canning kraut
November 11, 2009
I came home last monday night to a “matured” crock of sauerkraut. I left it with my mom for this last week, and when I returned, it was a lovely golden color, tart, and crunchy! I started the sauerkraut about 3 1/2 weeks ago, and it sat in my kitchen, periodically scenting the whole house. I had to watch it, making sure that the top remained clean throughout the process of fermentation. Making sauerkraut is much easier than I had initially imagined. It is amazing to me how simple a recipe can be, yet taste so good! Basic sauerkraut is made with salt and cabbage. Thats it!
Fully fermented sauerkraut was traditionally placed in a cool location to spend the winter. Now days, around here anyway, it is canned, frozen, or eaten when it is finished. I used a recipe for processing my sauerkraut from The Joy of Pickling. The remaining kraut I have put into jars to hand out to family (and the little left is going to go in the freezer). I know that sometimes freezing is better, but for some reason I really prefer to can things. I guess it has to do with the possibility of a storm leading to a power shortage, leading to frozen goods going bad…
living in the woods and making stuff 
November 12, 2009 at 6:39 am
Tor Tor,
Can I sign up for a sauerkraut if you have any spares? Love me some kraut! Won’t be back in Fairfield until Christmas but nothing says happy holidays like a jar of homemade sauerkraut 🙂
xo,
Anna
November 12, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I am going to put “Anna” on the top of one of the jars with a sharpie right now!
xoxo and see you at Christmas!!
November 12, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Yay! So excited 🙂
November 23, 2009 at 2:38 am
Hey Torrey – any chance I could get the recipe? We get a head of cabbage every week in the winter from our CSA and never know what to do with it. We are both a little “sensitive” to cabbage soup (to use Julia Child’s term – we get billous [not sure if that’s how she spelled it but it’s not one l which means dealing with bile]) and tried to make cole slaw a few times but it wasn’t ever what we really wanted.
Craut would be great because we wouldn’t need to eat it right away.
🙂
November 23, 2009 at 2:59 am
Sure! I could email you a general recipe, or you could use one of these books. They are my favorite resources on the subject. I read a lot about making sauerkraut before I finally made it. For some reason I was a little scared of the process. Here are the books. Joy of Pickling, by Linda Ziedrich, tons of great pickle recipes both canned and refrigerated. Joy of Cooking (75th Anniversary Edition), everything about everything. The Anjelica Home Kitchen, great user friendly recipe along with everything vegan. and Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning, a collection of French countryside recipes on preserving just about everything! From what I have read and been told, I understand sauerkraut to be really healthy, and actually easier to digest than fresh cabbage! And yummy too!!
Let me know if you want me to email you a recipe though. It might take me a while to get around to writing it all out, but I would be happy to!
January 12, 2010 at 4:34 am
Ate the kraut for lunch AND dinner today. Yum! Thanks again Torrey 🙂