We’ve been meaning to get to this one for weeks, ever since the first frost. We had 6 big cabbages in the garden, and Daddy wanted to make sauerkraut.
Unfortunately, that was November. It is now January. One thing and another has conspire to keep us out of the garden for the last two months amid damp, 45 degree weather, which is basically a baby boom for slugs and worms.
Only two of the heads were worth salvaging, and they required a lot of careful culling, and several rinses with cold salt water.
Although, when all was said and done, it is really pretty cabbage. Kalibos. We are going to grow it again next year, this time with an aggressive anti-slug plan.
This past week’s foray into aging meat, curing hides, and making kraut has opened my eyes to the reasons why salt has been such an empire builder for all of human history, why our word for a monthly paycheck comes from the Latin word for salt (salary), and why an unreliable or incompetent man is not “worth his salt.”
Just because.
We weighed out the salt and dissolved it in boiling water, then added ice by weight to bring the brine to a proper salinity (200mg/liter, according to the book “Charcutery.”) It is interesting, they recommend making kraut in a brine bath, but other resources simply coat the cabbage in salt to pull the fluid out of it to make its own brine. If only we had enough cabbage to experiment. Maybe next year.
A plate weighted down to keep the cabbage submerged. The bits that float to the top are likely to develop mold so we will need to clean these off.
Bottom of the stairs from the basement to the outside, a constant 45 degrees or thereabout. It will cure slowly, but should be pretty tasty in 3-4 weeks. We’ll see.
Little Farm in the Big City 