Glad you asked.I cooked sauerkraut this past weekend. There’s nothing like it freshly harvested from the market.
I usually eat it with brats, yep....I’m sadly one dimensional. Sometimes with pork chops.
I’ve not made it before. I can google it, but do you mind a brief overview and which seasonings you add to it?
How do you serve it? Just fresh on the side? Do you ever cook it or cook it with dishes?
Glad you asked.
In fact I had to write this out in an email to a friend last week, so a quick copy paste and…
Warm Sauerkraut is something I had to get used to. My husband's family is Bavarian — and they do like their warm Sauerkraut.
Mostly I eat it fresh — or at least straight from the jar… crispy and tangy.
I started making my own as it was difficult to find the unpasteurised version — most commercial ones are pasteurised, and so loads of probiotics have been killed off.
Anyway!
Here's the recipe. Ask any questions.
Sauerkraut
Large 1.5L Clip-top jars — (The ones with a rubber seal and clip — they self regulate and let out excess gas and liquid… also easy to "burp" them by pulling the little rubber tag once in a while the first week of fermentation.)
1.7kg Cabbage
34g Pink Himalayan Salt (How to calculate quantity? See right at the end)
1Tbs Caraway seeds, toasted lightly
1Tbs Fennel seeds, toasted lightly
Reserve a couple large outer leaves. Clean well.
Shred cabbage into a large bowl.
Sprinkle with salt.
Leave to stand 10 minutes.
Massage with hands until lots of liquid and soft(ish).
Add Fennel and Caraway, mix well.
Pack squeezed handfuls into a large clean jar — no need to sterilise, just wash it really clean in hot water, but YMMV.
Press down with fists and keep filling — up to 2 inches from top.
Make sure there is enough of the squeezed briny juices in the jar to cover the vegetables. But leave some headroom.
Place the large cabbage leaves (or a plastic lid cut to size etc) on top of the shredded cabbage… this is to keep any shreds floating up and sitting above the brine — these go mouldy and… well… there you go — bad kraut!
Place a weight — a smaller jar or clean pebbles etc on top of the cabbage “lid” and when you close the jar this will push the cabbage shreds down more… so everything gets nicely compressed.
Place the closed jar on a shallow bowl… there will probably be overflow of liquid escaping.
Leave at room temperature for minimum of 10 days. Taste test until you get the tang you like. I like mine to have fermented at least a month.
Then pack the sauerkraut into smaller (or a large one) jars and keep in fridge…
Another handy tip is, you can add your unpasteurised fermented brine to a jar of shop bought “pasteurised” sauerkraut and leave for a few days. The unpasteurised probiotics get to work and help to resurrect the pasteurised sauerkraut. After all, the reason for making your own is to get unpasteurised kraut… all the good stuff gets killed once it has been pasteurised.
************************
Salt Calculation
Calculate how much salt to use by weighing both your cabbage mixture and your salt.
Salt is key to preserving, and using the weight method you can use any type of salt you want.
Multiply weight of cabbage by 2% (.02), the recommended salinity for sauerkraut.
For example, the weight of your shredded cabbage is 900 grams.
900 x .02 = 18.00
Add 18 grams of salt.
NOTE: The recommended salinity for sauerkraut actually ranges from 1.5-2.5%.
I use 2.0% because I am bad with numbers; feel free to use 1.5% (x .o15) or 2.5% (x .025) or play around with what works best for the salt you use and your environment.
-- which even I can't manage to do 99% of the time so far. at least with respect to "how can you not like broccoli???"
I could eat them as candy all the time.
You won an up-vote from me as thread-starter for being resolutely "on topic" of the thread
And from the Grand Judges of the Internet, you also seem to merit a prize for fetching an immediate collection of naysayers
We seem a pretty eclectic crowd in here. I thought we'd run out of steam after a couple of pages of wrangling over whether this or that "fast food" menu item was actually popular and "how could you like that?" or "how could you not like that?"
In my wildest imagination of the destiny of this thread, it didn't occur to me we could end up with quite a few comments on, for instance, proper recognition (and construction of) Hawaii's Spam Musubi...
About beets: I suspect they are extremely popular with borscht-lovers. So it's time for those of you whose grandmothers passed down a recipe to share it out....and for klutzes like me to remark on how many dishtowels I have ruined with beet juice. Borscht may be one of the the things I have a real love-hate relationship with and it's all about the wonders of its durable coloring...
My favorite use of beets aside from simply cooking them and serving with butter or making so-called "Harvard beets" is to have them served cold. I serve them julienned on a bed of some nice torn lettuce and topped w/ chopped egg and (confession time) by a concoction known in the states as Thousand Island dressing.
That dressing is your basic sludge of ketchup and mayo with "islands" made of some sweet pickle relish. The exact recipe is created with those ingredients in proportions the cook approximates as "looks ok to me".
About "Harvard beets": supposedly called that because of its and that university's deep crimson colors. It's quite popular in the USA anyway, often featured at holiday dinners. One makes the dish with cooked beets, sliced or diced if they are large, sugar, vinegar, butter, cornstarch to thicken the sauce, salt and pepper. Usually served hot but it keeps well in the fridge thanks to the vinegar, so any leftovers at my grandma's house were sometimes served along with other relish options like sliced pickled watermelon rind, sliced fresh cucumber pickles, mustard relish etc. for a cold luncheon that otherwise featured maybe chicken salad or sliced ham and a choice of sliced breads for sandwich artists.
Oh lord, thanks for reminding me of appetizers made with celery and cheez whiz - the latter simply the grossest dairy product ever concocted.
Oh god, cheez whiz. Are you sure that’s a dairy product? Heh...
hmm.. something with a blue cheese in it? Yum! And I'd use stalks that are not from the outer layer of most celery. It's hard to strip the fibrous threads off the convex surface of big stalks and have them still look nice. Those outer ribs end up diced into salad for me, love the crunch but minus the "strings" which I generally remove most of with a peeler.
Man when you make up your mind, it's made up, eh?!
