Easy Tips for Making Sauerkraut and Sauerkraut Recipes

Easy Steps for Making Sauerkraut at Home

Here are a few easy directions for making sauerkraut at home.

Turn extra cabbage from your vegetable garden into delicious homemade sauerkraut...it's easy!

Includes recipes for Baked Sauerkraut with Apples, and Sauerkraut Casserole.

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Sauerkraut is believed to have been brought to the US via German immigrants.

Sauerkraut is a German word meaning sour cabbage.

Constructing sauerkraut, which is basically a pickled cabbage salad, consists of fermenting salted shredded cabbage in its own juices.

This German dish is tasty with many different foods including corned beef sandwiches, and adding frankfurters or sausage to the kraut.

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How to Make Sauerkraut

Preparing to Make Sauerkraut

First assemble the necessary items for putting sauerkraut together; a plastic bucket or stone crock, and a vegetable shredder.

You can use a handy food processor to shred the cabbage about the thinness used for coleslaw.

Also needed is a board or plate that fits snugly into the crock, cheese cloth, and a weight to weigh down the plate such as a bowl or jar filled with water.

Ingredients for Making Homemade Sauerkraut

Food ingredients for putting sauerkraut together include cabbage and sea or pickling salt.

You will also need a one to three-gallon size crock, depending on how much sauerkraut you wish to make.

Making Homemade Sauerkraut

Preparing to Make Sauerkraut

Wash and cut the cabbage into quarters before coring.

Chop or shred the amount of cabbage you want to make into sauerkraut.

For example, if you want to make a pound of sauerkraut, use one pound of cabbage along with 2 teaspoons of pickling salt.

Procedure for Making Sauerkraut

• First add a layer of shredded cabbage to the crock, then the salt. 

• Pack down the cabbage mixture tightly using a potato masher or wooden mallet. 

• Continue adding layers of cabbage and salt, packing down as well, until the mixture is a few inches of the rim of the crock. 

• As the salt draws the liquid from the cabbage, brine will develop on the surface. 

• As much air as possible must be excluded from the surface of the brine when making sauerkraut. 

• Put cheese cloth on top of the cabbage. Place the tight fitting plate on the cloth. 

• Weigh the plate down with a heavy weight. 

• The juice should cover the cabbage at all times without rising above the plate.
  

Freshly Made Sauerkraut

•  Allow the cabbage to ferment in a temperature of around 60 -65 degrees. 

• Every day you need to remove the weight, plate, and cloth to skim the brine. 

• Scald the weight, plate, and cloth with boiling water before replacing them back on top of the sauerkraut. 

• The sauerkraut can be eaten raw or cooked as soon as you no longer see any bubbles arise to the top.

• The flavor becomes stronger as time goes by. 

• Test taste it after a few weeks to see if it is to your liking. 

• If it passes your inspection, you can freeze it in freezer bags or can it in glass jars.

Turn Extra Cabbage into Sauerkraut!

Homemade Sauerkraut Recipes

Now that you are on your way to becoming the neighborhood expert on making sauerkraut, you will want to wow your neighbors and family using the homemade tasty ingredient to make the following delicious homemade sauerkraut recipes:

Baked Sauerkraut with Apples

1 quart sauerkraut

¼ cup sliced onion

2 tablespoons butter

3 medium-sized apples

1 ½ cup white wine

½ cup stock

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon celery seed

Instructions:

• Drain kraut slightly. 

• Cook onion in butter. 

• Add sauerkraut. 

• Stir; cook slowly. 

• Wash, peel, and core apples. 

• Dice fruit and add to sauerkraut. 

• Add wine and enough stock to cover. 

• Cook on low heat, uncovered for 30 minutes. 

• Add sugar and celery seed. 

• Cover and continue cooking in 325 degrees oven for half hour minutes. 

• Serves 4.

Sauerkraut Casserole

This dish with fresh homemade sauerkraut is delicious and easily made.

2 cups sauerkraut

½ teaspoon caraway seed

¾ pound frankfurters, cut in half, length wise and smeared with mustard

3 small onions

3 bay leaves

6 whole cloves

Instructions:

Combine the homemade sauerkraut with the caraway seeds.

Arrange the sauerkraut and the frankfurters in alternate layers in a casserole.

The top layer should be sauerkraut.

Stick two cloves into each onion, the cloves pinning the bay leaf to the onions.

Lay on top of the sauerkraut with the spice side down.

Add ¼ cup of water.

Cover and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Remove the spices from the onions before serving.

Serve with fresh horseradish. Serves 2.

Perfect Head of Cabbage for Making Sauerkraut