Memorial Day: Crock fermented sauerkraut

Last time I made naturally fermented sauerkraut I used a clean jar as the fermentation vessel, this time I decided to use my fermenting crock.  The recipe has only three ingredients...shredded cabbage, salt and caraway seeds.  The crock is 5 liters, and since you want to limit the size of the head space I bought the biggest cabbage I could find.  The cabbage was prepped by cutting in to quarters and removing the core.  The cabbage was shredded and placed in a bowl to be weighed.  The amount of salt to use for sauerkraut varies, 2.25% to 2.5% seems to be the what is recommended.  I had just over 1900 grams of cabbage so I weighed out 44 grams of pickling salt and mixed it in to the cabbage along with 2 Tb caraway seeds.  Over the next 15 minutes I would roughly mix the cabbage every 5 minutes or so while the salt started to pull the liquid from the cabbage, then everything including the extruded liquid and cabbage core was put in the crock and weighed down with the weight stones and short, wide cup filled with water.  The lid was put on the crock and over the next several hours I pushed down on the stones until enough liquid had been pulled from the cabbage to submerge everything, then the water channel was filled to keep out oxygen and the cabbage was left to ferment for 8 days undisturbed.  On day 8 pulled out a sample and liked how it tasted, the cabbage was still crunchy but it had a great sour flavor.  I moved the sauerkraut to a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator to stop the fermentation.  For Memorial Day the sauerkraut was served with grilled sausages and warm purple potato salad.  Crock fermented sauerkraut not only tastes great, but it provides a lot of health benefits.  That's good, because I have a LOT of it left!

Crock fermented, low temperature processed dill pickles

This was a project 6 weeks in the making.  A while back I stared making naturally fermented sauerkraut in glass jars, and since that was working out so well I had the urge to take things to the next level.  The opportunity came around Christmas, when I received some Amazon gift cards and decided to use them to buy my own stoneware fermentation crock.  The crock I selected has a 5 liter capacity, straight sides, stone weights and a water channel around the lid to help keep out oxygen while the fermenting is going on.  The first thing I tried was sauerkraut, and it turned out OK but not great.  After doing a little on-line research I believe that the issue is that I didn't fill the crock with enough cabbage, which left a large air space in the crock above the weights.  Next time I'll shred up two heads of cabbage and see out it turns out then.  I also read about a method of making sauerkraut where you ferment the head of cabbage whole in a brine and then shred it, might be interesting to try but I'll probably wait until it's a little warmer out to give it a try.

One of the things I've always wanted to try but never did was to make my own fermented dill pickles.  The process is simple, you take cucumbers, put them in a crock with herbs, spices, and a brine, then wait.  I looked around and found several recipes but was confused about the amounts, they all measured the salt in volume instead of weight and none specified what type of salt was used.  In the end, I assumed they were using pickling salt, found a weight for a given volume of salt on the Morton website and calculated the weights I would need.

The first step was to measure out all the ingredients I would be using.  The recipe called for 8 cups of water (Brita filtered), 1/4 cup white vinegar (5% acidity), 144 grams of kosher salt, 2 TB dill seeds, 2 TB yellow mustard seeds, 4 TB pickling spices mix (Spice House), 4 cloves of garlic, a dried chili and a couple sprigs of fresh dill.  The water, vinegar and salt was mixed together until dissolved, this resulted in a brine of about 7.4%.  I saw recipes using brines anywhere between 2.5% and 10% so this seemed like a reasonable level.  While the salt was dissolving I washed the pickling cucumbers and cut 1/4" off the blossom end, I read that if this isn't done enzymes present in that area will cause the pickles to get mushy.  The while spices were toasted briefly to wake them up and places in the bottom of the crock, then the cucumbers were packed in tightly (to help prevent them from floating), garlic and fresh dill places on top of the cucumbers and the stone weights added.  Next the brine was poured over and I shook the crock a little to let any trapped bubbles rise to the surface.  Once the lid was put on some watter was added to the channel to seal the crock but allow produced gasses to escape.  The crock was put aside in a cool corner and left alone to allow the magic to happen, a few times a week I would add water to the channel to keep the crock sealed.

The recipe I used said it would take anywhere between 4 and 6 weeks of fermentation before the pickles would be ready.  How long the fermentation takes depends on the strength of the brine, a weaker brine of about 2.5% can give you what are known as "half-sour" pickles after as little as a week of fermentation.  A stronger brine will inhibit both the types and rate of bacterial growth, which requires a longer fermentation and will result in what are called "full-sour" pickles.  After 4 weeks I opened the crock and pulled out a pickle to try.  The first thing I noticed when cutting up the cucumber
was that it wasn't completely pickled through to the center, it needed a little more time to finish.  The flavors were good, but I found the pickle to be a little too salty for my taste.  I added another cup of filtered water to the crock to reduce the brine concentration to around 6.6% and closed it up for another 2 weeks.

This past weekend it was finally time to open up the crock and process my pickles for storage.  Pickles will lose their crispness if they are heated to above 85C (185F), the temperature at which the natural pectin will start to break down.  Normal canning procedures where you process in boiling water will result in a limper pickle, so I opted to go with a lower temperature process using a water bath maintained at 180f with my Nomiku immersion circulator.

Here you can see the crock sitting next to a stockpot where I'm sterilizing jars for canning.  Apparently some of the brine was able to seep through the walls of the crock and evaporate, leaving a salt residue on the sides.  Hopefully this will provide a safe haven for the good bacteria to sit between fermentations so future batches will just get better and better.  The cucumbers here removed from the brine, cut in to spears (quarters) and packed in to sterilized jars.  Each jar received another teaspoon of mixed spices (dill seeds, mustard seeds, chili flakes, pickling spices) and a clove of garlic.  Brine from the crock was ladled in to the jars to about 1/2" below the rim and the lids placed on loosely to allow gas expanding during the heating to escape.

Here is the bath set up with the Nomiku for processing.  It's difficult to see in this photo, but I am using a cork from a bottle of wine to raise the circulator so the top of the jars falls between the Nomiku's max and min level markers.  Once the jars were placed in the bath container I added just enough water to bring the level up to about 1/4" to 1/2" below the top of the jars, the Nomiku was set to 82.2C (180F) and turned on.  I placed the lid on the bath container to help keep in the heat and the jars were allowed to process for a few hours.  Once I was sure that the contents of the jars had reached 82.2C and held there for 30 minutes I removed each jar from the bath, tightened the lid and put it back in the water.  I now added additional water to the bath to raise the level above the tops of the jars.  This was done to kill any bacteria that might have been survived by being above the water level during the first phase of processing.  after 20 more minutes in the bath the jars were removed to a cooling rack, as the jars cooled the centers of the lids popped down indicating that a good vacuum had formed.  These should be shelf stable for a good long time, but I don't intend to allow them to sit around for long.

The pickles are very good and still have a nice snap to them, unlike the quick pickles I'd made in the past.  I still find them to be a bit on the salty side, even after diluting the brine down to 6.6% after week 4.  Next time I'll try using a 5% brine and see how that turns out, I expect the weaker brine will cut the fermentation time down by a few weeks.  Before I make another attempt I'm going to do some research and try to come up with my own blend of pickling spices, the ready-made mix I used for this batch is more for corned beef than dill pickles.

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!