Sauerkraut!

What do you do with a 13 Lb red cabbage?

This cabbage was one of the late planted cabbages from last year that didn’t sprout in time for winter, but took off as soon as the ground started to warm up in the spring. It has been growing next to the pea trellis ever since.

IT weighed in at a whopping 13 Lbs, 9.1 oz.

Beautiful pattern.

Ellie is anxious to start beating it with the beating stick.

Halved.

Cored.

Slicing.

And slicing.

And more slicing.

2kg (4.4 Lbs) of cabbage (per batch).

Plus 40 grams of salt (2% by weight)

Plus a TBSP of Carraway.

Dump it all on top.

And mix it all together.

The purple juice starts leaching out of the cabbage strips and stains your hands.

Almost all 2 kg fit nicely in the 1/2 gallon jar, with the aid of Ellies exuberant tamping.

Then repeat the process for the crock.

At first there was not much brine in the jar, and lots of air pockets. However, after about 30 minutes of sitting, the entire jar filled up with purple brine, and all the air pockets squished out easily.

The crock was a little less user friendly to fill, as it has a lip around the inside of the rim, and you cannot see through the walls so you have to take it on faith what is going on inside.

It just looks like bits of salty cabbage right now. Because that’s what it is.

Fill, tamp. Fill, tamp. Fill, tamp.

Fill, tamp. Fill, tamp. Fill, tamp.

Some children tamp more… energetically… than others.

After coring and peeling the outer leaves we were left with 4.53 kg (about 10 Lbs) of total cabbage salted and put in jars.

Finally, when the jars were full, it was time to take them downstairs.

Remember, I told you this picture was going to be plot significant. Over the winter the temperatures in the basement were a nice steady 60-62 degrees. This is a great temperature (though a little on the colder side) for fermenting veggies and perfect for dry curing meat. Unfortunately since the summer months have kicked off temps have been climbing in the basement, up to 70 degrees yesterday. This is on the high end for fermenting vegetables and too hot for curing meat.

For veggies it is apparently doable, they just ferment faster with a less complex taste profile, and have a slightly higher risk of molding. After last year’s kraut fiasco, no thanks.

For meat, forget about it. That’s mold central just waiting to happen.

So Mommy found Daddy this little beauty.

A small kimchi refrigerator, which is a household appliance used (primarily by Koreans) to ferment and store kimchi at home. Daddy, Seppi and Winnie picked it up last Saturday from a nice Korean lady in Seattle. My Korean is a little rusty, but I can muddle through the instructions well enough with a little help.

The inside smells like kimchi (surprise!). We put in the 1/2 gallon jar and the 1/2 gallon crock (in a bus tub, in case of leakage), and then later a quart of dilly beans.

As a control, we put a quart of kraut and a jar of dilly beans in the dry fridge, (ambient basement temp) to see how they do.

And now, we wait.

While waiting, please enjoy this video of extemporaneous improvisation featuring award winning videography and editing.

Oh wait, this was the other video. Oh well. Enjoy!