Homemade sauerkraut is more than just delicious, it’s actually enormously healthful. For lovers of homemade food everywhere, this basic recipe can be your guide to experimenting with kraut adventures. While kraut has the reputation of being a German food, it’s actually just the German name for the simple brine fermentation that is a common practice of preserving vegetables in cultures throughout the world. Pickles and kimchee are other examples, for instance.
If you love the crunchy, tangy taste of sauerkraut, you’re actually tapping into an ancient tastebud tradition. Fermented vegetables have been in the human diet for thousands of years! Our ancestors were working in harmony with the microbial environment to preserve food with fermentation, and without the aid of a refrigerator, probably even before the advent of fire.
And yet, in the past few generations (you can thank Louis Pasteur for this), we have erased the actual TRUE goodness of sauerkraut and its brethren from the modern American diet. You see, the sauerkraut and pickles you buy in the store have been heat processed, and so robbed of many of the valuable micro nutrients our bodies have thrived on for eons.
But the good news is, you can easily remedy this grave gastric injustice right in your very own kitchen. You can stage a silent coup of the industrial food monopoly in a jar or crock of your own design. So far, there are no food police, so you’re still allowed to enjoy delicious food of made in the privacy of your subversive culinary habitat. And it’s so easy.
Wild Fermentation - How fermented food can change the world
I have to give a shout out to my friend Mike Clark for turning me on to this wonderful book. Wild Fermentation not only tells you how to make kraut from scratch, it chronicles the makings of dozens of fermented culinary delights that anyone can master. This book is more than just a great DIY guide, it’s a manifesto for health, wellness, and whole food, free from industrial processing. Wild Fermentation encourages us to take control of our own diets and take back our culinary history from the powerful food industry that perpetuates our separation from the grounding, life-giving forces of nature.
Everything I learned about sauerkraut I learned from this book by Sandor Ellis Katz. And, yes, I admit it freaked me out at first to be eating something that had been sitting at room temperature for several days. But overcoming my fear has paid off big time. Now there is not a day that a crock of kraut is not seasoning in some corner of my kitchen.
Sauerkraut recipe
A pictoral step-by-step of kraut making.
In this recipe I used equal parts red and green cabbage, plus I added some lovely fresh, local beet greens.
Chop the cabbage and greens into bite-sized pieces.
After producing a thick layer of chopped veggies, sprinkle some sea salt. No need to measure. But err on the light side. A good rule of thumb is about one tablespoon per cabbage head.
Continue until all your vegetables are chopped. Then mix them up, distributing the salt throughout.
Pack the vegetables tightly into a jar or crock. I use a wooden spoon or mallet (intended for meat tenderizing). The crushing of the leaves helps the salt to penetrate the vegetables and draw out the water.
Choose a lid that will fit very snugly inside the crock or jar. A bit of space is allowable, but you want to be sure to keep ALL the vegetables submerged under the brine. You’ll also want to weigh down the lid with a heavy rock or another jar filled with water.
Use a snug fitting lid with a weight,
or use a tightly fitting jar filled with water
to weigh down the kraut below the brine level.
Here I use a tupperware lid,
and weigh it down with a
boiled rock from Lake Michigan!
Press down the weight every few hours or so until you you are assured that water has risen above the vegetables. It can take up to 24 hours for the salt to completely leech the water from the vegetables. If after 24 hours there’s still not enough water to cover the veggies, you’ll want to add a bit of brine. Use 1 tablespoon of salt, completely dissolved, per cup of water.
The brine should be over your lid,
and no veggies showing!
This can take up to 24 hours.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that your lid is snug enough that NO VEGETABLES are floating to the top. Vegetables MUST stay submerged, or you are going to invite the wrong kind of bacteria into your crock - and the result will just be putrid vegetables rather than fermented kraut. (You’ll know from the smell, trust me. And nothing is sadder than having to throw out your lovingly chopped cabbage that never got the chance to fulfill its nutritive potential.)
Leave your crock ajar, but cover it with a towel to keep out dust (or cat hair!)
So now you wait. Don’t seal the crock. Leave it open a crack. You will want to cover it with a clean dish towel to keep dust out, but allow air to circulate. Each day or so you may want to check your crock to be sure all is well. The water has a tendency to evaporate if your home is very dry or the weather is warm. After day four or five you can remove the weight and lid and sample your kraut. I’ve found that day ten to twelve (here in winter in Michigan) is when I find it “perfect” - I then take out a big handful to put it in the fridge to enjoy. I carefully repack the crock, submerging the cabbage and weighing it down, to let the remaining kraut season even further, creating new taste variations as it ages.
Kraut around my house never lasts past week three, as we eat it pretty quickly, but you can continue to store it under brine for many weeks in cool weather. Of course in hot weather the kraut will mature more quickly.
Finished purple kraut
So that’s it! Pretty simple! I like to add my kraut to a sandwich of steamed kale, mustard, and tahini on rye bread for a lovely vegetarian ruben. It’s also amazing on sausages. Or just straight out of the jar! My roommate and I love to just eat a bowl of it when it has finally reached maturity..sort of a little kraut celebration, an epicurean tribute to the wonders of home fermenting!
I’ve experimented with combinations of cabbages and greens - probably my favorite combo being a spicy pink kraut I accomplished by combing four heads of green cabbage, one head of red cabbage, two large bunches of mustard greens, and four tablespoons of mustard seeds.
Makings of spicier kraut
Feel free to experiment! Add garlic and peppercorns. Spinach and kale. Get creative! Enjoy!
I’m trying my best to eat less convenience foods. So, rather than cracking open a plastic package of something with unpronounceable additives ($3.50 at the local food factory), I’m trying instead to put a little imagination behind the basic ingredients in my pantry. I know that with a little effort I can whip up something with more flavor and nutrition (and at a lower cost!) than anything the food industry can provide on a shelf!
This is not an intimidating task involving years of practice, study, and a dozen cookbooks. It’s just a matter of diving in.
Take, for instance, this morning’s banana bread. Now, I used to think that baking was a science. I believed would-be cooks had to have the exact ingredients, in the right proportions, added in just the right way, or the end result would be a disaster. I’m hear to tell you: NOT SO!! You can be just as adventurous with baking as any other kind of cooking.
Banana bread is a great example. Some recipes will say: “Take 3 to 4 bananas…”
Ummm, ok. Is that three or four? Big bananas or little ones? Define the exact size of said banana - right?
Then there is the egg thing. They rarely say what SIZE egg. What happens if I put two large eggs and they wanted two small ones? Should I just use one Jumbo egg?
What’s a conscientious baker to do?
CREATIVE BAKING
I say: Improvise! For instance, this morning I referenced this banana bread recipe, but only had one banana. So I sort of winged it with my proportions. For the egg, I used enough egg replacer for about 1/2 an egg, then I added about 2/3 less sugar than the recipe called for, and I also put in half whole wheat flour instead of all white. PLUS, I just lumped all the ingredients together and mushed them up with my hands instead of first mixing in the sugar with banana, then adding flour, etc.
I also put the batter into little mini soufflé pans rather than a bread pan. I cooked them on 350 until they looked done (maybe 25 minutes?).
BAKING EXPERIMENT - THE MOMENT OF TRUTH!
The result? Lovely little individual banana breads, perfect for Saturday morning coffee.
So my point is, BE BRAVE! Experiment! EVEN with baking!!! Make foods from the whole ingredients in your pantry, and over time you’ll be surprised at how much money you can save AND how delicious and satisfying the fruits of your culinary adventures can be!
Well, it’s always a challenge to make something 100% organic, but I think I succeeded this time with these yummy breakfast muffins! Even my Earth Balance Margarine was organic! This yummy recipe was from adorable Kittee Kake’s all-vegan website: Cake Maker to the Stars. She calls these muffins “Scotter’s muffins” after their creator. Kittee also has an amazing ‘zine loaded with tips. If you visit her site (which I encourage you to do!), you may note that Kittee’s muffins look far more fun and appetizing than my own, as they are perky pink. I decided to opt out of the food coloring, figuring this may ruin the whole “all natural” effect I was going for!
The Review
I’ve been very curious to experiement with Vegan baking, as it seems that after I sample some vegan goodie I am usually thinking: “well, this isn’t bad for a vegan cookie…” Like it’s good in spite of itself. But I believe these muffins officially escape the vegan stigma, being great enough to stand on their own! In fact, I fed them to coworkers and did not tell them until later. People seemed pretty surprised.
The strawberries infused this little muffin with a delectable moistness, and the coconut added a great nutty quality, and just a bit of richness, without tasting at all like coconut. Super yum.
One thing I would recommend to mitigate any heaviness that the whole wheat pastry flour might cause: I added a 1/4 cup of vital gluten flour to substitute for a 1/4 cup of the wheat pastry flour. This makes baked goods more spongy. Also, next time I will soak the strawberries in some agave syrup, since the were a little tart in the muffin I ate.
To Vegan or not to Vegan
Now is a good time to state my position on vegetarianism: I can not claim to be vegan or even vegetarian, as I do occasionally eat animals (especially fish), and animal products (especially cheese) but I feel that knowing what I do about factory farming’s impact on animals and the environment, I should be trying my damnedest to only buy animal products from local, family farms (for which I am limited by season at the moment, with farmer’s market season kicking off next month). And while one could argue that cheese is not especially cruel to the environment, you can’t always be sure where your cheese is coming from (once again, the factory farm thing, not to mention icky hormone infused milk products). Plus, it has been shown that people who eat only vegetable matter are less prone to obesity and many diseases, so in the interest of my health and the health of the environment, I try.
I find that the general public seems to get a little nervous if I mention something about eating vegan. I think it’s because they fear I am judgemental, so I want to really emphasize that I am not in any way prostelytizing that anyone should do the same. Vegan to me is more of an aspiration, something I strive to do and allow myself some slips. Just a personal challenge for me to try to tame my consumption patterns to more closely fit my ideals (the same goes for shopping and recycling — just trying to meet the contant challenge to live my life free of the pressure to consume/waste that seems to permeate my culture). And I view this blog as a fun way to help me meet my aspirations.
Well, it’s spring time in Michigan. It’s been difficult to get excited about it, since nature has pulled some cruel tricks, dumping snow past the solstice. But today I am willing to believe: spring is really here! Sunshine is streaming through the kitchen windows and crocuses have poked their colorful heads through the unfrozen soil of my dormant flowerbeds. Another sign of spring: English peas and asparagus are debuting at the markets, and my mind is abuzz with bright green menu plans!
But first, here it is Sunday morning. Need fortifying vittles for this last day of my weekend. Hopefully with leftovers, so Monday can go a little smoother. Looking in the pantry for something to inspire, my eyes land on the big bag of Arborio rice I keep for risotto.
PREPARATION POINTERS
Simple enough: Boiled the rice with soy milk, tossed in some diced organic pears, a stick of cinnamon, organic sugar, vanilla, some walnuts, and voila: a hearty, tasty breakfast porridge!
This concoction was inspired by The Complete Vegan Cookbook’s recipe for rice pudding, and takes near constant stirring for the latter 5-10 minutes of cooking.
A NOTE ABOUT INGREDIENTS:
- Sugar: Florida Crystals are the only organic sugar produced in the US. If you can’t find it at your grocer, complain! Or at least try to buy fair trade sugar (available at most food co-ops).
- Arborio rice: This is the best rice to use for puddings because of its creamy consistency. While some wild rice is grown in Michigan, most of the US rice crop comes from California, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. Arborio rice in particular is usually imported from Italy, but Della Rice of Arkansas produces a superior Arborio variety, milling their products in small batches - usually available at quality grocers.
- Soy Milk: I prefer to use Eden Soy, since the milk is organically produced in Michigan, the company was founded in Ann Arbor, and they have a strong commitment to local agriculture.
- Pears: After generations of insecticide-enabled production, Michigan has recently been producing organic pears, thanks to advances in organic pest control! Before 2002, the pesky pear-killing insect known as psylla necessitated harsh chemicals to allow the fruit to grow.
