How To Make Your Own Lacto-Fermented Sauerkraut

[Music] hi everybody its Carolyn from homesteading family and today I'm gonna show you how simple it is to make a lacto-fermented sauerkraut now this is the old-fashioned sauerkraut but instead of doing it in the giant crocks for long-term storage like they used to do we're going to go ahead and just do a more manageable amount which is just gonna be about a quart jar and this is so easy it's so simple and I know as a preservation or starting fermenting it can be really intimidating and overwhelming because we've heard so much about the danger of improper food preservation or improper food handling but fermentation is extremely safe there's very little that can go wrong because if it goes wrong it molds and you know about it or it smells so bad that nobody could get you to eat it even if they tried so you can feel really safe and really comfortable starting with lacto-fermented it's very simple so all you need is whatever vegetable you're going to firm it and again today to make sauerkraut we're gonna use a cabbage and you need salt now some people like to use way so that they can decrease the amount of salt and I'll show you how to do that a different time but today we're just going to use plain old salt and a nice medium sized head of cabbage now this cabbage was just out of the garden it's a nice dense head and that's what you're looking for you don't want it to be soft and mushy and just pick one out that you would call a medium-sized head of cabbage that's fairly subjective I understand and that's how those old recipes were so that's okay you just pick one out that you think is medium-sized and we're going to have two tablespoons of salt per medium-sized head of cabbage now all we're gonna do oh I can't forget first we want to look at the outside if there's any leaves that don't look great on the outside let's go ahead and peel them right off put them out to the chicken or any other animals they'll love it and then we want to go ahead and take off one leaf that looks like it's in really good shape and try to keep it as whole as possible and this is going to be for the top of our jar to go ahead and keep the sauerkraut underneath the liquid and just set that aside now we're going to shred the cabbage and the easiest way I find to do that is to go ahead and just cut it right off its core and any nice green parts at the top of that core you'll want to go ahead and pull out too and that thick core you really want to go ahead and either save that for making stock or whatever other use you use it or just go ahead and get it to the animals or the compost okay and then just shred it all you're doing is looking to cut it very very thinly just like that and it really doesn't take long you don't need to pull out the food processor for this it's just so simple it's a very simple process okay now that we have all of that cabbage shredded up we're gonna go ahead and just pour sprinkle over all of the salt that we have now the salt is gonna do a few different things right here at the beginning it's gonna start pulling the juices out of the cabbage and while the cabbage seems fairly dry like this it is actually a large percentage liquid inside of it it's got a lot of water in there and so we're going to go ahead and let that salt get to work now in the fermentation process though the salt does something else it go it stops the breeding of any bad bacteria and keeps your cabbage good and keeps your sauerkraut good while giving a chance for the good lactobacillus bacteria to go ahead and form and that's why we use the term lacto-fermented no because we add whey or any lactose product but because we're allowing the lactobacillus bacteria to form and that's what is creating that lacto-fermentation and changing it into its fermented form now we're going to go ahead and let this sit with the salt on it for about ten minutes to let it start getting nice and and wet and starting to pull out all that liquid now we're gonna go ahead and let this sit for about 10 minutes and I'll be back alright now this has been sitting for about ten minutes and if you can see it we're actually already starting to get some liquid forming at the bottom and that's a great start so you don't have to pound so much now the next step that we have is the pounding step we want to do this because we want to pull as much liquid out of this cabbage as we can right now at this step now there's a few reasons for that but the main one is that the liquid is going to come out of this cabbage because of the salt it's gonna pull the salt is gonna pull that liquid out and if you have added liquid over the top and then stuck that in a container like a jar you're gonna go ahead and pull that liquid out of that cabbage in addition to the liquid that you've added and you're gonna end up with large amounts of liquid coming out of your jar which is gonna give you an imbalanced ratio of liquid to salt and you're gonna have a lot greater chance of your ferment going bad so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and pound this cabbage to make sure we can get as much of that liquid out as possible so that we don't have to add any additional liquid now pounding it is really what it sounds like you are literally just taking something and beating on the cabbage you're gonna kind of bruise it up and that liquids gonna really start coming out now there are actual sauerkraut pounders if you want to buy something and they're just kind of like stick Oh big steak that you take and you just pound on it I find that something like a broad wooden spoon works great if you have a wooden meat hammer you could go ahead and use the head of that just fine straight down like this and you literally just go ahead and pound and pound and pound and what you're gonna notice while you're doing this is it's really gonna start breaking down we're gonna pound for about ten minutes I'm not gonna keep you here the whole time I count so we'll see you back here in a few minutes all right we've been pounding for about ten minutes now and you can see how much this cabbage has broken down there's way less volume in here than there was to begin with and you know it's broken down now to about a third the amount of volume and it's quite juicy there's quite a bit of liquid at the bottom that has come out of the cabbage now if you're noticing that your still looks really drying there's no juice you may want to take a break for half an hour and then come back and pound again for another five to ten minutes because you really want that juice to be coming out before you pack it into your quart jar and our next step step is to go ahead and to pack it tightly into a very clean quart jar clean freshly washed is the best way to go don't go overboard though and sanitize it don't pull out the bleach because we want something that the bacteria can live in and if there are any traces of bleach you're really gonna throw your ferment off so don't go crazy with the Sanitation just get it nice and clean and that's good enough now this is really simple make sure you have very clean hands you know trying to pack something like this into a quart jar without using your hands is actually very difficult and not very efficient so just make sure you have really nice clean hands and then you can go ahead and start packing it right in and you need to be able to get it in there fairly tightly and as you go you're gonna want to go ahead and take your tamper tamp it down in there pound it in there because you want that juice to be able to fill up and you want to get as much of this in there as you can so get out any air bubbles that could be in there by going ahead and pressing down that sauerkraut into the jar and go ahead and keep tamping it down a little bit and you can see we've done a pretty good job on the amount that medium-sized cabbage head that I guessed is gonna fill up his torque jar pretty nicely and we'll wrap it up here and we have quite a bit of liquid left in the bottom of the jar which is great we're gonna pour that in but before we do I want to go ahead and take this cabbage leaf that I have and we're gonna pull off to just the the soft flexible part and I'm gonna go ahead and tuck that over the top of the cabbage here of the sauerkraut to go ahead and help weigh that down and keep all of this under the liquid because we don't want any of it above the liquid if it is it will hold so this is a great way to do this it's just with a little more cabbage I use this do this for all of my home ferments just go ahead and tuck either a kale or cabbage leaf or whatever I have on hand right over the top okay and that liquid can you see that liquid is actually bubbling right up over the top of that but I do want to top off the jar with any remaining liquid so and try not to get any of these little bits of cabbage in there I'm just go ahead and top that off now you want to leave about an inch at the top of your jar so have a little bit of room because like I said it will pull a little bit and you'll end up with some spillage if you're not careful okay so now you are ready to start the fermenting you want to go ahead and get a lid on this now you have several different options I love these things they're new they certainly aren't old fashioned and you certainly don't need them but they are like a little airlock to help you be more successful in your fermenting so this is just going to give you one more layer of protection from any mold happening in your ferment so you just take one of those you can get those on Amazon or anywhere this one is called a firmly and you just use your canning ring and go ahead and lock it down and that has just enough of an opening that it'll allow the off-gassing if you don't have that and don't want to buy one that is fine people have survived for a long time without rubber firmly on their food and while fermenting so you can just take a regular lid I love these storage lids because they aren't airtight and so you can put this on and you can tighten it down pretty good and know that your ferment can still breathe and so you're not going to end up with bulging or exploding or any breaking of seals or anything like that now that you have it covered loosely if you use a two-part ring I should say with the regular canning lid you'll want to put that on loosely so that it can breathe and off gas as it does it will and you'll you'll end up breaking something if you don't give it a chance to do that and a way to off gas so we're going to leave this out on the counter for about three days if you're in a really warm kitchen your kitchen heats up a lot then by two days you're probably done and you'll notice that this will start changing a little bit you'll get some bubbles coming up in it the smell will change it'll get more sour and a little more acidic and you can start tasting it and see if it's at a taste where you like it once that is done you'll gonna want to put this in cold storage and that can either mean a refrigerator or if you are lucky enough to have a cool cellar cool root cellar you can go ahead and put it down there for long-term storage and boy this is such good food now all the timers say that sauerkraut is not really good until about the six-month mark but for us at after about the two to three day mark it's great to start eating so go ahead and eat it then and keep eating it and know that it will last in your refrigerator or in your cold storage for a really long time at least until the next garden season guys enjoy this is so healthy do this right now for your family it's gonna help you through your cold season your flu season keep you healthy keep your stomach and your digestive system working well and you guys will be so thankful to have some good easy food in the refrigerator take care guys goodbye for more videos like these sign up at WWDC my comm also follow along on Facebook Instagram and YouTube [Music] you

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 122,598

Rating: 4.9578843 out of 5

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, homesteadingfamily, sauerkraut, cabbage, fermenting, ferment, lacto-ferment, fermented sauerkraut, self-reliance, living off the land, homesteading family, homesteading for beginners, homesteading lifestyle, homesteading skills, survival, off grid, gardening, off grid living, permaculture, how to homestead, off the grid living, homesteading off the grid, off grid homestead, best sauerkraut, best sauerkraut recipe, fresh sauerkraut

Id: K3CJFzmRhvI

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017