Recipe for delicious homemade sauerkraut. Delicious crispy sauerkraut in brine Sauerkraut recipe in a jar without brine

Hi all!

I know, I know that many of you not only eat sauerkraut, but also know how to cook sauerkraut. But, I also know that some do not have time for this and, sometimes, or often, or constantly, many buy sauerkraut in stores ...

Unfortunately, almost all sauerkraut sold in stores, at least here in Toronto, is not fermented, but marinated in vinegar, pasteurized, with the addition of not only sugar, but also various chemicals. additives. And, therefore, such cabbage does not provide any beneficial effects to the health of any person.

Scientific studies in Europe (48.6%), USA (30.7%) and Asia (10%) over a nearly 90-year period, from 1921 to 2012, showed that sauerkraut, cooked in the traditional, classical way, one of the oldest traditional foods is an indispensable source of vitamins for our body and has anti-cancer effects. Sauerkraut will give you not only fiber, which is so useful for diabetics, but also vitamins A, C, K, B vitamins, it will help improve bowel function, strengthen bones and lower blood cholesterol levels.

Few know.

And sauerkraut is not only a great source of iron, copper, calcium, sodium, manganese, and magnesium—it also contains beneficial bacteria which will help and normalize the work of the gastrointestinal tract.

There are many ways to ferment cabbage at home, and every housewife believes that hers is the best way. Ways to home sauerkraut a lot, but you need to choose a more useful one - without sugar and boiling water! Such that not only all useful vitamins and minerals are preserved, but also during fermentation, safe and beneficial bacteria were formed that will help restore, improve the intestinal microflora and normalize the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.

You can use red or green cabbage, but make sure the cabbages are tough and heavy, with tightly packed leaves. Such varieties will not tend to turn into a mess, and will ferment better.

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cabbage (about 1kg)
• 1-2 pcs. medium sized carrots
• 2 teaspoons sea or pink Himalayan salt
• 1-2 teaspoons of black peppercorns
• Bay leaf- from 5 to 10 pieces, at your discretion

Wash all vegetables thoroughly.

Remove a few of the good outer outer leaves of the cabbage and set aside, we'll need them later. Shred the cabbage. Since I always cook 2-3 servings at the same time, I use a food processor - it's much easier, faster and the cabbage pieces are thinner.

Place cabbage in a large bowl and add salt.

Choose and success is guaranteed. Do not use iodized salt.

Now start mashing the cabbage until the juice comes out. If you have shredded the cabbage with a knife, because the pieces may be larger than when you use a food processor, the cabbage will take a little longer to process.

Let it sit for 10 minutes or more and then massage again until the mixture is very watery. Repeat several times if the cabbage is not very juicy.

Add grated carrots, pepper and bay leaf to the cabbage. Mix.

Then, adding the juicy mixture of cabbage in small portions, tamp it with clean hands or a wooden crush into glass jar with a wide mouth. Each time you press the cabbage to the bottom of the jar, more juice will appear. It is desirable that the juice covers all the cabbage in the jar.

Place a few of the cabbage leaves we set aside earlier on top and press down.

And now choose the method of sauerkraut that is convenient for you:

Method 1:
Place a glass or smaller jar of water on top of the cabbage leaves.

Cover with a clean towel and place in a dark corner of the kitchen, away from direct sunlight. Fermentation can take place at room temperature for several days to four weeks. Depending on how warm/cold and what flavor you like.

If the room temperature is below +18 °C, fermentation will not occur.

For the first 2 days, gently press down on the pressure several times a day to coat the sauerkraut in the brine.

Try sauerkraut every day. When you're satisfied with the taste, remove the top leaves and refrigerate for a few weeks or more.

Method 2:

I personally prefer the second method of making sauerkraut, because. I believe that more beneficial bacteria appear in cabbage made in this way than in the first.

So, it is necessary to tightly pack the cabbage into a glass jar so that the brine rises above the top of the cabbage and there is no air left.

Leave about 3-5cm of space between the top of the cabbage and the top of the jar. If there is too much brine (juice) - drain some, but make sure that the remaining brine completely covers the cabbage in the jar, you should keep the cabbage immersed in the brine while it ferments.

Place the saved cabbage leaf in a jar and cover the top of the cabbage with it.

Then press down a couple more times with a clean hand or a wooden pusher to make sure that there is almost no air left in the jar of mixture.

Cover with a lid. Because I don’t have plastic lids, but only iron ones, I first cover the jar with polyethylene, and then with a lid on top. If the brine (juice) pours out of the jar, the lid will not rust.

Place the jar of cabbage in a shallow bowl in case the brine spills out of the jar. Put the jar in a dark corner of the kitchen, away from direct sunlight.

You can ferment your cabbage this way for 1 to 4 weeks. The longer the fermentation, the greater the variety of beneficial bacteria in your sauerkraut.

After the cabbage is ready to eat, send the jar to the refrigerator. Sauerkraut made this way can keep in your refrigerator for up to a year, although sauerkraut flies away in our house. :))))

Our family loves sauerkraut, which has a lot of carrots, the taste is slightly sweet, but a lot depends on the variety of the carrot itself. You can add not only carrots to cabbage, but also any other vegetables of your choice:

• bell pepper
• zucchini
• cauliflower
• beets
• turnip
• apples
• cranberries

• thyme (thyme)
• dried dill
• chilli
• garlic

Delicious cabbage fermentation for everyone, in any of the ways, most importantly, without sugar and with a lot of beneficial bacteria!

P.S. If during the first week the level of the brine in the jar dropped, which is very unlikely, and became below the level of sauerkraut, dilute 1 tbsp. a spoonful of salt in 2 cups of water and pour into your jar of cabbage, cover with a lid, fermentation will continue.

Ah, sour crispy cabbage! With fragrant boiled potatoes and fresh dill ... How delicious it is!
If you love sauerkraut, you will definitely want to cook it yourself.
The recipe for sauerkraut is quite simple. But you can cook a lot of cabbage. In stores, sauerkraut costs decently, and homemade is very cheap.
It is best to cook sauerkraut from winter varieties. Winter cabbage is white, dense. Loose green cabbage is not suitable for fermentation. I offer you a recipe for making sauerkraut without brine and vinegar.

Ingredients for making sauerkraut

• White cabbage - 3 kg.
• Salt - 50 g.
• Carrots - 1 piece.

Salt should be used large, ordinary stone. Fine salt can also be used, but it is worse. Coarse salt in this recipe has an abrasive effect, it is easier to grind cabbage with it.
Attention! Never use iodized salt to make sauerkraut! Because of it, cabbage can turn out bitter, with mucus.

How to cook sauerkraut without brine - recipe

To prepare sauerkraut at home, you will need a large pot or bowl. In general, some kind of wide container, so that it is convenient to knead cabbage into it.

Shred the cabbage thinly.
Three carrots on a grater.

And let's get started. We put in a saucepan about a third of the chopped cabbage along with carrots, sprinkle with a third of the amount of salt.

We begin to knead the cabbage and carrots with salt. Knead thoroughly, three cabbage so that the juice comes out. Juice is the basis of a good fermentation of cabbage! It forms a brine, so no water is needed.

Add another portion of cabbage and salt, continue to grind and knead. And so on until we grind all the cabbage. It probably sounds complicated. But in fact, there is nothing complicated, the cabbage is frayed very easily.

There should be a lot of juice. We tamp the cabbage as tightly as possible. As a result, the juice that comes out should cover the cabbage on top.

We crush the cabbage with some kind of load. I press down with a large flat plate and put a jar of water on top.

On the side between the wall of the pan and the plate we stick a wooden stick.

Leave cabbage at room temperature. After a few hours, bubbles will begin to form in the cabbage, foam will appear on the surface. The cabbage started to ferment. Now the most important thing is to give her time to breathe.
Every few hours it is necessary to remove the load, open the cabbage and pierce it in several places with a stick. We pierce to the very bottom of the pan!

At the same time, gas bubbles come out from the bottom. Let the gases go away, let the cabbage stay in the air for 10 minutes.
After that, close it again and press down with a load until the next time.
So the cabbage is fermented for about 2-4 days. When you see that the foam has gone from the surface of the cabbage, the bubbles have stopped appearing, then the cabbage is ready.
We shift sauerkraut into clean jars, pour juice-brine. We close the jars and put them in the refrigerator or cellar.

Sauerkraut keeps for a long time. You can eat all winter.

What to do if the cabbage is fermented incorrectly

It happens that cabbage is fermented with “wrong” bacteria and covered with mucus. They say about such cabbage that it got snotty. Most often this happens when the cabbage was not opened on time during pickling, they did not let it breathe.
Such cabbage can be thoroughly washed and eaten, but only after heat treatment: in soups and other dishes.

You can try to fix the situation. Let the cabbage breathe, mix it, then cover it again with a load and put it in a cold place (refrigerator or cellar) for a period of several days to a couple of weeks.

Is it possible to ferment frozen cabbage?

I know that many are afraid to ferment cabbage if it is frozen. In fact, these fears are unfounded. Frozen cabbage ferments perfectly on a par with fresh, and there are no problems with it. The taste of sauerkraut does not deteriorate.
Before fermenting frozen cabbage, you need to let it thaw slowly. The easiest way is to put it in the refrigerator for a day. Just don't forget to put a dish under it to drain the moisture.
You can wrap the cabbage in a blanket and leave to thaw in the room for several hours.
After that, you can ferment it in the same way as fresh.

By the way, in my video recipe and in the photo, just frozen and thawed cabbage appears. I kept it on the balcony, where it froze all over.

Sauerkraut can be eaten as a snack, or added to other dishes: salads, soups, etc. For example, I love and .

This is a very old recipe - sauerkraut without brine in own juice. My grandmother always cooked cabbage according to this recipe, and not 1 kg, but a whole enameled bucket !!! Well, our grandmothers in their youth did not excel in various salads in the winter, they cooked everything simply and, nevertheless, tasty. Cabbage was fermented a lot, it was stored in the basement, according to this recipe, the cabbage remains crisp for a long time and does not peroxide. It can be used to make cabbage soup, cabbage soup, vinaigrettes, pies or dumplings. But, basically, we use it as a salad, add a little green onion or even onion, season with fragrant oil and it turns out very tasty!

Ingredients

1. White cabbage - 1 kg,
3. Large carrot - 1 piece,
4. Salt - 1 tbsp. l.
5. Allspice, bay leaf

In order to cook sauerkraut at home, you must first choose the right kind of cabbage, suitable for pickling, then the cabbage will be juicy, crispy and will not be bitter. Cabbage should be of late varieties, well ripened, dense. I think you noticed that there are cabbage forks that are round or even slightly oblong, of course they can be fermented, but in small portions, for example, if you want to make. And if you decide to prepare more sauerkraut and want it not to become soft and not peroxide - take a large, dense cabbage, which is somewhat flattened in shape, as in the photo.

How to ferment cabbage without brine - step 1

Remove the upper leaves from the cabbage, cut the stalk and chop - you can use a knife, but I use a shredder, an inexpensive, simple, manual tool that will help you chop the cabbage thinly and without the hassle in just a few minutes. Three carrots on a coarse grater, add salt and knead the cabbage well with your hands, good cabbage will immediately begin to secrete juice. You can chop cabbage in a bowl, you can directly on a clean table, it is convenient for me to do this on a large baking sheet.

How to ferment cabbage without brine - step 2

After the cabbage has been salted and mashed, it needs to be transferred to a suitable container, I usually use a saucepan. We take in small portions and tamp each layer well, periodically add allspice and bay leaf between the layers.

How to ferment cabbage without brine - step 3

We cover the cabbage with a plate on top and put oppression. I used 3 liter jar honey.
As you can see, the cabbage immediately gave enough juice.
From above, I cover my device with a thin towel or gauze so that nothing gets into the pan. Such cabbage is fermented for about 5 days, depending on the cabbage itself and the temperature in the room. Every day I remove the oppression and make several punctures in the cabbage with a knife to the very bottom, in order to release the gas formed during fermentation and the cabbage did not give bitterness.
We take a sample, the cabbage has fermented enough, you can eat it, it should be stored in the refrigerator or basement.
If you liked the recipe, please share it with your friends - this will allow me to further develop the site.
I recommend you other recipes from cabbage.