Homemade Sauerkraut

We finally took the initiative to learn how to make fermented vegetables. I have read about it for years. The more I read, the more I realized how good this process is for your health, and it is another way to preserve foods. This is our first, well second, but I'll get to that in a minute, batch of fermented cabbage. Let me back up and start with the books I have acquired so far. Here is the beginning of the story.

A few years back, I got this book. I had read little bits here and there over the years about fermented foods, but what I really wanted to be able to do is make a crunchy pickle. How are these two related? Well, I looked up how to brine pickles, and that led to pickle crocks, which led to other things to do with crocks, which led to sauerkraut and fermenting cabbage. So here we are, trying out our first home made sauerkraut. We bought the cabbage since ours is still in the seedling stage. But let me get back to this book and several others that I have bought recently, which include Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods and Real Food Fermentation: Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen.

The more I read about fermented vegetables and their health benefits, the more interested I became in trying them. Then after we changed our eating habits to include less carbohydrates, more nutritional vegetables and better protein sources, I learned more about how fermenting foods such as kefir, sourdough and sauerkraut lowers the carbohydrate content of foods. Thus, the motivation for learning how to ferment vegetables increased even more. An article over at Cultures for Health describes some of these benefits in this article: Low Carb Fermented Foods. "Fermentation occurs when bacteria feasts off of the carbohydrates found in a food. In making kombucha that food is the sugar. In making sourdough bread that food is the flour. In making sauerkraut that food is the carbohydrates in the cabbage. In making yogurt that food is the lactose naturally occurring in milk."

All of my reading and research lead me to use a crock made for fermenting. Some of my fermenting books indicate that there is no need for a special crock, while others recommend it. I chose this kind of crock so I wouldn't have to deal with the scum, or bloom, that typically grows on top of a crock of vegetables and has to be removed periodically. Or that is what I have read anyway. I didn't want to have to guess whether it was the good scum or the bad scum. I was leery enough as it was without wondering if what I had perking away in the crock would make us sick. I liked the idea of having the crock closed. 

A side note here. I found out the hard way to keep sourdough and kefir across the room from each other so their yeasts and bacteria don't have a little competition. The sourdough won at that time, and the kefir just about quit working all together. That meant that a week or so ago when I had all three out 'working', I placed them at the farthest three points on my cabinet that I could. The sourdough ended up stuck in the corner on top of the chicken scrap bucket, but it seemed to work and they all kept perking along.

We have hesitantly wanted to try fermenting vegetables for quite some time. I say hesitantly, because like anything, you have to be careful to produce a healthy instead of a deadly product. There are guidelines to follow when fermenting anything to make sure your finished product is edible, not something that will cause food poisoning. Neither one of us has ever eaten fermented vegetables before, and don't know anyone that does, except through things we have read both in books and on the internet. That goes back to why this isn't the first batch of cabbage we fermented.

 The first batch I started went like this. Chop up the cabbage very fine. Put in a the crock in layers, sprinkling it with salt, and pounding it down to compact it and release some of the juices in the cabbage. I used one full head of cabbage. The crock will hold much more, but it was an experiment, so I didn't want to over do it. I followed the directions in one of the books that said to wait 24 hours, then check and see if the cabbage juices had covered the cabbage and the stones used to weigh it down. There wasn't enough juice, so I added some filtered water, then let it sit and do it's thing for several weeks. The problem I ran into was having baby goats and getting busy with other things. This allowed the

water in the 'moat' to evaporate, thus allowing oxygen to enter the crock. When this happens, as it would if you used an open crock, scum or bloom as some folks call it, forms on top of the liquid. As long as this bloom is white, it is supposed to be okay. You can skim it off and let the cabbage continue to ferment. Well......... I just couldn't bring myself to trust that this was healthy instead of unhealthy bloom. Even though when I opened the crock, outside since I didn't know if the smell would knock me down or smell good, it had a nice tangy smell, we still didn't eat it. I just dumped it out in the garden. Nothing else ate it either, it just sat there.

Then I started another batch of cabbage. This time, after I chopped it up, I put a little in a large stainless steel bowl, sprinkled it with sea salt and pounded the whey out of it with a wooden pestle. I used the pestle the first time, too, but didn't pound it near has hard since I didn't want to break the crock. After 24 hours I was rewarded with a good amount of cabbage juice, but not enough to quite cover everything, so I added some filtered water. Surprisingly to me, it takes about a month for the cabbage to develop a sauerkraut kind of flavor.

We had our first, small helping today. It doesn't taste like sauerkraut you buy in the store since it hasn't been heat treated. Frank said it doesn't taste bad, but it doesn't taste good either. I thought it was pretty good. Crunchy, which I wasn't expecting, tangy, and different, but good. Since our bodies are not used to consuming fermented vegetables, we will go easy on it at first, so we will have time to adjust. I dipped out about a quart for us to eat on, and left the rest in the crock to continue fermenting. This was a recommendation in the books. Since it takes about a month to get to this point, I think I will start a second crock. That will give us a perpetual supply. For now, we will stick to cabbage. Before long though, we will be trying other vegetables as well, things such as turnips, carrots, cucumbers, okra and beets.

This is yet another new food adventure we have embarked on. I'm not sure how successful or long-term it will be, but it is something I thought was worth a try. It is another way to preserve food in a very healthy way. Fermented foods can be kept for years in a cool place according to my research. If this is something we can produce in the summer, when the garden is going great guns, then it will be yet another source of very good nutrition. If you have any information or recommendations for us, we would love to hear them. We learn a great deal from our friends out there in blog world, and appreciate all you regularly share with us. 

Until next time - Fern

Bread & Butter Pickles

Last year we made our first dill pickles with the cucumbers we grew. The recipe we initially used called for a 50/50 ratio of water and white vinegar. The vinegar flavor for that recipe was way too strong, so we tried cider vinegar and changed the ratio to two parts water to one part vinegar. I thought that recipe was good, but Frank just does not like things that sour.

So, with this cucumber harvest, I am trying out a traditional bread and butter pickle recipe. Hopefully, this will result in a pickle that both of us like. We really try to limit the amount of sugar we use in our diet, so I will only use half of the sugar this recipe calls for. That is my standard practice when using many recipes calling for sugar.

This recipe calls for 10 cups of cucumbers. I hope this is enough.

I figured these onions would be the equivalent of four medium onions. I have some I bought at the store, but since these were in the garden, they are the perfect compliment to the fresh cucumbers.

There were just barely 10 cups of cucumbers, but since this is an experimental recipe, this will do.

Next, slice and add the onions.

Now add 1/2 cup of salt and stir.

Cover with cold water and let sit for two hours.









It is a fairly simple recipe - vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed and ground turmeric. The recipe calls for white vinegar. I am using apple cider vinegar because it is not as strong. I think it will be more amenable for Frank.

Put vinegar, sugar and spices on to boil.

Drain the cucumbers and onions, then rinse under cold water.

Add them to the vinegar mixture and bring back to a boil.









I ran the jars, lids and rings through boiling water like we did when we canned beets and carrots. Then we filled the jars with hot cucumbers, covered them with boiling vinegar, wiped the rims of the jars, put on lids and rings and tighten them down snug. We put them on a shelf and covered them with a towel so they would cool slowly and seal.

The first year or so I canned peppers and squash relish, I always ran them through the water bath canner like the directions recommended. Everything was always soft and mushy and we didn't like it. I didn't want to add any artificial, chemical crunch enhancer so I asked some friends what they did. Several people said that they didn't use the water bath. They pack hot vegetables into hot jars, cover with boiling liquid, tighten the lids down tight, cover with a cloth so they will cool slowly and let them seal. It took me a few years, but that is how we do some of our canning now. We have used this technique on jalapenos and it works quite well. But again, it is not recommended. 

Once again...aren't they beautiful? 

Since this is another first time experiment, we hope they taste good and that Frank likes them better than the ones we made last summer. 

Well, a few weeks later we tried the pickles. Frank said they were okay, but I think they are awful. A couple of friends came over for lunch and were gracious enough to try them even after I told them I did not like them at all. The advice I got was use less salt - they were too salty. So I am wondering if I didn't rinse them well enough, or it's just too much salt. Another comment was, they were expecting a sweeter flavor since they were bread and butter pickles, even though they knew I had used half the sugar.

Another good learning experience. I may try this recipe again with less salt and a little more sugar. Try something new today. If it works, you have learned something and it is great. If it doesn't work, you have learned something and you try again. And again. And again.  

And by the way, one of our young, Easter egg hens laid their first green egg today! We are excited. More about them later.

Until next time - Fern.