How to make Sauerkraut at home. We eat a lot of sauerkraut, a lot, due to our Pennsylvania dutch and polish heritage, pork and sauerkraut is a pretty staple meal, especially on New Years, well since we have a lot of pork, we need a lot of sauerkraut.
RIP pig pig and sue sue
I realized we were getting low, so it’s time to get another batch going
So I grabbed 10 heads of cabbage, my food grade bucket and some canning salt
you want to pick off any discolored leaves on the cabbage
I quarter them and cut out the cores
I set up my scale
and chop up and weight out 5 pounds of cabbage, which will use about 2 heads and give you roughly a gallon of cabbage
you want your salt to be roughly 2.5 to 3 percent by volume, which is around 3 tablespoons per 5 pounds
so I take off roughly about a pound and a half of cabbage
dump it in the bucket and sprinkle with a tablespoon of salt
and keep layering it and sprinkling
I give the bucket a good shake to evenly spread the salt, and at this point you have a gallon of cabbage to make into kraut, but like I said, we eat a lot, so I have a lot more to cut
so I use a large lexan to dump into and massage the salt in by hand
and dump it into the bucket, giving me 5 gallons of cabbage
take a non reactive plate and set into the cabbage
and set something on to it to weight it down
the salt will slowly draw out the water from the cabbage and it will compress
that was after about 4 hours, I checked it the next morning and the brine has covered the cabbage, time to wait for nature to takes its course
if for some reason it doesn’t generate enough brine, mix 1 teaspoon of water and mix well and add enough so the cabbage is covered
here’s a good article on the benefits of sauerkraut
“Sauerkraut
Considering cabbage is low-carb, high-fiber, and contains cancer-fighting 3-indole carbinol and d-glucarate, a compound that works to clear excess estrogen, the veggie is already a superfood. Fermenting it into sauerkraut, however, puts it on nutritional steroids. The probiotics that drive fermentation also help repopulate your digestive system with healthy, hardworking good bacteria that lower inflammation, improve digestion, and maybe even aid in weight loss. Plus fermentation increases the bioavailablity of the antioxidants found in cabbage, and the longer cabbage ferments, the higher the levels of antioxidants become, meaning your body can better absorb and use them”
http://shine.yahoo.com/author-blog-posts/6-superfoods-youre-not-eating-175900472.html
