Time To Ferment Cabbage

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The hot season for pickling cabbage is September-October. By this time, the cabbage is poured with juice, finally ready for the canning and salting processes. In winter, sauerkraut is the most pleasant and vitamin product that a vegetable garden and its good harvest can offer us

What is sauerkraut good for?

The advantages of sauerkraut are the sea. And its main advantage is not at all that with the help of sourdough it is possible to preserve an excellent harvest of cabbage for the winter and spring. At one time, sauerkraut saved many peoples from scurvy and other diseases associated with a drop in immunity.

Sauerkraut, in addition to the high content of vitamin C in it, has a huge amount of other useful vitamins and minerals. For example, vitamin B6 in it helps food to be absorbed more quickly. Obviously, therefore, in the winter, nutritionists are happy to prescribe sauerkraut to their patients as a side dish to protein meat and fish dishes.

Nicotinic acid contained in sauerkraut stimulates hair growth, improves hair condition, strengthens nails, and helps to normalize the functioning of internal tissues and organs of the human body.

In addition to many vitamins, sauerkraut contains minerals that are essential for life support and the maintenance of normal health in humans, such as iron, magnesium, zinc, potassium and others.

Nutritionists love fermented cabbage for the large amount of fiber in it, for the low calorie content of the product (the most interesting thing is that fresh cabbage is even more high-calorie than sauerkraut), and also for the presence of valuable tartan acid in it, which blocks the transformation of food into subcutaneous fat.

So from all sides, sauerkraut is suitable for nutrition for all family members, not only satiates, but also heals. Therefore, all the fresh cabbage that was not eaten at dinners in the fall should be fermented quickly and not regretted for this time, since in winter you will thank yourself for this work.

Tips for fermenting cabbage

All housewives have a lot of favorite recipes for cooking salted, or rather sauerkraut. These tips will most likely come in handy for novice housewives. But they can correct the actions in the kitchen of the experienced.

The most delicious sauerkraut is always obtained in a wooden barrel or tub. Alas, today not every house has such a tub, therefore, for lack of the best, you can ferment in enameled dishes or in glass. You should not ferment in plastic, and in no case should you ferment cabbage in an aluminum container, since its walls, in contact with the acid of the product, can release harmful elements into it.

Keep an eye on the amount of salt you ferment. Lack of salt makes it soft, not crunchy, and if there is too much salt, it will give the cabbage the wrong taste, and beneficial lactic acid bacteria with an excess of salt are lost from cabbage.

The most rational amount of salt for every 10 kilograms of cabbage will be 200 grams, no more. Don't chop all the cabbage for sourdough. Cut some heads of cabbage into halves, quarters and place them between layers of chopped cabbage. Incidentally, such quarters and halves, or even a small head of sauerkraut in general, contain more vitamins than chopped cabbage.

Do not rinse kale before eating. You wash off most of the vitamins from it. Just squeeze lightly and place in a plate as needed. You can stew sauerkraut, just keep in mind that it loses many of its beneficial properties. Let's not talk about the fact that boiling the vitamins and minerals contained in it generally kills.

A proven method for fermenting cabbage in brine

A personal recipe for fermenting cabbage in brine (for many years I have been cooking cabbage for the winter just this way and nothing else - readers, of course, can use their own recipes for fermenting cabbage).

For each three-liter glass jar, you will need about 2 kg of cabbage (late, which is suitable for canning), a couple of carrots, 3 lavrushka leaves, caraway seeds, garlic chopped into plastics, black peppercorns, but you can do without them.

The brine is prepared separately. In every one and a half liters of water (just somewhere on a jar), 2 tablespoons of sugar and salt are poured. Salt not iodized! The brine should be boiled and cooled to room temperature.

Chop the cabbage using a convenient method, grate the carrots on a coarse grater. Gently mix cabbage and carrots with chopped garlic, caraway seeds, lavrushka, pepper. You don't need to shake the cabbage with your hands!

The cabbage is transferred to a jar. You don't need to press hard on it. Lightly tamp and fill with cooled brine to the very top. Cover the jar with gauze and put it in a plate or bowl on the kitchen table. A plate is needed so that the juice flowing out of the jar during cabbage fermentation does not pour out onto the table.

Cabbage should stand on the table for 2-3 days. The optimum temperature in the room for its preparation is 20 degrees. When hot and cold, cabbage ferments poorly. After 3 days, cover the cabbage with a plastic lid and refrigerate. You can ferment cabbage in a large enamel bowl (no pressure!), Also fill it completely with brine, and then transfer it to glass jars when it is cooked.