Homemade Sauerkraut
Cabbage, carrot and salt fermented in their own brine for two weeks.
40 min
12 servings
Difficulty 2/5
Lunch · Dinner
Prep 40 min
Nothing is added but salt — the brine is the water the cabbage gives up when it is salted and squeezed. Two per cent salt by weight is the whole recipe; the caraway and the bay are only for taste.
Per serving
47
kcal / serving
Ingredients
Written for 12 servings. Change the servings to rescale every amount.
White Cabbage
2,000 grams
Carrot
2 pieces (120 grams)
Salt
40 grams
Caraway Seeds
2 teaspoons (4.2 grams)
Bay Leaf, dried
3 pieces (0.6 grams)
Steps
Pull two whole outer leaves off the cabbage and keep them. They go on top at the end.
3 min
Quarter the cabbage, cut out the hard core and shred it as thinly as you can. Thin shreds give up their water far faster.
20 min
Weigh the shredded cabbage together with the grated carrot and use 20 g of salt for every kilo. This ratio matters more than anything else here — too little and it rots, too much and it never ferments.
5 min
Work the salt into the cabbage with your hands for 10 minutes, squeezing hard, until there is a pool of brine in the bowl.
10 min
Mix in the caraway and pack the cabbage into a clean jar a handful at a time, pressing each handful down until the brine rises over it.
8 min
Tuck the bay leaves in, lay the two whole leaves on top and weigh them down so nothing floats. Cabbage above the brine goes mouldy; cabbage under it does not.
4 min
Cover the jar loosely and leave it at 18–20 °C for 14 days. Press it down every day for the first three days and skim off any foam.
20160 min
Start tasting on day seven. When it is sour enough for you, close the jar and move it to the fridge.
5 min
Serving suggestion
Good beside braised pork, or stirred raw into a salad with oil and onion.
Storage
Two months in the fridge in its brine. It keeps souring, slowly.
Notes
Use non-iodised salt and a jar you have washed in hot water. Chlorinated tap water on the equipment can stall the ferment.
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