Let's make some sauerkraut...
You'll need some equipment - which my neighbors Mr. & Mrs. B have. This is a crock and a stomper...
I think the 10 on the side of this crock means it's a 10 gallon.
Mrs. B picked up 9 heads of cabbage... they are huge! That's my Big knife and those are quart size jars.
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.
This is a wonderful old 3 blade mandolin to shred the cabbage.
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.
Shred the cabbage - put it in the crock...
Add salt and mix around the first layer
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...
You can see the puddle of juice...
When you are finished filling the crock and stomping it's time to top it off with the cabbage leaves you saved.
I layered the leaves around - tucking them in around the edges and pushing the cabbage down into the juice as I go.
This is a big flat stone that they use on top - yes everything has been well sanitized (they've used these rocks for years)
And then a big heavy stone to keep the cabbage under the liquid.
Then we tied two layers of cheese cloth around the top to keep bugs out...
This will sit for 6 weeks fermenting...
There was about a 1/4 of a head left that we didn't shred - so that came home with me.
It got chopped up and cooked down with some onion and Smoked Sausage and we called it dinner! Yum!
In six weeks... we'll have sauerkraut!
3 comments:
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.
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
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.
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