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Ingredients
- 5 pounds fresh, organic cabbage - shredded (reserve a few clean outer leaves)
- 3 tablespoons sea salt
Details
Preparation time 30mins
Preparation
Step 1
Find some nice fresh healthy green cabbage. Remove any outer leaves that are damaged or are wilted. Core the cabbage. The easiest way to do this is to first cut the cabbage in half just to one side of the stem. Then cut the piece with the stem in half again just to one side of the stem. One more cut down the side of the stem should take the core right out.
Slice the cabbage into sliver thin shreds.
Combine the shredded cabbage and sea salt in a big bowl. Stir. Taste and ensure it tastes like salty cabbage -- still pleasant but a bit on the salty side.
Weigh this cabbage. If you have more than 5 pounds, separate out 5 pounds and place in a large bowl. Mix in 3 T salt. Mix well, tossing and getting the salt spread out as evenly as possible. Do this again with your next 5 pounds of cabbage. You want to mix in 3 T salt for every 5 pounds of cabbage.
Cover the bowl with cheesecloth or a light cloth and let it sit for 30 minutes or an hour to get juicy. (The salt will begin pulling moisture out of the cabbage.)
Pack well into a clean 1-gallon crock to ⅔ or ¾ full.
I like to pat it down firmly with my hand to remove as much air as possible. On top of EACH layer, I sprinkle some of the pickling salt. Alternate Cabbage and the salt until your crock is almost full.
Once my layers started getting higher, I used the bottom of a coffee cup to firmly pack the Cabbage down. I want as little air in there as possible.
Place cabbage leaves on the top of the mixture, followed by the weights. Once you’ve got your Cabbage and salt layered in the crock, tear some plastic wrap and place it on top, tightly tucking it down the sides if possible. I ended up tearing more plastic wrap and just jamming it around the edge of the crock. Now take a plastic freezer bag 3/4 full of cold water and set that directly on top of the plastic wrap. The bag will find any open areas and sit on top of it, hopefully removing ALL air at the top.
Put the cover on your crock and leave it alone for a couple of weeks. Check inside the crock a few times in the first 24 hours to ensure that the cabbage has released enough juice to rise above the cabbage leaves by about an inch (so the sauerkraut is completely submerged).
If there is a scum on top, take a spoon and carefully remove it. Make sure you put fresh plastic wrap on top. After it has stopped fermenting, it will be ready for canning.
For fermenting, you want a temperature of 68 – 72F.
In about a week, check the sauerkraut to see if it's done. It should be salty, sour, crunchy and transformed from cabbage to kraut! (See video above for texture example.)
You can eat right away or let it age more in cold storage.
Enjoy!
Hot Water Bath CANNING
Place your jars in the Boiling Water Bath and once the water comes back to a boil, set your timer for 15 minutes for pints or processing time for quarts would be 25 minutes.
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