[PLUG-TALK] Food geeks among us?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 11:54:47 -0800 (PST)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

>On Sat, 4 Mar 2017, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
>> I started on the advice of John Jordan. Keep out the air, use white
>> cabbage, and canning salt. 2 weeks at room temp.

>   I'll see if I can find white cabbage.

It's actually called 'kraut cabbage' and the most popular variety
is 'early Dutch.' The heads are 2-3 times the size of the green cabbage
that the supermarkets carry, typically 15-25 lbs. The best source is
Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, and it comes late in the season. I start
checking the Pumpkin Patch website about the third week of September.
It's usually there by the start of October, and they're still selling
it by the middle of October. I don't know where you could get it this
time of the year.

The recipe is just cabbage and salt, about 2.5% salt by weight. The
salt needs to be nothing but plain salt without additives. If it's
iodized it won't hurt you but it will turn the sauerkraut black or dark
brown. 

If you prefer a low salt diet you can use potassium chloride instead of
sodium chloride, or mix the two (I use a 50-50 mix). I found a 40 lb.
bag of KCl for water softeners at Ace Hardware for $15-20 (a lifetime
supply). Buying KCl in supermarkets or health food stores is
ridiculously expensive. I have a master's degree thesis done by a Home
Economics student in Kentucky on the subject of making sauerkraut with
KCl. She made three batches, one pure NaCl, one pure KCl, and one
50-50. Her taste testers gave the pure NaCl and 50-50 batches equal
scores, but they weren't as enthusiastic about the pure KCl batch.

Many people add other veggies to the mix - carrots and potatoes are
favorites. The first year I made my own sauerkraut I added jalapeños,
but I added too much. Nowadays I make mine just plain. 

The recipes that you find online or in books say you must have a kraut
crock made of pottery. That is BS. I went to Winco and bought several
of their food grade 5-gallon buckets for a few bucks each. They work
perfectly. 

You need to cover them with something to hold the shredded cabbage under
the liquid that the salt will pull out of the cabbage. A big heavy plate
works fine. 

I use a food processor with the shredding disc. This shreds it a bit
more coarsely than the sauerkraut that you find on store shelves, but I
prefer it that way. The more coarsely shredded the cabbage the longer
it takes to finish fermenting. But note that after a certain point it
is fermented enough to keep unrefrigerated. At about the three week
point I just can it, and then it will keep for years. There was a
historical time when mankind had learned about the cause of scurvy,
but before refrigeration was available, so ships would sail with lots
of sauerkraut on board.