Raw Sauerkraut

Today we're making an old-fashioned favorite, Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is
a way of preserving food using fermentation and
the most popular one is made with cabbage. So, we're going to
take our cabbage, and here we have 1 medium
head. We've cleaned it and peeled the outer leaves
off, and we're going to take 1 teaspoon of
kosher salt, although you can use sea salt.
Either one will work. So, we take our mandoline,
and if you don't have a mandoline you can always slice this, but
it's just a faster way of getting your
cuts using a mandoline, makes it
really, really quick. So,
you're just going to take
the shavings and sprinkle your salt,
and here we've already had some that's been worked up a little bit, but then you literally just take it
and massage the salt
in there, and get aggressive with it,
hands-on experience. And literally you're going to
start getting the juice coming out of the cabbage
like that, and this, the salty cabbage water
is called brine. So we're going to take our brine
and our cabbage.
We're going to use a glass or ceramic
crock of some kind
and put all of this
in there.
So there's only one secret to making Sauerkraut.
The secret is packing it and so that the brine
rises to the top, so
I want you to see, that we're going to take this plate and see how the brine
is literally at the top and you just want to pack it down.
Some, a trick and tip to this is
to take the plate or anything else
and we have a jug of water and you can see clearly
that the brine has risen
to the top. That is the one and only secret to making Sauerkraut.
That brine is going to keep the anerobic
bacteria in, in the bottom,
and it's going to keep this safe so that it ferments safely
and promotes the growth of the health
benefit, friendly bacteria that you want that makes your digestion
so good, so very, very beneficial for anyone
who has any type of digestion problems. So, okay.
So we're going to keep this at room temperature
or in a cooler place, and you're going to start if off
for like 3, 5 days, checking it everyday, and when it's done, it's going to taste tangy.
It's going to have a good, nice, tangy flavor.
And if it tastes bad, don't eat it
if it's bad. So it's that simple, you'll taste it. And
we have one, a little tiny mini one that we've done, and I've
taken a little cheesecloth. This is my mother's
tip. So this is a safe product
right here. But at the very top sometimes

a little bit of mold will grow, and don't get scared, that's not anything bad. All you do is take
the cheesecloth and pull it up and rinse it off, and then
either put a cleaner new one, or clean it and
put it back, but it's only going to grow on the top
and that doesn't doesn't ruin the whole batch. That's just because the air
is meeting there and it's growing with the bacteria.
So, we've just taken this and as long as that
brine is at the top, you're good.
So you can add many things to your Sauerkraut to make it taste different.
You can add in, like, spices and
fruits. One idea
is old-fashioned pickles. You can use dill,
garlic, onion, and cucumbers, and that's you're
New York-style dill pickle.
So it's that easy. This usually takes about
4 or 5 days, and you can keep it
in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks for the live active enzymes.
I would probably eat it within the first couple of weeks.
Although on the website Wild Fermentation, it talks about
a few months being good, so, I mean, that's kind of your
own decision. I have heard of
people doing Sauerkraut salt with salt-free
and instead they take the juice of celery or
you can use seaweed to do it, so, but
the bottom line is you have to have the brine at the top.
As long as the brine is at the top, it's safe.
So to finish this up, we're just going to protect it
from insects and flies, and just take a
cloth, clean cloth and just cover it up
real good so that
seals the cheesecloth,
a clean old t-shirt will work, a towel, so no bugs or insects
can get in there. A very, very simple, easy, healthy way to add probiotics to your diet
and thank you for watching.
Enjoy!