Sauerkraut Ferment from Start to Finish || Black Gumbo

hey folks welcome to black gumbo let's make some sauerkraut fermentation is a great way to preserve food and I've got these cabbages here and I'm gonna make sauerkraut it's a natural lacto-fermented by which you add salt to the cabbage and let that salt draw out the moisture that's naturally in the cabbage we're not making a traditional pour-over brine we're letting the cabbage make its own brine the way a lacto-fermented bacillus which is the bacteria the good bacteria that you want works on the food and and starts to break it down and act literally preserves the food it it causes it to have that nice peppy fizz that that good fermented flavor this is different than pickling in vinegar fermentation it's just so much better not only that but it's a probiotic and so the process of putting the salt on the cabbage draws out that that liquid to make its own brine the salts role is to suppress the growth of harmful bacteria but the lactobacillus has enough oomph in it it's it's hardy enough where it can survive in that and at to two or three percent brine solution and so that's what we're gonna do today I'll show you how to do it it's really easy I've got a batch already made so we can see it from start to finish and I'll show you the process so the first step you want to do is weigh your cabbages I've got two of them here I'll be able to pack both of these cabbages into a one gallon crock we're gonna we're gonna weigh our cabbages the first thing you got to do is know how much by weight of cabbage you have because then what we're gonna do is do some math we're gonna we're gonna find out how much these weigh and we're going to add 2.5% salt the last batch I did I did a 3% brine and it's delicious but I think I could back off on the salt just a little bit so we're gonna we're gonna weigh these up if you don't have a kitchen scale you need a kitchen scale you always want to use kosher salt pickling salt or sea salt you don't want to use iodized salt they there are a lot of folks who say you ought to use dedicated pickling salt because it's granules are small enough where it's able to dissolve but I've used I've used this sea salt I've used pink Himalayan salt and ferments and it all seems to work for me according to my calculations we have three thousand four hundred and forty grams of cabbage and so we need two point five percent of that that comes to 86 grams so I'm gonna zero out my scale here and we're going to get 86 grams of sea salt there 77 there we go 88 all right we're gonna do a a little bit more 18 a 89 grams of sea salt there this is all the salt we need for making sauerkraut so now we just need to cut up our cabbage some people like to use a mandolin and slice their cabbage up into real thin strips I like mine about a half-inch I like a little chunkier sauerkraut so I just eyeball it with a knife and chop it into strips take the core out and take off the outer leaves and then put it all in a big ol mixing bowl and sprinkle that salt in and really massage it and we're going to do the massage four times where this is going to take about two to three hours to get all the liquid drawn out then we're gonna pack it in our crock stomp it down with a with a whatever you got you can even use your fists and our firm until be underway do you like with any kind of fermentation you want to keep your surfaces and your hands clean so wash your hands frequently and wash your utensils bowls and everything make sure you get a fresh wash on that before you start putting things in there when peeling your cabbage it's a good practice to take some of the larger outer leaves the more clean ones that aren't moldy and wash them real well and we're going to use these to help hold down our cabbage under the brine if we need them sometimes you don't last time I just had an open top and everything did fine but these come in handy so save the few of those I need a longer knife then what we'll do is take this core out this hard core and we don't need that part put that in the compost pile there's a nice big chunk of cabbage there there's some density down there we might take out now here's another way you can core it you can cut it into quarters and then just take that right out like so I've seen some people actually cut around the core so we'll try that one too there you got a nice chunk of cabbage with no core in it just cut down at an angle and what you're left with when you're done is the core all right we've got our cabbage all nice and ready now comes the magic let's put the salt on so you just take your salt remember we have a 2.5 percent by weight salt to cabbage and so we're just gonna sprinkle this in and massage it in and that's the handy part wash your hands keep your hands clean I'll put in a little at a time and then turn it over this way you need a big mixing bowl put a little more salt in make sure you get all the cabbage in contact with that salt and you know if you don't it's no big deal because in the end a brine will form and everything will be in touch with that run but we want to make that brine and draw the moisture out and you'll be surprised how much moisture that will be down in the bottom of this look there's no moisture in there right now in two hours there's going to be a lot of it in there and the volume of this cabbage will have reduced because the waters absorbed out of it and that's how we'll be able to pack this into a one gallon crock right now I don't think I could get it in there you care crunch like you're walking too gravely I've heard some folks in the north say it sounds like the sound of walking through snow and galoshes crunching snow I don't know about that we don't get much snow here messy cabbage everywhere that's the rest of our salt and you can already see it getting wet all right so I'm gonna leave this here for 30 minutes I'll come back and do this again just work it with your hands get all the chunks separated get that salt really ground into there there we go you can already see the moisture just after a few minutes of massaging that so what we'll do we'll come back in 30 minutes do this again we'll do that for a total of four times unless we see that it needs to go longer and you need to get more brine out of there and then what we're gonna do is mix in a little caraway seed this gives it a nice kind of a nice flavor I like the caraway seeds in there if you don't like it you don't have to do that some folks mix some other flavors into their sauerkraut but you don't have to do that either all right so I'm gonna use gloves now just because I don't I've moved out into the garage here because my family doesn't like the smell of this stuff I do but you know you got to live you got to live with folks in peace so it's been an out of about 30 minutes actually I think it's been about 45 minutes and you can see there there in the bottom we're already getting moisture drawn out of this cabbage and it's feeling like it's a little bit more wilty so we're just going to massage it again and make sure we turn it around we'll do this another three or four times hear that sound that cabbagey sound okay we're almost there you can see all that liquid brine down in there look at that that's a lot of brine it will continue to draw moisture out of this cabbage even after we pack it you can see that the volume has reduced by quite a bit and you can see now how we can get all of that cabbage into a one gallon crock so I'm gonna massage it one more time this is the second actually this is the third massage so we did the original one when we put the salt on we came back a little while later and did a second one and now this is the third one it may not need a fourth massage okay guys we're about ready to put the caraway seeds in here and mix it all up man I wish wanted guys had told me my pocket was all messed up when I was doing video earlier but of course you can't because it's a recording but anyway I fixed my pockets so I'm gonna take care away seeds and I'm just gonna sprinkle some in here caraway seed adds a nice flavor I really like it well nice and aromatic like rye bread and then we're gonna do one final mix up and we're gonna put it in our crock I have a 1 gallon crock here and this crock is a glasswear crock that I use for ferment and you can see that it has a lid that loosely sits on there so it allows the air the the carbon dioxide I think it's carbon dioxide it allows the gases to vent out like you would with an airlock for for a fermentation in a mason jar but it also the only reason you want to lid is to keep stuff from settling in on top of your ferment this allows the gas to vent out and keep stuff out of it but it's yeah I mean how easy is it so we're gonna put this cabbage in our crock again make sure everything is clean make sure your hands are clean and you can just get on into it so you can see how this cabbage has really become wilty and and there's a whole lot let's see how much moisture we got there's a whole lot of moisture down in there now that's brine from the cabbage itself there's no water added to this so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna pack this into our jar and I like to put the jar in here just because it makes makes a little cleaner I'm not making a mess on my table all right sauerkraut and while you're at it mmm taste it you can eat sauerkraut at any time I like mine to go about two weeks and it gets it retains its crunch but at the same time it gets that that fermented fizz taste that that sour that you like all right so let me show you what to do okay this is a dedicated tool for people who are ferment and it's basically just a club and we can go in here and really press this down you want this to be compacted packed in there if you don't have one of these you can use a wooden spoon you can use your fist and just get in there and pound this down until it's nice and compact because what we want is for all of this cabbage to be underneath the liquid as long as possible as much as possible so get it down and pressing that cabbage in there and I'm not sure if you could see but the liquid I'm down to the liquid level let me bring you in a closer and take a look a so you can see when I press down them here you can see the liquid is right there that's its surface now I'm gonna press this as flat as I can get it and once it's all pressed in there we're gonna pour the rest of our liquid in that's in our in our big bowl over here all that brine is going right in here so we want to top it off with all that brine don't waste any of that there we go that's it now we just let it sit I like to write the date of my ferment beginning right here on the top this says for 4/20 that was my last batch that I fermented so I'll just erase that there's a sharpie marker on glass you can just wipe that off with a little vigorous rubbing but I'm gonna put today's date for 15/20 and in two weeks this will be nice and wonderful sauerkraut you can go longer than two weeks if you like a softer kraut with a little more fizz to it but I really like a little crunch so I'm gonna go two weeks and I'm gonna put this out in my garage right now my garage heats up in the afternoon it gets up in the 90s and that's a little hot for fermentation but I haven't noticed it really really hampering things I got to keep it out there because my family can't tolerate the smell of it in my house so yeah if you've got a place to put it fermentation goes well anywhere between 70 and 80 degrees if it gets a little hotter that's okay and I'm gonna keep direct sunlight off of this by putting a towel over this you want a ferment inside of a container like this Bowl because what's going to happen is all the gases are gonna build up we packed in all that cabbage in there so tightly that as it gives off gasses that cabbage is gonna lift up in here and it's going to come almost to the top and sometimes it may overflow so what you want to do is come out every day open your lid and use your tamper or whatever it is and press your cabbage back down under the liquid now what you might also notice every now and then you might see some white stuff on the tops and foam or some some yeast looking stuff that's just yeast or mold on the top you can just scrape that off and discard it and that's fine everything underneath it's just fine and it's not you know it's not gonna hurt you but you'll know if your Fuhrman has not gone well it will really stink bad it will be unedible but if it if you open this up and you get that wonderful smell oh man there's nothing better than a good ferment so with make cabbage we've made sauerkraut look at that that's what it looks like when we're done so you can see some of the cabbage is not beneath the brine that's okay just come every day and tamp it down and make sure you rotate you know as you tamp it down what you'll be doing is is pressing this under the brine and by eating those cabbages in the brine that's all you need to do so here's what we get in the end nice juicy crispy sauerkraut I know you can't really see that very well my exposure things going crazy hmm nice and tangy I'll put it in a mason jar I'll put the lid on but not secure it real tight because the fermentation will continue though when you put in the fridge it slows down a lot but it will continue on you don't want your jars bursting so let your cap beyond there lightly so that it can vent out some of those gases this will keep almost indefinitely I have eaten fermented foods two years after I fermented them with no trouble whatsoever and this is good stuff right here this is what it looks like when it's done two weeks and you'll be into some good sauerkraut today is a day we've got 12 day old sauerkraut here it's been in here fermenting for 12 days it's time to stop that ferment now and place it in jars and put it in the refrigerator so I'm going to begin this was I believe about 14 pounds of cabbage two heads of Brunswick and Gloria Van Heusen a true ferment is so different than what you might buy at the store then in cans or in vinegar vinegar pickled stuff that's not real sauerkraut true ferment you've never had ferment with food it's really so much better than pickling with vinegar it's so much better for you there's probiotics in here this is a living food tell you if you ever go out and work in your yard you find yourself cramping up because you've lost a lot of electrolytes from sweat loss a little bit of brine here will help you a lot so take your fermented food when you're ready and you you like it and just refrigerate it and that will cease the fermentation process or at least slow it down significantly and put a new fridge I got this right by my fermented radishes sauerkraut yeah man that's good that makes me happy I have made sauerkraut look at this delicious crunchy if you've never had sauerkraut made in the traditional way fermented not vinegar and cabbage if you've never had a fermented sauerkraut you're really missing out this took me 12 days and I have made a ferment in 12 days you can go up to 20 days 24 days some people go 6 weeks with this stuff but I like a little crunch to it so 12 days was all it took it's got that nice fermented bite to it that fizz to it it is crunchy I like it crunchy if you like it soft let it go longer but this will keep in the refrigerator for virtually indefinitely certainly it will keep long enough before I you know long enough for me to eat all of it and the health benefits are just outstanding it's a good probiotic any kind of fermented food is good for you but fermented cabbage sauerkraut with caraway seeds and it's hard to beat this stuff I'm so I'm so happy ok so we made sauerkraut man that stuff is so delicious when you've had a fermented food that vinegar pickling process they use at the store and annum you know the big pickles and the big sauerkraut makers that just pour vinegar on stuff and let it let it cure in there that's no good man when you've had fermented food man that'll make you live 150 it's good stuff so thank you for joining us on black gumbo so their gardening that's how we extend our garden and preserve our food and make it even better please follow us on Instagram like us on Facebook and we'll talk to you next time have good gardening and we'll see you later bye [Music]

Channel: Scott Head

Views: 700,152

Keywords: Gardening, Vegetables, Texas Gardening, Zone 9a, Black Gumbo, how to make sauerkraut, sauerkraut recipe, sauerkraut, how to ferment sauerkraut, authentic sauerkraut recipe, sauerkraut start to finish, complete sauerkraut, sauerkraut 101, how to make sauerkraut start to finish, fermenting cabbage, fermented cabbage

Id: Laj1-whtBs0

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020