This is another great how-to from my online buddy, Bob. He is a genuinely self-sufficient soul, living off the grid somewhere on the North American continent.
This time around, Bob shares his favorite methods for making sauerkraut at home.
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So around thanksgiving the snows were getting two feet deep and it was getting cold enough to just about freeze solid all the fruits and vegetables we store outside our home in a big ‘ol busted down chest freezer by the woodshed.
The ol’ chest freezer before the snows hit:
So y’all know what that means, it’s time to finish preserving the stuff we wanted to keep but not freeze solid. As part of our annual fall “stocking up” trip we’d gone to cash and carry and I’d gotten a fifty pound sack of onions for five bucks, forty-five pounds of cabbage for nine bucks and change, and the carrots had gone up to six bucks for twenty five pounds so we only got fifty pounds of those. The cabbages were starting to silver in the cold, so it was time for cabbage chopping and sauerkraut salting!
We hauled all the stuff into the cottage and I set my wife to chopping while I scrounged around for suitable containers. The containers I usually use for kraut were not gonna be big enough this time around. I was never happy with the mold growing on my kraut anyway, and my wife never cared for the smell of tubs of fermenting cabbage in our tiny cottage so I thought I’d try a new trick this year.
The raw materials stacked by the back door:
We chopped up two heads of cabbage, one onion and grated a carrot or two, threw it in a large bowl then mixed in a small salt shaker of salt.
The bowl was dumped into a clean five gallon bucket and I packed it down firm with a wooden mallet. Don’t ask me how many times we did this or how many heads of cabbage it takes to fill a five gallon bucket because before long it all became a blur!
When the bucket was close to full we still had cabbages left over. We decided to keep six heads in the fridge and experiment with two small batches of kraut. One was cabbage, onions and chunks of some very strong home grown garlic.
The next was cabbage and apples.
Now to seal the kraut. Traditionally a plate is placed on top of the kraut and weighted down with a clean stone. This is how my wife’s great grandmother made kraut.
The trouble is mold can grow on the liquid above the plate and the fermenting kraut smells a bit, especially is you’re leaving the crock on the kitchen counter. Stuffed in a root cellar nobody would care about the smell, but we don’t have a root cellar yet.
This year, I tried a new trick to seal the kraut. I took two plastic garbage bags and put one inside the other, then put the bags over the kraut. The inner bag was filled with water and tied closed and the outer bag was draped over the outside of the container. This formed a perfect seal!
No smell, no mold formation (yet) and any odd shaped jar can be used because you don’t have to worry about fitting a plate down in there.
Two plastic bags over the kraut, filling the inner with water:
The five gallon bucket with the bags in and water added to weigh the kraut down:
One of the small batches all sealed up and the kraut is starting to produce plenty of liquid:
A week later I started eating the kraut and the stuff from the bucket is excellent!
I like it kinda crunchy and not salty, and this stuff is excellent, rather more like coleslaw but with a nice tang than the limp, salty kraut you get in a store. I placed the bucket right by our French doors, the coldest place in the cottage. Hopefully this is cold enough to keep it pleasantly crisp all winter long.
Too warm a temp and it will ferment fast, and you’ll get limp sauerkraut. I have read that the right amount of salt is about 2% of the weight of the cabbage, but I’ve always just guessed the amount and have learned what seems to work for me.
The garlic kraut is coming out very strong, I think I’ll give that away to a brother in law who thinks garlic is one of the major food groups. Sadly the apple kraut is a failure, so don’t try that one at home!
The next day we made a year’s supply of apple butter and apple sauce, but that’s a different story…
