Sauerkraut

My aunt who is in her nineties and lives in a senior's apartment still mades her own sauerkraut.  In talking to her, she told me how she made her sauerkraut now.  The important thing was to buy a plastic container that is hard and safe for food.  In researching this, the recycling symbol was important to find as the best food grade containers are HDPE or those that have the symbol #2.  The molecules in this plastic are tightly packed so less plastic leaches into your food.  

My Aunt stressed the important ingredient in making sauerkraut is coarse salt which is not iodized but called Pickling Salt. The iodized salt, regular salt will make your cabbage turn color.   My Aunt does add thin slices of onion and allspice to her mixture, something I don't remember my Mom doing.  

The cabbage is finely shredded with a mandolin cutter.  My Dad had made my Mom a Mandolin cutter that looked like the pictures I found on the net for sale.  The blade on her slicer looked sharpen which leads me to believe the blade could be taken out to be sharpen.  

 While living on the farm my Mom had a huge garden, I saw her shredding the cabbage for sauerkraut and placing the cabbage into a large stoneware crock. 

The cabbage was pounded down as it is layered in the container.  My Mom would salt the layers as she went along.  She as my Aunt placed a few whole heads of cabbage at the bottom of the container to use for cabbage rolls.

My Mom had a stone that fit perfectly in the crock that she used to weigh down the cabbage to keep it submerged in liquid as it ferments.  A piece of wood cut to fit the crock fit over the stone.

My Aunt weighs the cabbage down with a gallon of water in a plastic milk jug in a plastic container.  Saran wrap covers the plastic container loosely then a white cloth.  

In speaking to her today, she uses a large stainless steel bread bowl to mix her shredded cabbage.   I had added the shredded cabbage to a smaller bowl but couldn't mix the cabbage well in the smaller container so did end up using my large bread bowl.   When I mentioned that I had 3 pounds of shredded cabbage she said that wasn't very much!  LOL!  She also laughed when I asked her for a recipe saying there ready wasn't any but to keep things clean. 

Although she did not measure the amount of salt, she thought it would be about a 1/2 cup added to the shredded cabbage in the bread bowl.  She also added about a handful of whole allspice and thinly sliced onions.

Any scum that developed over the fermentation process would be removed.  After a week, she tasted the sauerkraut and would package it in ziplock bags and freeze for later use if it had fermented enough.  She felt this was the best way to keep the sauerkraut once it was fermented to her taste.

I used a knife as only had one cabbage to shred! 

I did weigh out the amount of shredded cabbage and I had 3 pounds so to this I added 1 1/2 Tablespoon of Kosher salt. 

I had come across a large glass bowl that I thought would be perfect for fermenting a small amount of cabbage. 

 Ingredients

• 3 pounds of shredded cabbage ( one large cabbage head)
• 1 1/2 T Kosher salt
• handful whole Allspice
• 1 thinly sliced onion
• handful of peppercorn

My aunt strongly advised against using caraway seeds

My solution for weighting down the shredded cabbage.  I covered it with a tea towel to keep it dark!