None of our cabbage is ready yet. We were super busy in the late winter and early spring, and the long varieties of cabbage probably still have a few months to go before they fully head out.
We did get some very nice cabbage heads from Dude, though. She planted cabbage for the first time this year, and her little reds turned out very nice indeed.
Pretty standard preparation (you can see that we started some rutabaga fermenting about a day before).
Some people use a food processor, rather than a knife. I thought I would give that a try this time around.
Roughly 900g.
27g salt for 3% salinity, as well as dill weed and carraway for flavor.
The jar on the left is knife chopped, the jar on the right was food processed. I left them in the fridge most of the day but they didn’t produce much brine, so after supper I just made some 3% brine and poured that in around them, and squished out the air bubbles.
Almost immediately there was a difference in the way they pack. It was very easy to keep the large knife cut chunks under the top leaf, but the small bits of food processed cabbage came floating up around it. This could be a problem if they remain floating at the top of the brine, they can get contaminated with mold.
However, the knife cut jar overflowed a bit, on day 3 because the CO2 bubbles forming inside got trapped in among the larger chunks and pushed them up, shoving brine out the top, instead of diffusing through them and rising to the surface to escape through the airlock.
We will see if there is a difference in taste or speed of fermentation. I don’t think I will like the small chopped texture as well, but let’s keep an open mind as long as we can, shall we?
Little Farm in the Big City 