Here are some pickling products to make your life much easier (I own all of the Canadian version products so I can vouch for em!):
1 L jar set (32 oz)- grab it at any home hardware or Canadian tire or pretty much any hardware store. Or amazon. I’m using wide mouth jars
extra pickling lids
glass weights and squisher set – if you buy wide mouth jars make sure you get the lids for wide jars.
food processor. You can buy a bigger one if you have the money/ space too!
Now technically all you need are the jars, and I’ll explain how to use just them, but then they have to be burped (opened) every day to let gas out… and if you don’t use the glass weights on top of the kraut, the chance of mold growth is higher. I say buy the stuff! I had a couple of moldy jars without all the fancy pickling things.
1. Buy a couple of red cabbages. (I react very badly to green cabbage – no idea why – they also showed up on both my parents IgG tests and my husband’s but red cabbage did not.)
2. Peel off the first layer of leaves so the cabbage looks clean.
3. Cut in quarters (put the stem on the bottom and cut in half that way)
4. Cut out the core
5. If you do not have a food processor:
- Cut just over a cm slices
- Cut the slices in the other direction
5. If you do have a food processor (I highly recommend buying one):
- Cut wedge shapes out of the quarter pieces. Cut the wedge towards where the stem was.
- Stick a wedge into your food processor and chop it up!
6. Put the cabbage into a bowl (it’s actually easier to put it into something with a flat bottom so you don’t spill it everywhere…)
7. Add a tablespoon of salt per cabbage and sprinkle it around
8. Let it sit for 15 minutes or so to let the salt soak in.
9. Crush it until it starts letting some juices out. Or get someone else to crush it for you 🙂
10. Stuff it into 1L jars. Press down with something. If you have the pickling squisher, that works really well. It should be pressed down hard enough to release some juice. Fill it to the line where it starts to curve. If the juice doesn’t go above the sauerkraut don’t worry about it for now.
11. Put your glass weights on top of the cabbage
12. Put pickling lids on and put ’em somewhere dark. The colder it is the longer the fermentation will take.
12. Wait 4 weeks and enjoy!
You can eat it sooner than 4 weeks, it’ll just be less sauerkraut-y. This is delicious. I would at a whole jar if I could. See this blog post on probiotics (not everyone can handle them right away!)
Problems that can arise:
- my first jar was excellent, the next two got moldy, the next two were excellent. It takes practice. Mold won’t grow where there’s no air, so the cabbage juice should be covering the cabbage. Putting the glass weights on the cabbage helps it stay below the water/juice. I ran out of glass weights so I’m using olive jar lids for a couple of my jars… we’ll see how that goes.
- If the juice hasn’t risen above the cabbage 24 hours later, add a tiny bit of filtered water and a pinch of salt.
Comment with any questions! And be sure to read the probiotics post!
Good luck.
I am yet another person who found you through your father, but I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your experience. I work at a health food store and have seen many amazing things happen with diet and nutrition but I have several customers with persistent gut issues and now I can refer them to your blog. But most especially I hope your story will inspire my sister who has CREST syndrome to consider the dietary changes I have been recommending for years. I do hope you are enjoying motherhood thoroughly and look forward to your next post.
You’ve done an immense amount of research and experimenting about diet. I have been following a rotation diet for a long time and it has helped isolate some problem foods for me. However the most success that I have had is with a low Salicylate diet . I didn’t notice it in your list.
Here are two links that I have found most helpful: http://www.millhousemedical.co.nz/files/docs/factsheet_8_salicylates_in_foods.pdf
https://www.slhd.nsw.gov.au/rpa/allergy/research/salicylatesinfoods.pdf
I have heard of it, but it’s not what’s bothering us. Mint tea is fine and any amount of dairy bothers us. I’ll add that to my comparison list though, thanks! I’m glad you’ve found relief from it
I love that stuff. Although it’s not Sauerkraut. We Germans just call that “Rotkohl”. I never knew how it was made. It’s available readymade in glasses and sometimes mixed with apple which makes it even better.
I don’t get it m.
I thought sauerkraut was “sour”(fermented) cabbage. sauer-kraut. Why isn’t this sauerkraut, but Rotkohl?
sauerkraut is made of white cabbage…but isnt this anti-carnivore?
Hi Mikhaila. Here is my sauerkraut experience. Same as your up to putting the salt on the cabbage. I sprinkle the salt onto the cabbage, mix it up, then grab a handful and stuff it into the the wide mouth mason jars. I press down on the cabbage, and then gran another handful. I have a smaller glass jar that fits nicely inside the mason jar mouth, and I use that to really squish the cabbage, till the juice comes up. Now the juice will come up when I squish the cabbage, but then fall down again after I take out the squishing jar. If I don’t get fluid over tha cabbage, then I just add a bit of brine to cover the cabbage. Then I take a piece of the cabbage outer leaf (that was taken off before slicing the cabbage) and fit it inside the mason jar covering the cabbage and slightly under the brine. Then I take a piece of the stem from the cabbage, and cut it to fit on top of the cabbage piece, so that the mason lid, when screwed on, will hold it in place and hole the cabbage piece pressing down on the cabbage and keeping all the cabbage in the brine.
I used to scrunch up the cabbage with the salt in the bowl beforehand also, but thinking about it didn’t make sense. I am already going to scrunch up the cabbage in the mason jar with the salt, so why waste time doing it in the bowl also? Is there a reason to do it that way?
A tasty treat is to add stuff to the cabbage in the bowl, such as:
-peppercorns
-juniper berries
-sprinkle with tumeric/curry powder. I’d like to try garlic powder, cayenne, herbs like rosemary, oregano, thyme,…
The only concern I have with spices is I don’t want them to interfere with the bacterial growth.
Thanks for your great recipes!
by the way, I realize you’re probably not eating sauerkraut anymore. only meat! have any soud-vide recipes?
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