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!
Few acts of cooking are more satisfying than removing a perfect loaf of golden brown, yeasty hot bread from the oven.
Bread has come a long way. Having been in the human diet since the dawn of civilization, with the yeast that creates its leavening power carefully cultivated and passed down through families, all the way to today - where scientists isolate and improve yeast strains for mass commercial production, and bread aficionados possess machines that knead and bake the perfect loaf.
USING YEAST - THE EASY WAY OUT
As a slow food enthusiast, I am currently deep in study of traditional bread making, and am currently nurturing a sourdough starter in a tucked-away corner of my kitchen. But this week was Thanksgiving, and my starter was not yet ready (cold weather rendering its evolution a bit on the slow side). Rather than buy bread, I really wanted to make some. Equipped with a little jar of yeast from the bulk foods store, I perused my recipe collection for a process that would seamlessly fit into my already busy cooking schedule. I stumbled upon an amazingly simple recipe - so easy I felt a bit guilty as though I were cheating. Yet, my guilt was mixed with the pride that comes from making your own staples.
LAST CHANCE FOR HOME-GROWN HERBS
Even though it’s frequently freezing in SE Michigan this time of year, I still have some hearty herbs hanging on in my kitchen garden. They likely won’t last long, so I wanted to make use of them for the holiday meal - perhaps the last meal they will flavor before Spring gives them new life.
Armed with fresh rosemary, thyme, and sage, I set about adapting the recipe for No-Knead Whole Wheat Herb Bread from Vegan Vittles, a popular recipe book for vegan standards. Except that I used real milk, having procured an excellent local source of high-quality, grass-fed milk, which I suppose make this recipe a bit blasphemous. I am sure it works fantastically with rice or soy milk, for those who are inclined.
MY ADAPTED RECIPE
1 1/2 cups milk (regular or soy for vegan version)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup atta, white, or chick pea flour
1/2 small white or yellow onion, minced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs or 2 tablespoons dried herbs (of your choice)
Heat the milk on med-high, to just before boiling (little bubbles will begin to appear on the edge). Turn off the heat and dissolve the sugar and salt in the milk, and add the oil. allow it to cool to luke warm.
In a big bowl, dissolve the active yeast in the warm water. Add your milk mixture and mix in your flour, onions, and herbs. Mix well with a wooden spoon until well incorporated. This dough will be much “softer” than the dough you are used to kneading. More like a batter, really.
Cover the bowl with a clean, damp tea towel or cheese cloth and allow it to rise in a warm place for about an hour (I have a shelf high above my stove where I place my dough; it’s pretty toasty up there).
The dough will have almost doubled in size when you come back. Right about now you’ll want to turn on the oven to 350 to preheat. Stir up the dough again for ten minutes or so. Then turn the dough into a bread pan that you have coated or misted with olive oil. Let the dough rest for about 15 minutes. Bake the loaf for about an hour, until it’s a lovely golden brown color.
DAY-OLD BREAD
Of course bread is best fresh from the oven. But with this bread, it’s especially good the next day, re-heated, as the herbs have infused the bread even more. I recommend enjoying with a pat of butter. If you happen to have any left after day two (unlikely), this bread makes excellent croutons for soup or salad - simply cube and crisp in the oven with a spritz of oil and dash of salt or Parmesan.
It’s important to remember that, unless you have a convection oven, your bread is going to be a little heavier and moister than what you buy commercially. But much more delicious!
Ask me if I’d like some carrot soup and, like most people, I’d answer, “uhh…what are my other options? ” But all that has changed since I discovered this recipe!
I’ve realized in recent months that I was throwing away too much food, so I’m trying to be more disciplined and efficient with what’s on hand. This week I had a big bag of baby carrots, just sitting there, waiting for inspiration. I had not much else in the way of vegetables, either. And true to my mandate to stick with what’s in my fridge, I decided to try to find some way to use those little suckers.
RECIPE BOOK COLLECTION TO THE RESCUE
I use carrots in vegetable soups and salads, but don’t really have any tricks up my sleeve for highlighting them. To the rescue - the always entertaining Isa Chandra Moskowitz, creator of the PPK (Post Punk Kitchen). Whether you’re vegan or not, you’ve gotta love Isa’s style and her cookbooks, just loaded with thoughtful alternatives, enlightening suggestions and inspiration to be creative.
From her book Vegan with a Vengeance I found her recipe for Carrot Bisque. I noted I luckily had all the ingredients on hand — this one calls for a can of coconut milk (I keep a couple of cans from Trader Joe’s tucked away for Thai curry emergencies). So i was all set! I varied the recipe a bit - hers called for curry powder and I just made my own little curry with cumin, red pepper, garam masala and ginger. (Curry is actually a combination of spices that varies from region to region, and even family to family, in India, so I rarely keep the nebulously titled “curry powder” around - instead opt to make impromptu variations.)
CURRY SOUP?! WE HAVE A WINNER!
I have to say the sweet nutty richness of the coconut milk, with the spice of the pepper and cumin, made this a truly complex, satisfying and memorable soup. HIGHLY recommended! (I actually just bought more carrots today, an extra big bag, with plans to pair it with that last can of coconut milk waiting patiently in the pantry.)
COMPLETING THE MEAL
But the challenge was not over! I had to make the soup part of a complete winter-night meal. I had some cooked chick peas that needed to be used or they were going to riot their way right into the garbage can. So I whipped up a little crowd-pleasing hummus, adding cumin to bridge the gap between the two dishes. It was actually a great meal, receiving favorable views from the assembled diners - myself included.
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!
