Care to share a recipe? I'd love to do that as well, I'm a big sauerkraut fan.
It's relatively simple to make. First, you need to get a container to ferment the kraut in. Wood, ceramic, glass, or food-storage grade plastic are appropriate materials for such a container, anything with metal parts that might contact the fermenting kraut should be avoided. You also need something to compress it, either something rigid that fits well in the fermentation container, or a plastic freezer bag full of brine. I use a ceramic crock which was originally part of a slow-cooker, and weight my cabbage with a casserole dish that fits snugly in the crock, and a rock.
The ingredients are cabbage and non-iodized salt, and possibly brine. I personally use a non-iodized kosher salt because the flakes dissolve pretty easily, but pickling salt or a low-iodine sea salt works too. You want ~35-40g of salt per Kg of cabbage, though I don't measure either very carefully anymore, and just go by experience. If you need to make brine, 20g low-moisture salt/liter of water gives a 2% brine, and 2-3% usually gives the best results for sauerkraut.
To make it, shred the cabbage however finely you want it. I shoot for strips 3-5mm wide, and shred most of it with a mandolin slicer. In the bottom of the fermentation container, put a layer of shredded cabbage, 3-5cm thick when not packed. Sprinkle some of your salt over it. Repeat until you're out of cabbage or you're within 4cm of the top of the container. Push down on the top of the cabbage, and compress it as much as you're able. Repeat until you can't compress it enough to add another layer, or you're out of cabbage. If you have leftover juice from unpasteurized, fermented sauerkraut, you can add a bit of it at this point, and use it instead of brine if you need to add liquid later. This will result in a faster fermentation, but the faster ferment gives a slightly different (IMHO, not bad or overly noticeable) flavor to the kraut, and some prefer not to use it. If you're using something rigid to compress your cabbage,put it on top of the cabbage, and add a weight to it. A good-sized rock (cleaned and sterilized first) works well, as does a full glass jar. Don't use anything made out of metal for anything which might spend more than a few minutes in contact with your kraut or the brine it will be submerged in. If you're using a brine-filled freezer bag, put the bag into the container on top of the kraut, and try to get it to spread out at the bottom to mostly seal off the container. The goal is to keep all of the kraut submerged beneath the liquid which should already be starting to leach out of the cabbage. Give the cabbage at least 4-5 hours of being pressed before you add brine, but if the cabbage hasn't produced enough brine to keep all of the cabbage completely submerged within 24 hours, add enough room-temperature brine to fully submerge it all. I added half a liter of brine at about 6 hours to this batch, which has about 2.5 kilos of cabbage.
If you're using something rigid to press down the kraut, put a clean towel or other cloth over the whole thing to keep out dust and bugs. Put your fermentation container in a cool place where it will not be exposed to direct sunlight. Check the kraut every few days, adding brine as necessary if evaporation becomes an issue. If you get a white or pale colored non-fuzzy scum on the surface, remove it (it's mostly made of various yeasts). If you get fuzzy growths (usually on exposed bits of cabbage) you have mold. If you catch it early enough you might be ok to remove it and keep the batch, I usually toss the batch if I get mold. If you added juice from a previous ferment, you might start to get edible kraut in about a week. If not, I wouldn't bother checking anything beyond what's mentioned above for at least 2 and a half weeks. Once the stuff starts to smell like sauerkraut, the best way to tell if it's ready is to fish out a few pieces and taste it. When your taste buds say it's ready, move the kraut to smaller containers and refrigerate. The kraut will continue fermenting in the refrigerator, but at a much slower rate, until all of the sugars in the cabbage have been consumed. You can also put it in jars and heat process it, but doing so kills the probiotic cultures that cause the fermentation, and are generally considered to be one of the big health benefits of eating fermented foods. You can also freeze it, but frozen/thawed kraut doesn't have quite the same texture as fresh kraut, and I don't like it as well. The kraut will keep for months in the refrigerator, so unless you are looking at keeping it for most of a year or longer, I wouldn't bother with heat processing or freezing.
Now that I look back, that's more of a narrative description of the process than a recipe, but it really is easier than the wall of text above makes it seem.
Author
Topic: Food Thread: Kitchen Chemistry (Read 554557 times)