Easy Homemade Sauerkraut Recipe

It is so easy to make homemade sauerkraut and my favorite way is in a mason jar!  When you taste how fresh it is, you'll never buy store-bought again!

I love sauerkraut and would eat it even if it wasn't great for us.  I read an article about probiotics and about how important they are for our gut health.  You can even buy probiotic supplements and some foods that don't normally contain probiotics are even being supplemented with them. 

But why buy supplements when you can get your probiotics in Easy Homemade Sauerkraut?   The best part of making it yourself is that it can contain different strains of probiotics each time you make it!

Ingredients.

• Cabbage - you can use red or green cabbage.
• Water - filtered water is best, because tap water can contain chlorine, chloramine, and fluoride which can hamper the growth of the good bacteria. We run our water through a simple Britta filter, you could also use bottled water.
• Salt - you want to use a salt without additives. Table salt, in addition to iodine, can contain additives to keep it from clumping. A good pickling salt or kosher salt will work. Just check the ingredients and make sure it's salt without any additives.

And that's it, you only need 3 ingredients to make sauerkraut!

Instructions.

Begin by thinly slicing your cabbage. You can also grate it if that is your preference. You can use a mandoline for really thin slices, I usually just thinly slice mine with a knife.

Place the cabbage in a bowl and sprinkle with salt. Massage the salt into the cabbage for about 5 minutes. You will see the cabbage soften, and even get a bit smaller. I use about 1 tablespoon of salt per 1 ½ pounds of cabbage.

Let the cabbage sit in the bowl for about an hour. When you return, you'll notice the cabbage has reduced quite a bit and you'll have some liquid in the bottom of the bowl.

Start placing the cabbage in a clean mason quart jar. If you have a canning funnel, it works great for this.

After every 3 or 4 inches, use your hands or a pounder or muddler to push the cabbage down. You want it compacted and you want it to continue to release even more liquid.

After getting all your cabbage in the jar, you will probably need to add a little extra brine to top it off.

To make extra brine, mix 1 teaspoon of salt per 1 cup of water.

Pour the brine over the cabbage. Do not fill it to the top, you need to leave room for whatever you are going to use to weigh down the cabbage.

You can use a whole cabbage leaf to push the cabbage down. I like to use glass weights. They are made to fit in a wide-mouth mason jar perfectly (I will link to all my favorite tools in the recipe card.)

Place the cabbage in an out of the way location, preferably around 70°f. I just keep mine in the not-so-used living room. A warmer temperature will ferment faster, and a cooler temperature will ferment slower.

Be sure and place it on a plate, because as the cabbage ferments, liquid may bubble out of the lid.

Then you wait. You can start checking the kraut after 10 days. When it reaches your desired level of sourness (somewhere between 10-30 days) change out the fermenting lid for a regular lid and refrigerate. You can leave the glass weight in to keep the sauerkraut submerged if you like.

It can continue to age slowly in the fridge for 4-6 weeks, but mine never lasts that long!

After you've made your first batch and see how easy it is and how amazing it tastes, feel free to mix things up.  You can add carrots, and/or ginger, different herbs, even fennel and apples!

More fermenting ideas.

Recipe.

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