Home made organic sauerkraut
96 oz of fresh, organic sauerkraut for $6, versus a 16 oz container for $6. The choice is yours!
Sauerkraut is a delicious, probiotic filled superfood. This article from Natural News talks about the mighty Kraut as something like the Godfather of fermented foods, used by sailors, packed with vitamins, excellent for Vegans. Side note, my embedded spell checker recognizes “antibiotic” as a word but not “probiotic.” If that just doesn’t show you what’s wrong with the world I don’t know what will. 
Here are the start to finish pictures of this project on our Facebook page. We started on June 5th and were ready to serve on July 3rd. We used three large heads of cabbage, about $2 each, and the final product was three, 32 oz jars of kraut. We saved $30, and didn’t create any trash, except the cabbage leaves that went into the compost. We make this regularly now – always have a crock going.
Some notes before you start:
Only use fresh, organic cabbage. The cabbage has all the good bacteria for fermenting already on it. Do not use non-organics! You don’t need fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, and any other “ides” in your diet, and fresh, organic cabbage should give you the highest population of beneficial bacteria that does the actual fermenting. Salt is used to inhibit the growth of the bad bacteria. Salt with iodine inhibits bacterial growth, so use the types of salt listed in the recipe.
Some recipes show you how to do “low salt” but I’ve never tried that. If you use fresh cabbage you will probably not need to add any water. The salt will suck the water out of the cabbage to make the brine. If the cabbage is not covered over with brine after a day, add some. About a teaspoon of salt per cup of water.
Some sites that say to add starter culture are usually selling starter culture. I’ve never done this, but I don’t know why you’d need to if you use organic cabbage.
You will need:
- A fermenting jar or crock
- The crock system normally comes with stones to hold down the veggies – you may need to supplement this with a plate, jar of water, etc
- Natural salt – sea salt, kosher salt, or pickling salt, about 3 tablespoons per 5 pounds of cabbage. For us this was about 3 large heads.
- Cabbage – 3 heads is about perfect for our crock
- Jars to store finished product. Mayonnaise jars are typically 32 oz.
Basic process:
- Shred the cabbage. You can use a Mandolin slicer or a knife. I use a knife and prefer large cut, chunky kraut. The thickness will impact the fermenting time.
- Put the cabbage into your crock and salt each layer as you put it in. Smash it down and pack it with your fist. Continue adding layers and salt until it’s all in the container.
- Weigh it down with the stones, plate, and optionally the jar of water. You want to cabbage to remain submerged during fermenting.
- Wait. Our last batch took about a month. Since it’s just salty cabbage you can taste test it the whole time and figure out when it has the right sourness and crispy texture for your taste buds.
What I’m doing differently now.
- I weigh down the crock stones with a ceramic dish and a jar of water. The jar with the metal lid started to corrode (from the acidity of the air?) – I will use a plastic lid next time, since the jar doesn’t touch the food. You can see this in the FB pics.
- I used to use a cup of ‘starter juice’ from the last batch, I guess to jump-start the new batch and ferment faster. The problem is that I ended up with a lot of Kahm yeast to scrape off. With this batch from scratch, no yeast to remove at all. If you get Kahm, you literally just scrape it off. There are pics on google images and on our Facebook cooking album.
- Not trying to ferment any other vegetables in the same batch. We’ve had mixed success doing this, everything from sloggy cucumbers to rock hard beets. Mixing things also changed the flavor of the kraut in a way that I didn’t like. Solution? We bought a second fermenting jar that we’ll use for other stuff. I still add onions, pepper and garlic, just for taste.
Happy eating!
Home made organic sauerkraut by Brad Rowland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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I saw a brilliant idea for holding down the vegs on Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s site – place a plastic zip top bag of water on top of your lacto-fermenting goodies. I’m trying it with my current batch of cucumber pickles.
great tip thanks Rachel. i will try that in my next batch in the big ceramic crock and i’ll probably put the water bag on top of the flat stones.
i just got a new fermenting crock from pickl-it.com that solves the problem differently, and also may be good for fermenting on the road in the rv/bus. i loaded that one up tonight so we’ll see what happens.
what kind of fermenter do you use?
Hey Rachel I tried the zip lock water bag and it worked well. i decided i didn’t want it directly on the food so i set it on my plate and flat stones – worked like a charm. i didn’t need it the whole time, just the first couple of days when i have a problem with the bubbles pushing the kraut up out of the brine.
thanks for the tip.
Wow Brad, that’s a real bargain – you’ve saved money and are healthy and eco-friendly as well! You’ve explained the process really well so anyone can do it, and I like that you can regularly taste test to suit your own requirements.
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Thanks Clare. To add to that, i actually find ‘real’ sauerkraut quite delicious and a good compliment to other foods. I think my wife was surprised how much she liked it, after having had overcooked, stored in a can for a year, ‘phoney-kraut’ when she was younger.
Do you make any fermented foods, or do you have plans to?
Big difference in price – who said eating healthy has to be expensive?
I was astonished to find that I liked homemade sauerkraut, having thought that I didn’t generally like it. Who knew that what I didn’t like was actually ‘phoney-kraut,’ just like your wife. I’m really hoping to branch out this year and start fermenting and pickling veggies other than cucumbers and cabbage. I love pickled veggies and there’s no reason I can’t be making my own on a regular basis!
From Dour Kraut to Power Kraut!
Yum! I have this thing where I have to eat something wild and something fermented each day.
Have you read Sandor Katz’s book Wild Fermentation? I realized after reading that book that our food culture lacks fermented foods, and so we don’t get the probiotics and vitamin Bs, among other things.
So keep on spreading the fermented love!
That’s a great book. Also I find that when I eat fermented food every day, especially sauerkraut, I seem to burn through or digest my food much faster.
Hey Mil – have you done any (or planning on) any fermenting outside the standard kraut/kimchi stuff? Like the kraut with kefir recipes, or kefir fermenting veggies, anything like that?
And I forgot to ask the last time you posted, any honey fermented drinks? Mead?
Brad,
I took a fermentation class and a cheese class with Ruby Blume. We made sodas, a kraut with veggies the students brought, and kombucha, not to mention cheeses and yogurt in the other class.
Ruby told us you can use the whey from kefir as a starter for the sodas, but why not kraut?
I’ve made coconut kefir at home extensively, but have been very curious about mead, especially with our bees!
Also, I’ve always wanted to make kombucha with honey, but was told it wouldn’t work. So, what did they do back in the day before sugar was invented, I wonder?
I’ve always loved sauerkraut. I’m seriously thinking about starting to try to make my own, thanks so much for the info on the process, I’m sure it will come in handy.
hi – it’s super easy, and tastes about a billion times better than anything i’ve bought at the store. start with the simplest recipe, cabbage and salt. then you can add carrots, garlic, peppers, etc. good luck!
Great article! One question. How long would you say the kraut lasts in those jars (assuming it isn’t eaten) and will the kraut continue to “work” or “mature” once the jars are capped? Ok…that was two questions. Thanks alot for the great site!
Hi Dave – although that should be a really simple question to answer, i couldn’t find any solid info on it. in our house the kraut never lasts that long, although we have had some in the frig in jars for like two months and it tasted fine.
i looked around on some of the sites where people ferment in 5 gallon buckets, because you KNOW they’re not going to be able to eat several 5 gallon buckets of kraut very quickly, or keep them in the frig. i saw comments like, “lasts a very long time” which isn’t a helpful answer. the people doing large batch fermentation are keeping the kraut in the container in the basement and just keeping an airlock on it so i guess it continues to ferment, but slowly. one article said they have kept their that way for up to six months.
you can also investigate canning, which should make it last “forever” but we’ve never done canning so i can’t comment.
if you look at the Pickl-it site http://www.pickl-it.com/ they sell full size fermenters, and also small containers with airlocks for longer term storage.
you may also want to check out the forums at http://www.wildfermentation.com – Sandor Katz site.
i think if you’re doing small batches you should be fine in the fridge for a couple of months. we use old mayonnaise jars like in the pic above and that works for us with four people in the house.
Awesome. Thanks for the links and I’ll also check my Ball Blue canning book and see what they say.
Cool – hey if you find something please post back here or send me an email and I’ll update the article. I’m sure lots of other people probably have the same question.
If i ever planned more than a week at a time i would probably have the question myself….