Sauerkraut

Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown, 2004



Yields:

12 cups

Time Required:

Prep time: 30 minutes
Fermenting time: 4 weeks

Ingredients:

Preparation:

In large mixing bowl, mix cabbage thoroughly with salt, juniper berries, and caraway seeds, using hands or tongs. If using your hands, make sure that they are very clean prior to mixing. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Pack cabbage mixture down into a large plastic food container. Top with a lid smaller than the opening of the container, and place a glass jar filled with the quart of water on top of the lid. Place in cool area overnight (65 to 70°F). In a day, the cabbage should have given up enough liquid to be completely submerged. The jar serves as a weight to keep the cabbage submerged and away from air.

Check cabbage every other day for approximately 2 weeks and skim the surface of scum, if necessary. Let stand for 4 weeks. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 6 months.

Cook's Notes:

Whenever I start a batch, I tape to the vessel's side a note documenting start date, expected finish date, and what recipe and any special ingredients. That way, seeing the note every day, I don't overshoot its finish date.

Once cracked out of the fermenting container, sauerkraut needs refrigeration, and even at that probably won't keep well for more than six months, so do date-label it (even in the fridge). It's tempting to home-can one's excess in Mason jars, but be aware that doing so will certainly kill the lactobacilli and friends that are part of sauerkraut's attraction as "living food" that arguably helps keep our intestinal flora healthy. So, admittedly, suddenly having a huge batch of fresh sauerkraut can be a bit of a challenge: What your family doesn't eat and friends aren't happy to get will sit around figuratively telling you "I won't last forever, y'know."


1 For a change of pace, try instead purple cabbage, which is every bit as good and adds an interesting colour tinge. Other cabbage variants such as Nappa ("Chinese") cabbage are also fine, if you have them. I have read that bok choy, kale, tat soi, mustard greens, and other leafy vegetables also work (but haven't tried those).

For shredding the 5 lb. of cabbage, I just run it through my food processor with the "slice" attachment.

2 "Pickling salt" basically means non-iodised salt, since iodine can inhibit the anaerobic fermentation process. "Sea salt" is therefore fine, for example. Salt's role is to be something of a preservative (prevent botulism!), change pH and thereby help produce lactic acid, and help your sauerkraut develop a tangy flavour.

3 Smashing a bit the juniper berries before use is recommended, else you get semi-hard juniper nuggets. I use mortar and pestle.

Resist the temptation to adapt berries harvested from your local juniper bush, unless you're absolutely certain it's a real Juniperus communis bush, because some other "junipers" have poisonous berries. Seriously, when in doubt, forage in the spice aisle.

In cooking, whole or crushed juniper berries are very common in meat dishes, adding an undertone of a tart, pine-like flavour and aroma. For example, practically any meat dish with a sauce based on red wine and onions would be helped by a half-dozen or so juniper berries. Most groceries stores should have jars of them in the spice aisle; if not, you can order good ones from Penzey's Spices.

4 Sure, this is pedantic, but caraway "seeds" aren't seeds, but rather small fruit, from a carrot/parsley-family plant (Carum carvi) related to cumin. Thus the plant's alternate names: Persian cumin and meridian fennel. It's been used to add a pungent, earthy, anise-like flavor and aroma to a wide range of food since ancient times, and often used as a spice in breads, especially rye-based breads.

We Scandinavians also use it in akvavit.

Its name is derived from the Arabic al-karawiya, which probably also arrived in European languages as "cumin". The plant is believed to have originated in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. In Indian groceries, you may find it as "shah jeera", which is Hindi (derived from Persian) for "royal cumin".

Not that readers would, but never harvest for eating purposes any wild member of the "Apiaceae" carrot/parsley family, as that includes some of the most poisonous plants on earth, and live-off-the-land people who get it wrong tend to die.

5 Rather than using the makeshift glass (or sometimes plastic) jar mentioned, I personally went gung-ho, and bought in 2013 a Schmitt 5 Liter German Fermenting Crock Pot ("gärtopf" = fermentation pot) for US $97 + tax from Harvest Essentials ($120 + tax in 2024). With this large ceramic crock, which include a water-based airlock to keep interfering microorganisms (like mold and worse things) out, and include a pair of semi-circular ceramic weights to keep the developing sauerkraut under the surface, you needn't crack the batch open to check, and can even leave the finished batch sitting unopened on your counter for some months, until you need it.

Before putting anything into the fermentation container, that vessel needs to be thoroughly sterilised. Some sources say spray everything with plain white vinegar, and then rinse well with hot water. Since my Schmitt gear (the crock, its lid, and the pair of ceramic weights) can easily take it, I use a dilute solution of bleach, then thorough washing and drying.

I find that 1 qt. water isn't enough in the Schmitt pot; 2 qts. seems better.

6 As is so often true, one thing that makes this recipe great is its adaptability: You can use the ingredients shown as a base, but get creative, adding your choice of apple chunks, chili pepper pieces or flakes, black pepper, turmeric, chopped onions, coriander, garlic, grated carrot, smoked paprika, thinly sliced raw fennel bulb, purslane, grated or matchstick raw beets, chopped fennel fronds, coarsely crushed fennel seeds, cucumbers, ginger, radish, daikon, and on and on. (Some of that. For Ghu's sake, no, not the whole list.)

Expect fruit that oxidises, such as apple and pear, to brown from the fermenting. Some avoid them for that reason.



Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/sauerkraut.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Nov. 23, 2024. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

Taken from: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sauerkraut-recipe-1942351 (which page claims Television Food Network, G.P. owns copyright — though, inherently, nobody can over an individual recipe). Warm thanks to Alton Brown, the Mad Scientist of the Kitchen, for this gift of knowledge.

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2024 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)