I would just like to interject here that, first of all, Captain has tried to make sauerkraut for three or four years in a row with EPIC failures every year. I'm not sure why he thought this year was going to be "the year" it all worked, but whatever. Second of all, I hate sauerkraut so the fact that I got stuck making it was sort of comical.
At any rate, I harvested four nice big heads of cabbage and took them to the house. We had to borrow a 3-gallon stone crock from Gammy that also came with a wooden tamper-downer thing. I got the cabbage all cleaned up and rinsed off before going to the computer to watch this dude, Gardner Bob.
Fast forward through 25 minutes of pure frustration because there is no such creature as Gardner Bob.
Turns out it's Gardner Scott. Captain, that was vital information that you biffed up! Yeesh.
Anyway, Gardner Scott explained the whole process that, while not exactly rocket science, still required some precision on the ratio of cabbage to canning salt. Side note--table salt is not adequate here; it must be canning salt. At any rate, the ratio was five pounds of shredded cabbage to 3 tablespoons of canning salt.
Now how the heck was I going to determine if I had 4.75 pounds of cabbage, 6.15 pounds of cabbage, or 5 pounds of cabbage. This seemed very math-esque to me which gave me the heebie-jeebies. Obviously, a food scale would be the answer here, but we don't happen to have that in our arsenal at the moment.
I could hold a five pound bag of sugar in one arm and the cabbage in the other arm to see if they weighed the same, but that seemed a little imprecise for what I needed. Eventually a light bulb went off when I remembered how the elevators determine how much grain is on a semi. They weight it full and empty to compare.
Eureka! I grabbed my dishpan and headed to the bathroom scale to determine the weight of me and the empty dishpan. After I had shredded a good amount of cabbage into the dishpan, I went and repeated that process. Nope, still 2 pounds short. Shred some more cabbage, re-weigh and hit it on the head at exactly 5 pounds. Was I smart or what?!
Gardner Scott explained that the canning salt would cause the cabbage to release moisture that would mix with the salt and make the brine but it would take some time. As in 10 to 15 minutes of standing at the table with what amounted to a sawed-off baseball bat, compacting the shredded cabbage in the crock to get it to release enough water to get the brine over the top of the cabbage. Talk about an upper body workout!
Eventually I was successful in getting enough brine to cover the cabbage. Now to store it for three to six weeks while it fermented. Gardner Scott stressed that it had to be in a room where the temperature did not get below 65 degrees (has he ever been to Minnesota in August?!?!) or above 75 degrees (again...same question).
At our house, the only room that fits that requirement is my office. Oh goodie, I get to share my work space with a pot of stinky slaw for a month and a half. The things I do for Captain...
As my office is carpeted, I found a tarp to put down first in case the sauerkraut decided to go mutant and explode all over everything in the night. I weighted it down with a zippered bag of pie weights covered by a gallon-zippered bag with brine in it.
When Captain came home hours later to ask how it went, I took a few seconds to point out that he got the dude's name wrong in the video and then proceeded to brag about how I'd been so smart on weighing the cabbage.
Men, I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice here. If your wife comes to you and says, "I did [insert task]. Wasn't that smart?" Do not tell her she should have or could have done it a different way unless you want to limp for two days from where she kicked you in the shin. No; the correct response here would be, "Honey, that's amazing! Good job!" Just ask Captain.
For the next several weeks we would check the status of the sauerkraut about every other day. After three weeks when it had stopped bubbling around the edges (the indication of fermentation), it was ready to can.
Gardner Scott did not cover this aspect in his video so we went back to the Ball canning book which said to simmer the kraut until it was warmed through and then put the hot kraut into hot jars and water bath for 15 minutes.
We watch a lot of cooking shows around here, and they all say "If you're looking, it ain't cooking." This is a rule that Captain just cannot wrap his head around. If we have stuff in the crockpot, he can't resist taking the lid off and poking at it a half dozen times. Same with the kraut. Lid off, stir, complain that it isn't hot yet.
Dude, leave the damn lid on the pot and let it get hot!
Finally, the kraut was hot enough so I got five pint jars into the canner. Fifteen minutes later, Captain took them out of the canner for me, and the jars started pinging almost before he had them set on the counter. Those pings are so darned exciting!!
Since that was such a success, I now have another crock full of sauerkraut sharing my office with me. Hopefully we will get another four or five pints to share with friends and family.
Images used:
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