sauerkraut

filed under:
cabbage

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This is Farmer Mark Rempel’s recipe for sauerkraut! I’ve just made it for myself. Mark told me that it would take around five weeks to complete, so I figured I’d better get started… but today I stirred it up after the first week, and it tasted SO good--fresh, but salty and fermented and yummy… that I decided to stop it after only one week!  I popped it into ziplock freezer bags and froze it!

You can buy cases of cabbage from most of the vendors at the farmers’ market, and sometimes farmers will be willing to give or sell you split heads of cabbage cheaply. The cabbages are so fresh and sweet and full of moisture right now—the perfect time to make sauerkraut! Then you can make delicious sandwiches (like Reuben sandwiches—using pastrami or roasted mushrooms), or eat it with sausages or as a side dish. 

Check out our YouTube video for the step-by-step process!

I’ve given you the recipe to fill a 5-gallon bucket, but you can make a smaller amount if you want, using the proportions I’ve shown, below.

sea salt or kosher salt
16-17 pounds of green cabbage (this amount will fill a 5-gallon bucket)

1. Clean out a 5-gallon bucket very well. If you don’t have a food-grade bucket, clean it and then line it with a sturdy plastic food-grade bag.
2. Wash your hands thoroughly. It’s important to keep your hands and equipment very clean when you’re making sauerkraut, because it is made by fermentation at room temperature, and you don’t want to introduce contaminants to the process.
3. Quarter each cabbage, cut the core out, and then shred the cabbage, using a food processor and a fairly thin slicing blade. (Or you can do this by hand, if you like.)
4. Weigh the cabbage, so you know how much salt to add. For each pound of cabbage, you’ll need 1 ½ teaspoons of salt. Measure the salt you’ll need into a small bowl.
5. Layer the cabbage into the bucket, sprinkling each layer with salt as you go.
6. As it sits, the salt will take most of the water out of the cabbage—so much will come out that it will cover the cabbage with briny liquid! 
7. Leaving the bag containing the cabbage open at the top, folded down over the top of the bucket (or just leaving the bucket open, if you didn’t line it with plastic), put a double-bagged bag of water on top of the cabbage. This bag of water keeps the cabbage submerged in the briny liquid, but it also lets the carbon dioxide that results from the fermentation escape around the edges. It’s a perfect fitting top!
8. Let it ferment in your house at about 70 degrees. Stir it once a week, tasting every week! I stopped mine after just a week, but Mark lets his go for about 5 weeks to complete the fermentation. Just taste and see, and decide when you want to stop it from getting any more sour. 
9. Take the sauerkraut out of the bucket and pack it into ziplock freezer bags and pop it in the freezer!