Sauerkraut - A New-To-Me Solution to Too Much Cabbage

Fermented foods seem to be the IT thing to make and eat these days. I've been meaning to get serious about trying my hand at it, but have only made half-hearted attempts at it, other than yogurt and bread which I think I'm pretty good at. But a combination of a couple of events has resulted in a couple of jars of home made sauerkraut taking up space in my refrigerator.

Event #1, I read a short article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a device that works on a standard wide mouth canning jar. It is supposed to make small batch fermenting easy and fool-proof.

Event #2, there was an excess of cabbage heading up in the garden.

Pixie Cabbage

I thought, ok, it's time to give this fermentation thing a serious try. I went to the Kraut Source web site and ordered up. The web site says that you are placing a pre-order, but my order arrived in just a few days. It came just in time because one of my Pixie cabbages that I had been putting off harvesting because of a surfeit of other veggies and a lack of space in the fridge split wide open. I noticed in time to be able to salvage most of the head, much of which went into my first double batch of sauerkraut.

Here's the parts that make up the Kraut Source lid. 

It's really quite ingenious. The lid accomplishes three things that help to insure that the fermentation process goes well. There's a spring loaded plate that holds the vegetables down in the brine, a silicone gasket that creates an airtight seal, and a moat/cap system that allows the fermentation gases to escape. The assembly shown below on the left is held place by the standard ring that comes with a wide mouth canning jar. You add water to the moat and place the cap in it. As the gases build up they push the cap up just enough to escape without pushing the cap out of the water thus not allowing any air into the jar. Once the fermentation got well under way it was really delightful to hear a little clink every minute or so as the cap lifted a bit and then dropped back into place.

The cap is a bit expensive but is really well built and I'm sure it will last for years. It is made from high quality stainless steel and not at all flimsy. And it really worked well. I have another system that I've tried, a plastic airlock that fits into a plastic pour cap that screws onto a wide mouth canning jar. It's a flimsy set up that can work, if you can get the plastic lid cinched down tight enough, which isn't always the case. I'm always afraid that it's going to break.

I used the basic sauerkraut recipe that came with the lid except that I made half a batch with cumin instead of caraway since I'm not a big caraway fan. The caraway batch got the plastic airlock lid for comparison. I managed to get the airlock sealed, eventually, so I could watch the gas bubble push through the water, but it was much more fun to listen for that little clink from the KS lid.

I did make one mistake and packed too much cabbage into the jar so the brine level was too high. As the fermentation proceeded the brine got pushed up into the moat and then overflowed. I figured out what I did wrong after I went to the website and watched the demo video. Typical for me, watch the video to find out what I did wrong instead of watching it to learn how to do it correctly. (They are redoing their website at the moment so the videos aren't available, but the ordering page is still operational, of course). In spite of that, the kraut came out great. And the plastic airlock worked as well, so even the caraway version is tasty. But hands down, the KS lid was easier to use.

It took only three days at room temperature (around 68ºF) for the kraut to become mildly sour but still somewhat crunchy. Now I have to figure out how to use it. Kraut isn't something that we've consumed a lot of around here. I've got a loaf of naturally leavened white whole wheat bread proofing even now, so I'm thinking thick slices of grilled bread topped with kraut and melted cheese.

What's your favorite way to consume kraut? Let me know, I need some inspiration!

Next up, there's a few heads of napa cabbage getting close to harvest in the garden so I'll have to try making some kimchi. And two big heads of red cabbage so perhaps some pink kraut is in the lineup. And lacto-fermented sweet onions when that crop starts to come in... Any other garden veggies you like to ferment?

Please note that I have no affiliation with Kraut Source, I purchased my unit and am just so pleased with it that I had to share.