Make Your Own Sauerkraut

Eating live, fermented foods like sauerkraut have been proven to be beneficial to your health in many studies. The stuff you buy in the store is heat processed during canning and essentially dead. It is so easy to make your own sauerkraut that I couldn’t believe it when we learned how. So, we had to try it out.

Homemade Sauerkraut Ingredients-

3 heads of cabbage
1/4 cup of salt
1 Tbs. dill weed
1 tsp caraway seed
1 tsp celery salt

We bought 3 heads of cabbage and shredded them in the food processor with the grater attachment. Sarah is mixing in all the salt and spices as well as squeezing the water out of the cabbage. It is important to work the cabbage by hand to get the water out of the leaves which gives you a brine. The cabbage mixture is put into clean jars with some head room for expansion. The solids are pushed down by hand leaving the brine mixture covering the shredded cabbage. The lids are left on very loose…do not tighten the lids. As the cabbage ferments the pressure will easily escape, and some liquid may spill over the sides (hence the glass baking dish). We leave the sauerkraut sitting on the counter for 2-3 weeks. Once it tastes like we want it we put them in the fridge to stop the fermentation process.