Basic, simple sauerkraut is one of the easiest fermented foods to make.  (One of the hardest to spell, though!  I always want to spell it saeurkraut.)  Essentially you just mix shredded Cabbage with salt, then leave it alone.  But you have to understand some things about the environment you’re creating.

Good and Bad Bacteria

The primary aim when making kraut (or, for that matter, most other types of fermented veggies) is to enable the growth of good bacteria while impeding the growth of bad bacteria (and fungi), so the good bacteria will do their work.  That’s what allows the food to ferment rather than rot.

There are three key ways this happens.

1. Salt.  Most of the good bacteria like salt and the bad bacteria don’t, so ensuring an adequate salt level gives the good bacteria a head start.
2. Acid.  Most of the good bacteria like an acidic environment and the bad bacteria don’t, so if the acid levels are high enough, the bad bacteria are held at bay.  The good bacteria also produce acids, so once that salt enables the good bacteria to start reproducing themselves, they begin to create an environment that further fosters their growth and suppresses the icky stuff.
3. Oxygen. Most of the good bacteria prefer an anaerobic (“no oxygen”) environment, while the bad bacteria thrive in an aerobic (“oxygen”) environment, so minimizing exposure to the air is good for (most of) your ferments.

With sauerkraut, the way we accomplish these things is to use enough salt and then pack the cabbage under the liquid — which protects it from the air.

Basic Simple Sauerkraut (The Recipe)

Okay, so this is honestly as simple as 1 pound of cabbage (weigh it after removing all the extraneous bits) and 2 teaspoons additive-free sea salt.  (I use RealSalt.)  But you can add things to it if you want.  Just keep it mostly cabbage or you might start running into issues with too little liquid.

I don’t personally think plain sauerkraut made with green cabbage is all that appetizing.  It tastes fine, but it looks kind of blah.  So I prefer to either use red cabbage, or to supplement my head of cabbage with two shredded carrots and two or three chopped cloves of garlic.  When you weigh your veggies, just use the total weight and add 2 teaspoons of salt per pound of cabbage.

Making the Sauerkraut

The first thing you want to do is shred your cabbage.  If you’re including other veggies, shred those, too; it all goes in together.

These need to be fresh, because it’s the bacteria that naturally occur on the vegetables that facilitate fermentation.  (I tried once using bagged cole slaw mix.  It didn’t work, presumably because the veggies were “sterilized” in the preparation process.  It might work to use primarily bagged cole slaw mix and add just a small amount of fresh vegetables, but I haven’t gotten around to trying again.)

Weigh your vegetables (be sure to subtract the weight of the bowl!) and add about 2 teaspoons salt per pound of cabbage or vegetables.

Mix it all together well with your hands so the salt is well distributed, then go away and leave it for a little while — maybe 15-30 minutes.  You can just move on now, but if you just leave it to sit, the salt will start to do it’s work and it will be less physical effort overall.

When you come back to it, use your hands to massage the cabbage.  You’ll start to feel the cell walls break down and the cabbage soften up (although it should already be partially softened from the time you let it sit).  As the cabbage softens, it will also release liquid.  When it’s pretty uniformly soft, and you can pull the cabbage aside to find a puddle of liquid, it’s ready.

Now you pack it into jars.  I can typically fit up to about 1-3/4 lbs. of cabbage into a quart jar.  If it’s more than that, it’s best to divide it up.  If you’re dividing it, be sure to alternate handfuls of cabbage so you don’t end up with all the driest parts in one jar and the wettest parts in the other; you want it pretty evenly distributed.  Any liquid left in the bottom of the bowl should be poured into the jar(s), too.

Now use your fist to really pack it down.  You want all the cabbage under the liquid, and you also want to be forcing any air bubbles to rise up to the top so they aren’t trapped underneath.

If you saved a clean cabbage leaf, you can put that on top of your packed cabbage and press it down, too.  That helps prevent little floating bits.  Then use your fermentation weights or small glass jars to hold everything down, and screw the lids onto the quart jars (but not too tightly).

Label the jars so you know what’s in them and the date you started!  And then set them aside, preferably in fairly cool, dark place.  I put mine inside a cupboard (the light is on when I’m taking pictures, but it’s off most of the time) — and I set my jars on a plate or in a shallow dish so that if the jars overflow, the mess is contained.

For about the first week, you’ll want to check it every day or two to see if you need to “burp” the lid (unscrew it a little to let air out, then screw it back down).  After that, you can pay less close attention to it.

You can eat it after about 7-10 days, or you can leave it longer.  As the fermentation process progresses, different bacteria take center stage, so the flavor shifts and the bacterial balance (gut benefits) shift.  This means you get benefits from eating it at any stage; they’re just slightly different.  And different people prefer the flavor at different stages.  So just taste a bit every few days and see what you think.  If it’s not ready to your taste yet, push everything back down below the liquid, close it up, and leave it again for a bit.  (It will get less salty and more “sour” as it goes.)

The Taste

Speaking of taste… This is not like that soggy bagged stuff you buy at the grocery store.  While it does get softer with time, even year-long sauerkraut has never been as soggy for me as what I’ve experienced from the store.  That is to homemade sauerkraut as canned peas are to fresh peas.

And the flavor is different, too.

So if you’ve tried storebought sauerkraut and hated it, don’t let that put you off of trying homemade kraut at least once.  I hate the storebought stuff; I like this.

What About Our Spiritual Lessons?

I promised a spiritual lesson.

Remember what Jesus said about salt?

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt becomes unsalty [tasteless/bland/insipid/weak], how shall it be made salty again? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”

When we moderns think of salt, we usually think merely of flavor.  For the ancients, salt was much more than that.  (It was much more than just what I’m going to share here, too, but this is a part of it.)

Salt was highly valued as a preservative — like in our sauerkraut.

Think about it: when we’re making our kraut, the salt provides a defense against the encroachment of the destructive bacteria.  It’s almost like a shield against them.

And at the same time, it encourages the good to flourish, creating a hospitable environment for the good to grow and take over — and change the character and flavor of the food in a positive, life-giving, beneficial way.

Is that not a rich picture of what “salty” Christians should be like?!

Are we stemming the tide?  Keeping the destructive forces of the enemy at bay?

Are we encouraging other believers to flourish and grow?

Are we, as a community, growing and “taking over” and creating a pervasive “flavor” in our culture that overpowers the darkness?

If not, are we really being salty?