One of my Facebook followers asked for my sauerkraut recipe when I mentioned I was making a bottle of sauerkraut in preparation for the SNAP Challenge my family and I are doing starting Saturday the 20th. In a nutshell, we are going to try to eat for an entire week on just $29.49 per person. For our family of three that is a little under $90 for the whole week. I am amazed at how much work is going into planning all of this so I can still feed my family whole, nourishing meals. I will try to post more about it here, but you can follow along with me on my facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DoctorCorinne

My recipe:

About 2 pounds of green or red cabbage. (I generally go for all organic in our house, but for the SNAP Challenge I had to keep costs really low, so since cabbage is one of the clean 15 I got non-organic green cabbage for .89 cents a pound.)

Remove the core and cut the cabbage into chunks

2 teaspoons of salt per pound of cabbage (so in this case I used 6 teaspoons of salt)

We like dill in our sauerkraut, so I added about 1 teaspoon of dill per pound. Dillicious!

Directions:

Rinse cabbage in clean water (I like to soak my cabbage for 5 or 10 minutes just in case there is anything living in there. The water encourages them to leave.)

Remove outer leaves if they don’t look crisp and healthy.

Core the cabbage and cut into useable chunks.

Cutting cabbage in the food processor.

I have a food processor so I put the cutting blade on and use that to cut up my cabbage super quickly. You can also use a knife.

Squeezing the cabbage and salt mixture. Look at all that brine!

I like to put the cabbage into a plastic tub and add the sea salt then I squeeze the cabbage and salt together with freshly washed hands. Very quickly you will get a briney liquid that comes out as the salt breaks down the cabbage’s cell walls.

After you have massaged your cabbage for about 5 minutes put it into a wide mouthed glass quart jar and press the cabbage down under the brine. I like to weight the cabbage down with something: very well washed rocks work or plastic bags of water or glass fermentation weights are also excellent. You don’t have to use a weight, but it often helps to keep the cabbage under the brine. This part is key: make sure all the cabbage is under the brine so none pokes out and goes bad.

I then loosely cap the bottle and place it on a shelf in a cupboard where it won’t be disturbed but where I will see it and be able to ‘burp’ it daily. Burping means I loosen the cap a bit to make sure no gas builds up and makes the sauerkraut overflow as it is working its magic. I usually like to keep it in the cupboard until I smell the sauerkraut as I walk in the house. That may be a little strong for you. I suggest tasting a tiny bit (taken out with a clean utensil) after day 3 of fermentation and when it is at your perfect ‘doneness’ putting it in the fridge to halt the processes. It will keep fermenting, but at a much slower rate.