Old Fashioned Sauerkraut

The DH and I took a class on lactofermentation and we recently made our own sauerkraut, the old-fashioned way. Lactofermentation uses no heat. It relies on naturally-present bacteria to break down the food and provide probiotics. Lactofermented foods are good for you like yogurt and other "live" foods. The kraut tastes tangy, slightly salty, and is such a pretty color! I've seen red cabbage used, as well, for a lovely pink hue. Next up, I hope to make some kimchi and try kombucha.

Below I share our general process of making sauerkraut. These steps are meant to be informative, but not instructional. If you want to try this, find yourself a good book. I suggest Wild Fermentation by Katz.

Step 1: Grate the cabbage. We have a handy-dandy hand-crank tool that makes fast work of this. We used nearly an entire head of cabbage.

Step 2: Crush the salt, if it's not in small particles. It's important to use natural salts that don't have additives. (Hand modeling by the DH.) We used 2 tablespoons of salt. The recipe called for between 1 and two tablespoons. Next time, I'll use a bit less.

Step 3: Toss in the salt, and "tamp" the cabbage. Yes, tamp is a technical term. It means beat the heck out of the stuff. You can see here we are using a pasta measuring device for its flat bottom. Tamping starts the cabbage along its journey, and in combination with the salt, releases the juices. Tamp until the cabbage looks shiny, or lightly cooked.

Step 4: Place into jars (or, traditionally, a crock) and tamp some more. You need to ensure all the cabbage is below a layer of juice.

Step 5: Cover and let it sit. Test regularly, until it gets to your level of tartness and then refrigerate. Ours sat about about a month.