's pretty stiff, it's all
sort of knitted together and if I take some of it out and we'll just pop it
into a serving bowl. Smells like pickled sauerkraut, smells delicious. Now I don't
know if you've noticed there's been a lot in the news and in social media
recently about the health benefits of these fermented cabbages like sauerkraut
and kimchi. So it looks as if we've made a super health food as well but actually
what we've made is just delicious sauerkraut.
Now you may decide to serve this and just eat it as a cold salad, that goes
really great with a sort of Bratwurst or a cooked sausage of any sort. I'm just
going to have a little try now, just to sort of tell you what it tastes like. Here
goes, can you hear, man that tastes so good, I do love
sauerkraut. It's not too salty, it's just about perfect, it's got that fermented
taste, it's got the crunch as you heard there. If you decide to make
sauerkraut at home, just let me know how you get along with it, whether you're a lover
of sauerkraut. Now if you've only ever had sauerkraut
that comes from the supermarket, try and make it yourself. I tell you it's so, so
much more delicious without all the preservatives and additives that they
put in. Now many of you may ask what to do with this sauerkraut now that we've
started to use it. You could keep it in a jar just like this, with a lid, a little
bit open, just keep that water level or the salt water level up so that it
doesn't go off and it will continue to ferment a little bit longer. What you
could actually do is just seal that up now, close the lid down tight and once the
lids on you can store this for a month or two easily in the fridge, if it lasts
that long. Just keep smelling it occasionally, if it starts to smell a little bit funky,
then probably it's time not to eat it anymore but generally trust your nose. I
hope that helps a little bit and if you've been listening to all the health
benefits of fermented foods like sauerkraut online, comment down below,
share those across with everybody here on Steve's kitchen, it's great to hear
your thoughts and opinions. Be good and we'll see you for another fun video in
Steve's kitchen very shortly, take care.