Canning Sauerkraut

[blissful]

Originally Posted by Moose600

The recipe came from Cooks.com. Quick and Easy Sauerkraut.
After canning a bunch of tomatoes, mostly whole and some sauces and a bunch of apples, (butter, sauce and pie filling) I had some jars left over, so I figured I'd give this recipe a try.

There is nothing wrong with cooks.com as long as the recipes are tested, by universities, universities extensions, or ball blue book. That's why they are mentioned here. Let us know how your sauerkraut works for you. Best wishes.

[gadzooks]

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and lived in Philadelphia as a child. In a neighborhood full of Germans, Poles, Czechs, Ukranians...a lot of cabbage goin' on. Everybody made their own 'kraut, and I watched and learned. Fifty years later, I still make it the same way, in a five gallon stoneware crock. Put in a 2" layer of shredded cabbage, sprinkle with coarse salt and caraway seed, and repeat until the crock is nearly full. Then I lay a piece of cotton twill (I actually use mattress ticking) and insert a wooden lid that fits inside the crock, so that the cloth protrudes around the edge, and put a rock on the lid. Then cover with another piece of cloth. Every couple of days I take the rock, lid and cloth out, wipe the lid and exposed portion of the crock interior with a damp cloth, rinse and wring the ticking and replace it all. In two weeks...sauerkraut! It was always a winter food back east, and was kept on a back porch or fire escape to stay anywhere from cool to cold. I don't remember anyone canning it, as it kept well as long as it was kept cool. Serving it uncooked also preserves its' abundance of beneficial enzymes. Of course, each to his own.

[FrankZ]

Kathleen bought the crock mentioned earlier in this thread (the 5L) one from Amazon. The 7L one was only $5 more but they wanted $80 in shipping (YIKES).

We had very good luck with it, the kraut was wonderful. Too bad we ended up with a containment getting in the crock and ruining the last of it.

We have discussed starting a new batch and canning when it is ready. We have not looked at all the variables yet, or the process, to be sure this is something we want to do. Might be time for some research.

[Steve Kroll]

Originally Posted by gadzooks

I don't remember anyone canning it, as it kept well as long as it was kept cool. Serving it uncooked also preserves its' abundance of beneficial enzymes. Of course, each to his own.

You sound a lot like me. I prefer it raw myself.

The recipe I put up on the first page is the way my grandmother showed me how to make it. She made her own kraut for 60-some years using fresh cabbages from her garden. She hated the canned stuff from the store, and it's easy to see why. Fresh kraut is tart and flavorful, with a wonderful crunch you just don't get from a can.

[blissful]

I'm so glad no one has mentioned the unmentionable. We are all so polite!
Sauerkraut can give you......GAS. Would you like beans with that?

[Moose600]

Forgot to mention, we have well water, running through a softener, using the rust pellets. Think this might have anything to do with the sediment I'm seeing?

[mcnerd]

Yup. My tap water is 70% well water and I vaguely remember information somewhere not to use well or softened water (maybe that was for doing beans. Can't remember). I use Brita filtered or bottled water for all such recipes since and I've never had problems.

[gadzooks]

A white film on the bottoms of the jars makes me think of a different kind of fermentation. When I was in college, the university had extensive apple orchards. Being a land grant school that specialized in mining, agriculture and forestry along with the standard academic fare, they did a lot of research in these areas. When a research project in the orchards finished, the orchards were opened to public picking, and I would go pick several duffel bags full of apples. I took them back to the Vets' House and crushed the apples and jammed them into 5 gallon glass carboys with a couple handfuls of sugar and a half a handful of brewers' yeast, then filled with water. I stored them in the furnace room in the basement to ferment, and I knew they were ready when the liquid went clear and a thick layer of white settled in the bottoms of the jars. In this case, the white stuff was dead yeast, killed when the alcohol content of the mash was high enough to kill it. Time to siphon the liquid off and distill it in the still I made out of a huge institutional-size pressure cooker that came from a university equipment auction, placed on a hotplate, complete with a copper tube condensing coil. The result was a fierce applejack, that burned like hi-test gasoline and tasted faintly of apples.

[blissful]

Gadzooks you've lived an interesting life!

I've seen recipes requiring filtering the liquid before canning--it might just be leftover 'bloom' or mold or maybe that is yeast?