As I wrote in my previous post, we’ve been fermenting a lot of vegetables around here lately. One of the things we make regularly is sauerkraut, and we’ve been making it for many years. There are different methods for making sauerkraut- you can put the shredded cabbage in a brine of salt and water, massage the shredded cabbage with salt and wait for the juices to be released, or you can pound the salted cabbage to release the juices that will be your brine. After experimenting over the years and sampling different types of sauerkraut made in different ways, we’ve settled on our favorite method. I thought I’d share a little about our favorite way to make sauerkraut today. (This is not a step-by-step guide with pictures, but I link to a book below that is excellent for walking you through the whole process.)

Your preferred method for making sauerkraut will depend on your taste preferences and also what works best for you. We don’t like to add water to our brine because we prefer the flavor of the sauerkraut when the cabbage has fermented in it’s own juices. When we’ve simply massaged the cabbage with salt it never seemed to make enough brine for us. The most successful batches we’ve made (and the ones we thought most delicious) were when we pounded the sauerkraut. That method works well when we are making kraut for our own family’s needs, but if someone were making kraut to sell or making very large batches each time, that method might not be the best fit. (It would be quite a workout to pound that much kraut!) I’ve heard complaints that pounding makes the sauerkraut too “mushy.” Again, taste preferences. We don’t find it to be too mushy that way, we love it, but that’s the great thing about making your own kraut is that you can customize it to what you like.

We’ve tried both red and green cabbage, and prefer making kraut with green cabbage. To make sauerkraut, we slice our cabbage into thin pieces. (We’ve never used a cabbage slicer, but I’d be curious to try one at some point.) Then, as we fill a large bowl with the sliced cabbage, we sprinkle it with salt as we go. We prefer Himalayan Crystal Salt. (It’s full of minerals, and doesn’t contain microplastics like sea salt, which I mentioned before in my post about Pesto.) When the bowl is full of sliced cabbage and salt, we start pounding with a wooden pounder. (There are kraut pounders made for that specific purpose- like this one. The one pictured above was actually not made for kraut, it’s something we’ve had in the kitchen for years and I’m not sure exactly what it was made for originally, but it works great.)

Sometimes kids will love helping with that part. Our son will love pounding kraut at times and other times doesn’t have any interest in doing it. I wonder how many batches of sauerkraut Jeff has pounded throughout his life- a lot. (I also wonder how many jars of pickles he’s made. At one point, he had neighbors chasing him down the street and stopping his car, begging for more of his homemade pickles. One guy would eat an entire quart jar in one sitting and then drink all of the juice, he loved them so much. Our family still laughs about that.) I don’t mind pounding kraut, and I love the results at the end so I’m motivated to do it. (Though I find it best to start the project earlier in the day. Pounding kraut is not as fun when you’ve run out of steam after a full day of getting things done.)

How do you know how much salt to add? You can’t really say a certain amount of salt per cabbage because the size of each cabbage can vary so greatly. I’ve tried weighing and measuring. After so many batches, Jeff and I have a general idea of how much salt we need to use for one of our large kitchen bowls filled with cabbage. (Jeff has historically been the best guesser in our house for amounts of salt to add.) But in the end, the best way I’ve found is the taste test.

The book ‘Fermented Vegetables‘ by Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey (which I just mentioned in this post) has some excellent advice about adding salt when making sauerkraut, and it’s definitely worth mentioning here. It says “After coring and shredding the cabbage, it’s time to add salt. Don’t let this cause you anxiety. While encouraging bacteria seems like a project for the science lab, it’s an organic process that has a very tolerant range of what is acceptable. Just as in cooking, there is a degree of flexibility in the amount of salt that tastes right in a dish.
Though these recipes all contain a recommended amount, it is best to begin with half that amount. Taste. You want to taste the salt, but not be overwhelmed by it. Slowly build up to the recommended amount, but don’t be afraid to stop if your mixture is beginning to taste too salty. If you find it too salty, add more cabbage. If it’s tasty fresh, it will be delicious fermented.”

And then again, it gives the reminder: “Taste before You Pack! Please, please, please taste your kraut while you are making it. It’s the simplest way to ensure success. Make sure you can taste the salt, but it should not be “briny,” “salty,” or in any way unpalatable. Remember, if it’s good fresh, it will be excellent fermented.” So, there you go- taste your kraut as you’re making it! So simple. (Wish I had this book when I was first starting out! It didn’t exist yet.) Also, if you are wanting a step-by-step guide to making sauerkraut, as well as a variety of different kraut recipes to try (and every vegetable you can think of), I’d highly recommend getting that book. To clarify- the book does not suggest pounding kraut, that’s just something we like to do.

Okay, back to the process. Salting. Pounding. We stop pounding the kraut as soon as we see plenty of brine. We fill our jars (we’ve been using two quart mason jars) with cabbage and brine, and then press the cabbage down with our wooden pounder until it’s completely submerged under the liquid. At that point, we like to gather some grape leaves in the garden to set on the top, to keep the little pieces of kraut from floating up. (This is also an excellent trick Jeff taught me for pickles. Grapes leaves help keep pickles more firm, which is why you sometimes see them in pickle jars.) Then we place a glass weight (or two) on top of that to hold it all down under the brine. (You want to keep it under the brine.) We add a Pickle Pipe lid on top, and then we set it on the counter to ferment for a week or two (usually two weeks), depending on temperature. (I wrote about our favorite fermentation airlock lids and weights in this post.)

Then we taste it to see if it’s done to our liking. It’s amazing the magic that can happen with two simple ingredients- cabbage and salt. Sometimes we put it in the fridge as is (it’s so delicious on it’s own it doesn’t need anything else), sometimes we add seasonings before fermenting, and other times we add flavor after it’s fermented. Once you put it in the refrigerator, the cold slows down the fermentation process. When we add seasonings to our kraut, we like to use things like seaweed, coriander seed, garlic, chile powder, dill seed, turmeric, curry powder, etc. There are so many fun variations to try.

A note on seaweed and sauerkraut: Seaweed has been a regular part of our family’s diet for many years. The nutrition seaweed contains is amazing. With our soils being so depleted these days, the minerals that seaweed provides feel even more important. (We love the seaweed flakes from Maine Coast Sea Vegetables. They test for heavy metals, radiation, etc. and are my favorite source for seaweed I’ve found.) We started adding seaweed on occasion to our sauerkraut, thinking it would be a good way to add iodine because of the goitrogens found in cruciferous vegetables. We were not alone in thinking this because when I started reading my ‘Fermented Vegetables’ book they mentioned the same thing. “Crucifers (the backbone of the canon of fermented vegetables) contain goitrogens, which some people with hypothyroid conditions should avoid, as the goitrogen suppresses thyroid function. Cooking breaks down goitrogen compounds; fermentation will not” and “Consumption of large quantities of the goitrogens in raw cruciferous vegetables is not recommended for those with a sensitive thyroid. The best way to consume them is fermented with seaweed. It naturally contains iodine, which the body does not produce on it’s own, and which is important for the proper function of the thyroid. Although some say iodine inhibits fermentation, we’ve never had a problem with it, nor do we know anyone else who has.” I thought that was worth mentioning if you eat a lot of sauerkraut.

A few weeks ago Jeff and I turned 40 lbs. of cabbage into 4.5 gallons of sauerkraut. That set the record for the most sauerkraut we had ever made in one sitting. It’s nice to make a lot all at once, but I would probably go for slightly smaller batches in the future- it’s a lot of kraut to pound and the progress wrapped up too late in the day when my gusto for the project was fading. Really happy to have all that sauerkraut though! If you are a kraut lover, making your own can save you a lot of money and could end up being your favorite you’ve ever tasted.

Do any of you make sauerkraut? What are your favorite ways to make it?