Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Making Sauerkraut

Let's make some sauerkraut...

You'll need some equipment - which my neighbors Mr. & Mrs. B have.  This is a crock and a stomper...  

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I think the 10 on the side of this crock means it's a 10 gallon.

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Mrs. B picked up 9 heads of cabbage... they are huge!  That's my Big knife and those are quart size jars.

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Mrs. B had already cleaned off the bad leaves and then peeled off some of the outer leaves to use when we are finished... she was all business with her knife.

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This is a wonderful old 3 blade mandolin to shred the cabbage.

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Mrs. B and I got started but we were sure glad to see Mr. B come home.  I don't think either of us could have shredded those last 3 heads.

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Shred the cabbage - put it in the crock...

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Add salt and mix around the first layer

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Then you 'stomp' with the stomper... which breaks down the fiber of the cabbage - releases juice which mixes with the salt... which helps draw more liquid from the cabbage... and on it goes.... shred, fill, salt, stomp...Sauerkraut 101 008

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You can see the puddle of juice...

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When you are finished filling the crock and stomping it's time to top it off with the cabbage leaves you saved.

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I layered the leaves around - tucking them in around the edges and pushing the cabbage down into the juice as I go.

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This is a big flat stone that they use on top - yes everything has been well sanitized (they've used these rocks for years)

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And then a big heavy stone to keep the cabbage under the liquid.

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Then we tied two layers of cheese cloth around the top to keep bugs out...

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This will sit for 6 weeks fermenting...

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There was about a 1/4 of a head left that we didn't shred - so that came home with me.Sauerkraut 101 029

It got chopped up and cooked down with some onion and Smoked Sausage and we called it dinner!  Yum!

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In six weeks... we'll have sauerkraut!

3 comments:

Diane said...

I knew it took a long time to make sauerkraut but I thought that meant the prep. It doesn't look too hard to do and now you just have to wait for 6 weeks. Where did they get a crock that big? Thanks for sharing.

Pokey said...

Never made it, but I guess it's like most stuff, if you made it you'd find the store bought canned stuff a poor substitute! The 'leftover dinner looks yummy. too!:-} pokey

Judy D in WA said...

Oh my, that brought back some memories. My Great Granny used to make sauerkraut every fall...oh how I loved that stuff! I wanted to be able to shred the cabbage but she would never let me--I think I started asking when I was about 10 because I was so grown up. ;-) I never got to shred cabbage--I wonder what happened to that thing.....
Thanks for making my day.