Rotten Cabbage????

(innocent organic cabbages awaiting their transformation into sauerkraut!)

If you used to think sauerkraut was just a fancy way of saying rotten cabbage and that it was better off polluting some other poor sap's meal than your own but now you're a sauerkraut fiend then...wow.....cause seriously that's almost exactly what happened to me!(hacking up the cabbage into food processor sized bits)

Sauerkraut used to be a lot like New Zealand for me. I knew it was out there but knew next to zip about it and wasn't too concerned about my lack of knowledge. I still know zip about New Zealand BUT sauerkraut....oh mama......who knew that it was a gastronomical delight?

(shredding organic cabbage in my big fancy food processor)

Seriously now, who can I blame for my lack of sauerkraut knowledge? There has to be somebody! I've been missing out on one of the most fabulously tasty not to mention HEALTHY things that humans have discovered, and this went on for yeeeeeeeaaaaaaars.

(loose, shredded cabbage with sea salt in glass container)

Other people were out there gobbling up great vats of sauerkraut while I was suffering, unbeknownst to me. Oh sure I didn't know about how yummy it was so I can't miss what I don't know of right? WRONG! I ache for every year, every minute every tick tocking second of my past sauerkraut stupidity. That's 852037002 seconds of life I was deprived of sauerkraut. Of course I'm calculating based on discovering sauerkraut as a yummalicious food and not a weapon of mass destruction a couple of years ago. How long I've know about HOMEMADE sauerkraut as the fricking easiest, cheapest of all mega fabulistic foods is more like 15778463 seconds. Which is not long enough if you ask me.
Well lets just let bygones be bygones and not place the blame of my lack of culinary education squarely on the shoulders of all the adults in the life of me as a youngin, lets move past the horrible betrayal of said adults keeping yummy sauerkraut a secret for their own nefarious needs and not cling to silly past wrongs of those again, previously mentioned adults, severely depriving me of tasty sauerkraut. I'm past that..........I think........

(adding sea salt to shredded cabbage, it will bring the juices out of the cabbage and make its own brine)

Alan and I discovered we could make sauerkraut in our very own home after reading about it in a super fabulous book called wild fermentation. Ooodles of interesting recipes and things in there.

(packed down cabbage)

All we needed was salt, cabbage (organic of course) and a big old thingy-ma-jig to store it in, plus some super heavy stuff to weight it down with. They'll sell you sauerkraut making crocks online for a hundred bucks, We bought a gigantic glass cookie jar type container for 15 bucks at the local department store.
Can I get an "oh yeah" for the thrifty people in the house?

So here's how ridiculously simple sauerkraut is....are you ready? Shred a fricking boatload of cabbage, add about 3 tablespoons of sea salt for every 5 pounds of cabbage, weight the whole mess down in an appropriate container....and......you wait....THAT'S IT????? Hell yeah that's it.(bottled sauerkraut, to be kept in the fridge as it's preservative free)

I know, I know I'm as shocked as you but that's seriously it. There's no cooking no sauteing no fancy herbs or oils, vinegars, HA no way and spices don't need em. REAL sauerkraut is just salt and cabbage and time. Ingenious really.
It does take a wee bit more time then the average home maker is perhaps used to...like 3 to 4 weeks BUT if you think about it that's a lot less time then it would take to seriously lay a whoop ass down on the people responsible for your lack of homemade sauerkraut knowledge.

(our homemade sauerkraut is featured here in a feast of homemade Russian black bread, German potato salad, galric-y rapini greens, a pasilla and onion pepper medley and homemade pork sausage patties.....ohGodhelpmeIwantitnow...)

Homemade sauerkraut is zesty, delicious, crunchy, cool and full of all kinds of microscopic probiotic doolies that are good for your insides. Considering that in a way it's alive, it's sort of like a really boring pet you can eat....eww, strike that comparison from your brains please.