Sauerkraut

We've been eating more seasonally and going to the local farmers' markets on the weekend to source most of our ingredients for the week. That's been great in the summer and fall. But as winter now takes hold, things get a little more bare out there. The only thing to do is to embrace what humans have been doing for centuries: preserve!

The easiest thing to start with seemed like a nice sauerkraut. We had made a smaller version (only about a pint) earlier, but armed with a modest degree of experience we paid a visit to the local restaurant supply store and picked up two food-grade plastic prep dishes. These fit inside one another perfectly and added up to a great leap ahead of the glass jars we had been using previously.

The process is pretty straight-forward: Take as many cabbages as you can stand, shred them, then toss with a good couple pinches of salt per head. Then pack the shredded cabbage into the (very clean) vessel. By pack, I mean literally punch, beat, or otherwise compress the cabbage down on itself. I used the end of our rolling pin to accomplish this, but I think in the future I would use something with a little more surface area. After they're packed, the second jar slides into the first and a weight is added to press down onto the cabbage.

The salt will slowly draw the water out of the cabbage, which will form a brine that the leaves will be submerged in. The weight keeps the leaves under the brine and out of the mold-zone. For four large heads, I got a little over 2.5 litres of packed kraut.

Tomorrow I'm moving it into the basement for a month. I'll be sure to include updates.