Sauerkraut making tools

Or rather, oxygen! When fermenting, you want the process to be anaerobic The absence of oxygen. Pounding your vegetables into a container forces air pockets out. This is definitely the case with cabbage when making sauerkraut. Another answer is texture. Crushing your cabbage creates a better texture in the finished sauerkraut. Crushing the cabbage also releases liquid and breaks down the fresh cabbage, making it better suited to ferment fully, more uniformly, and more quickly.

You can crush by hand but its really a workout. You can crush with other readily available utensils, but a cabbage crusher works best. There are a number of materials used to craft a Cabbage Crusher.

My case for wood: wood is porous. As you use your wooden cabbage crusher batch after batch, it picks up microscopic particles. As you are using live cultures in the preparation of the sauerkraut, the wood holds on to these beneficial microbes and spreads them throughout your batches.

If cared for properly, your sauerkraut culture can live on your kraut pounder and inoculate your batch as you pound it. Full disclosure, this is more of an educated guess than actual science!

However, it seems reasonable to me. Wooden sauerkraut stompers are sustainable. Cut down a tree, make a cabbage crusher, plant a tree, let it grow, repeat! Wooden cabbage mashers age well. You can pass your beautifully aged cabbage crusher down to your family or friend, along with your recipe, making it an heirloom piece and process. There are many sizes of kraut pounders.

There are small vegetable tampers and large cabbage crushers. Each have their applications. The answer to the question of size is actually a list of questions:. If you are producing a large batch in a big fermenter, a small sauerkraut pounder will make the task of crushing and tamping hard. Get one that is made of a dense wood so the weight is right, not too light, and not too heavy.

There is a wide array of cabbage crusher shapes. Ultimately, a vegetable packer tends to have a handle and a head. The head is typically larger than the handle. This makes sense considering a cabbage stomper is designed to crush, tamp, and pound cabbage firmly into a fermenting container. All you need is cabbage, salt and a bit of patience.

The presence of vinegar gives fermented vegetables, like kraut and pickles, a sharp flavor but lacks the probiotics that you are looking for. In our house, that means making it by the quart or half-gallon rather than in a large crock.

The great thing about making sauerkraut in small batches is that you can constantly change the recipe. Our kids like to mix in carrots and beets while my husband and I enjoy a spicy pepper or two. Variety is the spice of life and you should experience it with your health supplements as well as your food!

You can always buy a small fermentation crock, but in my kitchen I aim to be frugal and keep multitasker tools on hand. This is what we want as fermentation is an anaerobic process that requires no oxygen. This is not a fixed number, you do not need to fret about it, and in fact, the first method I will be discussing does not require you to actually make a brine separately from the cabbage processing you will be doing.

You usually do not need to make up a large solution of brine when making sauerkraut. When you make sauerkraut you shred the cabbage, then add salt to it and leave it for a period of time. This will form the basis of the brine that you will add to your plastic sauerkraut container , crock, or mason jar to cover your cabbage. If you pounded away, squeezed the cabbage, it should be limp due to much of the moisture being drawn out.

You will then squeeze out the cabbage and put it into your fermentation crock or jar. Press it down firmly, I use my kraut hammer, but an appropriately sized bottle works well to press it down.

If you did not get enough juice from salting and pounding your cabbage, you can add some with a little brine which you will make up separately. See the next section. In such a case you do need to make some additional brine to top things up so the cabbage is covered.

Again, you can use a little hot water and top up with cold, or just use warm water, make sure the salt has dissolved, and then leave to cool. Use this to top up the liquid in your fermenting vessel so it covers the cabbage. I like 1 inch about the cabbage to make sure all air is excluded.

Method 3 — For those that like to measure. I prefer to use water from my water filter, but tap water will do, ideally not chlorinated. Simple math is multiplied by 0. Note: You can use most salt for fermenting, but avoid normal table salt.