How To Make The Easiest Sauerkraut Recipe…With A Kick Of Spice

Homemade sauerkraut is simple to make and delicious. I put it on all kinds of things…burgers, chicken, sausages, as a side and even just by itself. If you don’t like spicy, keep out the pepper!

Ingredients:

1 cabbage (my favorite is napa cabbage)

1 whole carrot

3 serrano peppers or habaneros

Kosher salt with no additives (this is done by weight)

Tools needed:

Cutting board

Sharp knife

Cheese grater

Large mixing bowl

Digital scale that weighs in grams

3 qt mason jar

Fermentation weight or ziplock bag filled with water

How to make it:

Peel the outside layer of the cabbage reserving a leaf for later on in the fermentation process. Cut cabbage into quarters and remove the core. Rough chop the cabbage and place set aside.

Rinse carrot under cold running water, peeling is optional. Carefully grate the carrot on a cheese grater.

Cut the stem end off the serrano pepper and cut into thin strips roughly the same size as the chopped cabbage.

Turn your scale on, set it to grams. Place large mixing bowl on the scale, tare (zero out). Place the cabbage, carrots and peppers into the bowl. Record that weight and multiply it by 2.5% to get the amount of salt needed in grams. Set the bowl aside.

EX: 1301 g ingredients x .0025 = 32.525. I round to the nearest whole number since my scale doesn’t read in grams. Place a ramekin on the scale, tare the scale. Add the allotted amount of salt to the ramekin. In this case is 33 g salt.

Add the salt to the mixing bowl, massage the cabbage like you’re kneading dough. This process will take 3-5 minutes. The kosher salt is more abrasive and bruises the cabbage more than a fine sea salt would. The point of massaging the cabbage is to bruise it slightly and extract the natural water content out. This water is getting salty therefore is our brine that is needed to get the fermentation process started. You should get around 1 c worth of the brine.

Place the ingredients into a 3 qt mason jar. Press down gently with a muddler to get more liquid out of the cabbage. You want there to be enough liquid to cover the ingredients with the brine. It is important to keep the ingredients submerged in an anaerobic environment. This environment lactobacillus thrives in and feeds off the natural sugars on the cabbage, carrots and peppers. This good bacteria lives on the produce, on the skin of the peppers and carrots amongst other things. This bacteria creates lactic acid which is needed to break down and preserve the ingredients, thus this is lacto fermentation.

Once you are done pressing the ingredients down and extracting enough brine to cover the ingredients, place the reserved cabbage leaf on top of the ingredients. If you have a fermentation weight, place it on top of the cabbage leaf. If you don’t have a weight, fill a ziplock bag with water and carefully place on top of the cabbage leaf ensuring that it weighs the ingredients down keeping them under the brine level.

Let ferment for 2-3 weeks on the counter top or in your pantry. Keep away from direct sunlight in a preferred temperature range of 65-75 degrees. You can place a coffee filter over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band. This will keep things from falling in the jar and contaminating your sauerkraut. I taste it at day 3 to see how the fermentation process is going. It should start to taste “tangy” and slightly acidic. It should also have signs of fermentation starting to happen This would be bubbles developing in the brine and on the surface of the cabbage. You can ferment it for longer than 3 weeks if you like it more funky tasting. I have found that it taste great after 3 weeks of fermenting.

Once fermentation is complete, remove the bag from the jar and place a lid on the jar. Keep in the refrigerator. This will keep for 2-3 months if you don’t eat it all sooner. It is delicious and spicy.

Enjoy!

Logan