Ingredients:
1 Cabbage - It was 1.3kg
I used a white organic one because it was grown 15 minutes from my house. You can use green, red & yellow also if you like. It works with any cabbage basically.
3 heap tsp sea salt - for every 500g of cabbage use 1 tsp of salt roughly. It's super forgiving.
That's it.
Now traditionally you could add some caraway seeds & some black pepper to this as well.
The reason I kept this recipe easy with so few ingredients is so you can get used to fermenting if this is a new method of cooking. One step at a time. So lets get into it.
Method:
First thing you want to do is give a nice wash with hot soapy water to a large jar you want to ferment your sauerkraut in and leave it aside.
You can sterilise it if you want however the bacteria in the sauerkraut fights off bad bacteria on its own.
Next cut the cabbage in half and remove the woody stem of the cabbage. However, If the stem is tender use it up as well #nowaste. Again sauerkraut and fermenting stuff in general is pretty forgiving stuff. You only have so much control over these things. Its a living thing after all!
Slice your cabbage as thin as you can with a knife or a mandolin slicer and place in a large clean bowl.
With clean hands start to squish and kneed your sliced cabbage for about 10 minutes.
This is going to break down the cell walls and release the cabbages water.
After 10 minutes the sliced cabbage should have shrunk in volume swimming in its own juices if its only let out a bit of liquid keep squishing the cabbage for another 5 minutes or so. (I have used a kitchen aid equipped with the K paddle in the past and it worked really well.)
Now place your cabbage into the clean dry jar pressing down as you go. You dont really want air pockets so keep giving it a good press as you top up the jar. The liquid from the cabbage is going to help keep the air off your cabbage so put all of that juice in as well.
Now we need to cover it. There are many ways of doing this. The way I do it for most of my ferments is to get a sandwich bag or freezer bag filled with water. Place the bag it in the jar standing up so you can add water to it. The reason for this is so that no air will come in contact with your sauerkraut.
Another really good way to do this is go out and buy a fermentation jars with airlocks I highly recommend this option. As you can use these for all future ferments.
Place the sauerkraut in a cool dark place to ferment for about 2 weeks.
''Not often but sometimes with sauerkraut half way through fermenting it might smell a bit eggy but keep going it will usually fix it self. If there is loads of mold and its eggy after 2 to 3 weeks you might have to start again it's very rare but it does happen''.
Ok so now we just have to chill out for a few weeks then you can enjoy the sauerkraut.
It will smell acidic and sweet at the same time with a lovely crunch. Amazing in just about anything. Enjoy!