Sauerkraut with Ginger

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Emily Kociolek | 0 comments

Sauerkraut has always been my "problem" ferment.  I have tried many different methods and recipes, but I can never seem to get it to come out right!  I have a hard time getting the salt ratio correct since you aren't making a brine with water, but using the natural cabbage juices with the salt to create the liquid.  I will often add too much salt, and end up with salty cabbage instead of sauerkraut!  And then the next time I don't put in enough salt and it molds!

As I've mentioned in the past, we tend to follow a more "relaxed" method of fermentation like our ancestors did.  We don't use testing strips or weigh our ingredients for precise outcomes.  We do a lot of experimenting, combining ingredients we have on hand or are in season to see what works best for us and what new flavors we can discover!  Of course, this method means sometimes we get "fermenting failures", but that's just part of the process!

I recently had a breakthrough with my sauerkraut ferments thanks to a recipe that Dawn Dunkin shared with us.  She used both ginger and turmeric in her sauerkraut when she made a video using our crock to ferment!  You can check out the video we shared last year on the blog here - https://www.stonecreektrading.com/blogs/news/sauerkraut-making-video

Since then I've been experimenting with using ginger more in my sauerkraut. Based on my experiments over the last year, adding ginger to my sauerkraut has completely changed the process for me!  Every time I add ginger in, I get perfect sauerkraut!  

I don't have a specific recipe for you, but here are the ingredients I used for this last batch of sauerkraut -

1 large & 1 small head of cabbage shredded on our Small Cabbage Shredder

3 large carrots shredded on a cheese grater

~1.5" piece of ginger finely chopped

~1" piece of turmeric finely chopped

Salt

I ended up with too many ingredients for our 2L Mountain Cream Fermenting Crock, so I had to put the overflow in our Stone Creek Trading 2.5L Fermenting Crock.

We have already eaten half of the sauerkraut that we finished a couple weeks ago!  It goes with everything - from scrambled eggs in the morning to my favorite nachos with sauerkraut! 

So if you struggle with sauerkraut like I used to, give it a try!  Or is there another fermenting recipe that you struggle with?


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