[PLUG-TALK] Food geeks among us?

[Denis Heidtmann]

Wonderful to get the straight skinny down in writing.  Thanks, John.

I use a bucket as you describe.  I put a window in the lid and a water-trap
vent so I could seal the thing (ocd, I know).  But I got no brown stuff at
the top.

-Denis

On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 5:02 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at gmx.com> wrote:

> 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.
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