I want to try making some sauerkraut. Any advice?

My dad occasionally makes sauerkraut. He literally just puts salt, water, cabbage, and caraway seeds in a jar, covers it with a towel, and lets it sit for 3-4 days.

Lactobacillus

Don't do it. You can get the same shit in a jar that tastes as good for next to nothing.

All you really need is unprocessed salt like sea salt and cabbage. Organic works best, pesticides tend to good bacteria, but it usually works either way.

As long as you wash your hands and the vessel you are going to use, you should be fine. Having something to weigh down the top of the vegetables is good.

Spices like caraway seed and juniper berries are traditional, but you should experiment with whatever you want.

Most people shoot for around 2 weeks of fermentation depending on the temperature. Low 70s is best. Fizziness and bubbles means your ferment is active and healthy. You can taste it at any point, unless there is mold or something growing. But if you do it right it wont be.

It is scary at first but if you do it well you'll realize its piss easy and a great way to take advantage of sales on vegetables

I mean, you might just do it because it's fun to do things yourself sometimes

>Organic works best, pesticides tend to good bacteria
95% of the """"organic""""" produce you find in stores was grown by the same companies using the same pesticides as the other produce, but just jacking up the price 200x.

I posted a walkthrough of how to make a simple kraut a few months ago, reposting

first is ingredients. The use of carrots is not necessarily standard though it is a common ingredient in many eastern europe and russian traditions.

clean, chop and core, save outer leaves of cabbage.

weight your veggies cuz you'll want roughly 2~2.5% of that in salt to massage into the cabbage.

then shred your veggies. if you dont have a mandolin you can chop the cabbage as thinly as possible with a good sharp kitchen knife and grate the carrot with a cheese grater.

pour in salt and massage into the veggies by hand, press and squeeze everything roughly in order to bruise the vegetables and release most water.

you can cover the bowl with a cloth and let sit for an hour while the salt draws out more water from the leaves.

then have a jar ready to stuff everything into. in picture is also a wooden tamper for mashing everything down to get it as packed as possible, sprinkling a little caraway seed with each layer.

last you need to have some system in place to hold everything down under the water that has been released from the veggies. Typically the large green outer leaves of cabbage that are saved from earlier are stuffed around the top of the packed down vegetable and then some kind of weight in placed on top of that. This is because the fermentation can easily push the leaf up and make everything float to the surface.

in picture I rigged up and system using a tumbler glass and balancing plates on top (obviously not a perfect set up. lots of floaters i had to pick out later). This makes it an open fermentation, and while it is not recommended as long as your storage space is clean you should be safe from kham yeast and other molds. This is usually the only option that will be available to most anons who are working with basic kitchen equipment.

store your fermenting vessel in a dark place for 3wks to a months checking every now and then for kham yeast (milky white film on top of liquid) or mold forming on floaters. The yeast is harmless but can give some off flavors. If you have a scoop out floaters when you see them, but if some white mold does occur you are still safe, just scrap it out. You are however in trouble if you notice green, blue or black mold. See these and it's probably best to throw it out and try again.

As longs fermentation starts within the first day these things shouldn't occur. You'll have created an environment with enough salinity for the lacto bacteria tp thrive, which in turn once they start working on the sugars in the vegetables will quickly create an environment with too much acidity for bad bacteria to survive.

pictured, is a christmas present, A water sealed 10L ceramic crock that i've stuffed with 11lbs of cabbage and carrot.

It's a pretty big investment, but this crock saves you alot trouble, weights provided keeps everything under the brine, opaque so doesn't have to be stored in a dark closet or pantry, and the water seal keeps everything airtight so there is very little worry about bad beasties getting in.

Once this batch of kraut is done I plan on doing a fermented hot sauce in the crock. If a fermentation station general is not up at that time I'll start one.

extra notes that I didn't cover in previous posts, store in a dark place and make sure the ambient tempurate is around 68~72F

i hate this fucking germanocentric name of it the americans are using

its so fucking retarded

in poland we say, plainly in polish - kwaśna kapusta/kwaszona kapusta

kwasna = sour
kapusta = cabbage
kwaszona = 'made to be sour'

so, why not say sour cabbage in english but use this fucking retarded out of ass german name for it you fuckheaded nation of faggots?

Instead of a sauerkraut what we have here is a salty Pole

Make something that tastes good instead.

id rather be salty than have something german in my mouth faggot

In Britain we say'' Clean my toilet, you fucking pole'', and we fuck your slutty sister.
I bet the germans have a similar saying

Good thing you weren't alive from 1939-1945 lol.

his grandma was probably the village whore back then. During the day she was fucking the germans, during the night she was fucked by the russians

ahmeds go home

Not guy who asked, but thanks for posting. Gonna do this today

We don't call it sour cabbage because the English language just fucking loves loanwords. Hell, the word cabbage is derived from Old French rather than a Germanic or English phrase. As to why it's German rather than any of the other big sauerkraut producing nations? This giant swath of light blue might have something to do with it.