Homemade Sauerkraut
This is a German-style sauerkraut recipe that I (Amanda) have adapted to my own taste. I use caraway seed, mustard seed, and juniper berries — these flavors combined are my personal favorite, and I could eat it with every meal (and I do sometimes).
The salt to cabbage ratio I use is 20g sea salt per 1 kg shredded cabbage.
I’m sorry to say that I did not precisely measure my spices, just intuitively added a dash each of caraway & mustard seeds, and 3 juniper berries. The juniper taste ended up being very subtle and I wish I’d used 5 instead — however, the juniper berries I had were about a year old…
Start by shredding your cabbage — with a mandoline if you have one, but I was able to get pretty fine shreds with just a large knife.
Then, in a large bowl, sprinkle the sea salt over you cabbage, mixing and squeezing thoroughly with your hands to incorporate the salt and break up the cell walls of the cabbage leaves. The cabbage will start releasing lots of water — that’s good. You might spend about 5-10 minutes working it with your hands.
Once the shreds are pretty limp and you’ve got some liquid collecting in the bottom of the bowl, transfer your cabbage to a large mason jar (I used a half gallon jar and had plenty of room). Use a wooden spool or similar to press the cabbage down into the jar — you want the cabbage to be covered by the cabbage water. If it’s exposed to air, you could end up with mold or other funk. You can use glass fermentation weights if you have them. (An easy way to ‘cheat’ the glass weight thing is to put a sheet of plastic wrap over the top of the jar and push it down inside the jar so that your cabbage is below water — then fill this plastic ‘bowl’ with water, which acts as a weight.)
Put a lid on your jar, but don’t tighten it all the way down (or it might explode!). You want air bubbles to escape during the fermentation process. You may even need to ‘burp’ your jar every day if it’s building up. You may also want to put a large plate under the jar — if your bubbling is very active, it can sometimes cause the water to overflow out of the jar.
Depending on how warm your house/kitchen is, fermentation can take 5-14+ days, maybe even more. Taste it periodically, and when it is sauer to your liking, put it in the fridge to stop the fermentation process.
