Naturally fermented sauerkraut at home.

I had half a head of cabbage left over from St. Patrick's day this year and needed to find a good way to put it to use.  Normally I would just fire up the grill for a cook-out and use the left over cabbage for some slaw, but this year spring seems to be having a difficult time getting started.  Instead of waiting for a warm day I decided to turn the cabbage in to fermented sauerkraut.  

The ingredient list is short...


1/2 head cabbage
2 tsp kosher salt


Several recipes also included caraway seeds as an option, but I couldn't find the ones I was sure I had in the pantry so I substituted 1/2 tsp dill seeds.  Remove any dirty outer leaves from the cabbage but don't wash, you need the bacteria naturally present to do the fermenting.  The first step was to remove the core from the head of cabbage and cut in to 1/8" strips.  That was placed in a bowl and the salt sprinkled over top.  Using gloved hands the salt was mixed and massaged in to the cabbage and allowed to sit for about 10 minutes for the liquid to start coming out.  While that was happening I sterilized a 1 quart mason jar (and a canning funnel) in boiling water.


While the jar was cooling a bit I went back to the cabbage and mixed in the dill seeds, then started loading it in to the jar using the canning funnel.  When the jar was filled almost to the top I took a small juice glass and used it to push everything down in to the jar, then continued adding more cabbage.  Eventually all the cabbage fit in the jar, so I added some water to the juice glass and covered everything with a towel secured with a rubber band to keep anything from finding its way in.  I went back about once an hour the rest of the night to pack the cabbage down in the jar, by the end of the night enough juice had been exuded from the cabbage to submerge everything.  By the next morning it was obvious that something was happening, there was a slight vinegary and lots of bubbles were coming up from the cabbage.  Over the next week the jar was allowed to sit out at room temperature covered with a towel.  Twice a day the fermenting cabbage was packed down in to the jar using the juice glass to make sure everything stayed submerged in the juice.  At day 5 I pulled a little out with a fork and tried it, it was good!  Finally on day 7 I figured it had had enough time so I loosely put a lid on the jar and put it in the fridge.



The results are fantastic.  The sauerkraut is nice and tangy, but unlike the stuff you get the the grocery store it still has a lot of crunch.  Since it's fairly acidic I would guess that the shelf life is decent, but I'm thinking I may vacuum seal some and pasteurize in a water bath using my Nomiku, I figure 140F for 90 minutes would kill off any pathogens but still retain the crunch of the cabbage.  Now I just need some warm weather so I serve this with some grilled sausages!

Irish Cream Bread Pudding with Guinness caramel.

This was a really good dessert for our recent St. Patrick's day dinner.

Irish Cream Bread Pudding.

1 loaf bread (I used challah)

1 cup Irish Cream liquor
1/2 cup raisins

1 cup whole milk

2 tablespoons butter, softened

4 large eggs
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 pinch salt

Cut about 1/2 to 3/4 of the bread in to 1" cubes, you want enough to fill the loaf pan you'll be using.  Dry in a 170F oven for a few hours or let sit out overnight.

Add the raising to the Irish cream liquor and allow to sit overnight.

Preheat the oven to 300F.

Grease a loaf pan with the 2 tablespoons of butter.  Prepare a water bath for the load pan.

Bring the milk to a simmer.

Beat the eggs with the sugars, vanilla, nutmeg and salt, slowly whisk in the hot milk.  Add the Irish cream and raisins and mix in.  Pour the custard mix over the dry bread cubes and gently mix until adsorbed.  Press the soaked bread mixture in to the buttered loaf pan.  Bake the bread pudding in a water bath for 50-60 minutes.  Can be served warm or cold.

Guinness Caramel.

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
Juice of 1/2 lime (or lemon)
1 pinch salt
1/2 - 3/4 cup Guinness draught (allow to go flat or be prepared to deal with boil-over)
2 tablespoons butter

Add the sugar, salt, lime (or lemon) juice and water to a saucepan and cook over medium flame until the sugar has caramelized.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.  Slowly whisk in the Guinness, there will be a lot of steam and sputtering so be careful.  Once the bubbling has died down whisk in the butter.  The caramel will thicken as it cools, if it is too thick heat it us and add more beer (or cream if you prefer).

Sous Vide Corned Beef for St. Patrick's Day.

I've been having fun laying with my Nomiku immersion circulator, so I decided to put it to good use for our traditional St. Patrick's day meal.  We usually cook the corned beef, the centerpiece of the meal, in the crockpot for about 10 hours.  The result is very tasty, but leaves something to be desired in the texture.  It is usually falling apart and kind of stringy by the time we get home, or if we cook at a lower temperature it may still be tough and dry.  This year I decided to cook the corned beef sous vide.

There are several recommended time/temp combinations for corned beef on the internet, from 82C for 10 hours to 58C for 72 hours.  I decided to cook ours for 48 hours at 64C, which fit the best in to my schedule. Because I had a rebate check for Costco we picked up a corned beef (Sy Ginsberg brand) there along with a second component of my plan...a case of guinness.

Corned beef in water bath with frozen Guinness/spice puck still visible.

The first step was to make a guinnesscicle, I poured about 2/3 cup of Guinness in to a plastic container, added a tablespoon of corned beef spices I bought from The Spice House, sealed it up and put it in the freezer.  The next day it was frozen solid and ready to use.  I filed up my 12" x 18" x 9" polycarbonate box with hot water from the tap, the minimum and maximum levels are written in Sharpie on the box so I filled it to about an inch below the max level and attached my Nomiku.  After touching the screen to turn it on I set the temperature to 64C and left it to heat up.  Meanwhile I removed the corned beef from its packaging and rinsed off as much of the salty brine as possible.  Because we would not be doing the traditional cooking method of simmering in lots of liquid I wanted to eliminate as much of the salt as possible.  Once it was rinsed and patted dry I put the Guinnesscicle in a vacuum bag along with the corned beef and sealed it up.  In the picture above you can see the still frozen Guinness in the bag.  The bag was put in to the bath and the waiting began.

Nomiku screen with "Power Outage" icon displayed.

During the soak an unusual thing happened... the power went out.  I say that it's unusual because this is only the second time in the 15 years we have been living in this house that I can remember a power outage.  It happened on Sunday while we were all at home and only lasted about 10 minutes.  I found it interesting because it showed off a controversial feature on the Nomiku that I had never tested, if the power goes out the Nomiku will remember the set point and resume once the power is restored.  When this happens an icon lights up on the screen to alert you of the outage.  I say it's controversial because it can be a food safety issue, if the power goes out while no one is around and stays out long enough for the bath temperature to drop in to the danger zone (between 4C and 49C) it could allow harmful bacteria to grow unchecked.  If you don't notice the icon you could end up serving dangerous food.  The way I see it is by resuming after a power outage and letting me know that there was one I get to decide if there is a risk, and take the appropriate actions.  If the same outage had happened while we were all out at work and I was using a circulator that didn't resume afterwards then food that would have been otherwise fine would end up getting spoiled and thrown away.  It would be REALLY nice if the Nomiku folks could add a feature that not only will tell you that there was an outage but also what the bath temperature was when the power was restored, that way you could make an informed decision.  In the meantime I'm looking at buying a digital aquarium thermometer that has min/max capability like this one here.

St. Patrick's Day dinner

Now on to St. Patrick's day.  When I got home from work I pulled the corned beef out of the bag and allowed it to cool in the bag for about 10 minutes.  During that time I quartered some new potatoes and sliced half a head of cabbage in to 1/2" thick slabs.  A corner of the bag was cut off so I could pour off the juices (and there were a lot) through a strainer and in to a sauce pan.  To those juices were added the potatoes and carrots with the cabbage lain on top.  The lid was put on and the flame set to low, after about 15 minutes everything was cooked and we were ready to eat our St. Patrick's day meal with some soda bread and Guinness.  The corned beef was excellent, tender but not falling apart with strong flavors and not too salty (thanks to the rinse).  I don't have a picture, but for dessert I made an Irish Cream bread pudding served with some Guinness caramel.  I'll post those recipes in a future entry.  With the leftover half of cabbage I'm making some home fermented sauerkraut, we'll see how that goes in a week or so.