‘Tis the season, here in the dog days of summer, to be squirreling away as much of all the fresh, cheap, readily-available produce that you can. The last couple weeks, I’ve been indulging in some overexuberant canning, and I just bought another flat of pint jars today (and about ten pounds of stone fruit).

But canning really means some serious slaving over a hot stove — we are talking blood, sweat, and tears territory. And sometimes, you want to preserve some bounty, but you don’t want to be fussing with hot water baths (and hot water burns) and jars, and all the rest. Enter fermenting. Enter sauerkraut.

Way back in the day, I said that one of my New Year’s resolutions (along with redesigning this site, check!) was to make sauerkraut from scratch. And while the redesign sat on the back burner for a while, I got going on the sauerkraut pretty quickly. Nothing, after all, can really stand between a girl and her fermented cabbage.

My first attempts, however, were utter disasters. All the web sites I looked at assumed that I was starting with jarred sauerkraut that I simply wanted to kick up a notch (with the universal advice to cook it with juniper berries and butter). Few cookbooks had anything about sauerkraut, and those that did (ranging from a 1940s vintage farm cookbook to a modern-day book on preserving) all said the same thing: mix cabbage and salt and wait for the cabbage to release enough liquid to cover itself. Well, folks, maybe something is screwy with my cabbages, but they never ever came remotely close to releasing more than a tablespoon or two of liquid. Meaning only one thing: my first two (two!) attempts at sauerkraut rotted. They rotted in my closet. Thankfully, cabbage (strangely?) doesn’t smell very much at all when it rots; doubly thankfully, cabbage is cheap.

But, oh, what was I doing wrong? Enter the beautiful, amazing cookbook Cooking for the Moment, by Andrea Reusing (which I received c/o Clarkson Potter). This book not only had a recipe for homemade sauerkraut (a rarity, let me tell you), but it worked. And it was easier than all the ones that failed. The secret was simple: don’t rely on the cabbages to create their own liquid. Take matters into your own hands, and create a brine. Meaning: Just add water.

At any rate, now that I know the secret, making homemade cabbage could not be easier. So far, my attempts have tasted a little different than the store-bought stuff, mellower in flavor, and also more cabbage-y. More vegetal. At first, I was dismayed by the difference, but then, one of my friends pointed out to me: Wouldn’t you hope the homemade version would be different than the processed, store-bought version? Yes, I would think so.

All I know is that once you try this, you will never buy $7/jar sauerkraut again (in fact, you will be outraged that it even exists).

And, as a final note, I cannot sing the praises of this cookbook enough. Not only is it the only book I’ve found (in my extensive search) with an accurate recipe for sauerkraut, but everything in it is just my kind of food — simple enough, but with one easy flourish you could never think of on your own. And, as if that weren’t endorsement enough, I saw it on the shelf of one of my most food-savvy friends, with one of the most carefully curated cookbook collections I know. This one is seriously a keeper.

Homemade Sauerkraut

Adapted from Cooking in the Moment

Makes about 6 quarts

Ingredients

- 2 large heads of green cabbage (about 5 lbs.) — you want the kind that’s tightly wound, not frilly and loose

- 1/2 cup plus 3 Tbsp. kosher salt, or more as needed

1. Remove outer leaves from cabbage, discard. Core cabbage (cut off base stem of cabbage, then cut into quarters; remove the more solid-looking core on each quarter). Cut cabbage into thin slices, horizontally.

2. Put all the sliced cabbage into some large vessel. Reusing suggests a 10-12 quart crock or food-safe plastic bucket. I used a large glass punch bowl that I got at a thrift store for less than a dollar and washed the living hell out of (I now use it for all fermenting needs, and I highly suggest this option).

3. Combine salt with 1 gallon of water; stir until salt is dissolved. (If you are somewhat lazy, like me, you can simply toss the cabbage with salt and then add water to cover.) Either way, the cabbage should be covered by several inches of water. (If it isn’t, add more water, along with more salt — 2 tsp salt/1 cup of water.)

4. Use a plate to weigh down the cabbage so that it doesn’t float up (it needs to be fully submerged in the brine).

5. Cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Put in a dark, cool place (I used my hall closet).

6. Check every day or so, skimming off any impurities that form on the surface (I didn’t have any problems, really with that). It probably won’t be ready to go for a week or so, but the warmer it is, the faster it ferments. You may want to start tasting it after three or four days.

7. When it reaches the desired flavor (level of tang), drain the sauerkraut, reserving all liquid. Pack the kraut into containers (I just use old yogurt containers, but you can use glass mason jars if you’re feeling fancy). Cover kraut with reserved liquid. Store in refrigerator.

8. That method lasts for at least a couple weeks, but Reusing adds that if you want the kraut to keep longer, you can bring the liquid to a bare simmer in a large pot. Let simmer for 2 minutes, then let cool. Use the simmered liquid to cover the kraut in Step #7 above and store in the refrigerator. It should keep longer. (I haven’t actually tried, as my kraut seems to disappear fast enough as is.)

*NOTE: This should work out just fine, but if for some reason anything looks or smells funky, throw it out and start again (and feel free to ask for help in the comments). Cabbage is cheap; no reason to get yourself or anyone else sick.

Bubble, bubble...minus toil and trouble

Let’s first make one thing clear: I’m a big fan of the vinegar pickle.  I love the dilly bean and the pickled corn round and swear I would walk 500 miles (more, even) because I am a junkie for those grossly addictive Zuni café red onion pickles (yes, those pickles.  The good news is there’s no need to walk anywhere. Visit those links! They are a piece of cake to create at home).  Not to mention the many occasions when pickles, snacked on between shots of vodka, have no doubt inoculated against unkind mornings-after.  Mainly, it seems I can’t ever get enough vinegar.  One, let’s say, “uncommon” habit I have is to down cider vinegar mixed with molasses on occasions I’m too lazy to brew coffee, or when I’m in need of a pre-jog pick-me-up.  Probably, it goes without my saying: Any vegetable in vinegar is basically this girl’s dream come true.

Here’s the but: If there’s anything I love more than the vinegar pickle, it’s the lacto-fermented pickle.  Science projects that double as cooking have—for the past couple years—placed high among my preferred pursuits.  These include, but are by no means limited to, sourdough bread baking, kombucha brewing, and yogurt culturing.  Among these, there is nothing quite like watching cabbage bubble up in its crock into sauerkraut and kimchi—and my latest experiment, a Japanese cabbage pickle called “tsukemono.”  There’s something wondrous about lacto-fermentation.  Given a couple days, the bacteria already present on raw cabbage turns some tricks, ups the vitamin C and lactobactilli content, and emerges something greater than the sum of its parts. You shred some cabbage, add salt, and basically that’s it: it practically wants to become sauerkraut for you. It’s like Jimmy Stewart put it, once upon The Philadelphia Story: “Vinegar pickles are a slap on the back. And lacto-fermentation is a heavy mist before my eyes.”  So maybe he was talking about whiskey and champagne, respectively, but lacto-fermentation isn’t so different from bubbly: It’s magical, it’s fortifying, and it will make you giddy.

For reasons beyond understanding, store-bought sauerkraut often contains high fructose corn syrup or other dumb additives.  On top of all this, it costs a small fortune.  Why pay for the jar or refrigerated (often pasteurized! What!) bag when it’s simple—and it really is truly, truly simple—to make your own for pennies?  It’s delicious, for one thing, and ridiculously good for you: it’s rife with vitamins, highly digestible, promotes healthy intestinal flora, boosts your immune system, and can heal your broken heart.

Ways to enjoy your pickled cabbage

• There’s no shame in eating kraut straight out of the jar, but my favorite thing is a sandwich of toasted dark bread—some kind of pumpernickel or dark rye—slathered nearly to excess with mustard, topped with kimchi or sauerkraut and sardines. It is possible to buy the fish in its “skinless and boneless” manifestation, but why do that, when you’d be paying more to miss out on tasty calcium?  What I do is I remove the primary, disorienting, crunchy spine; the rest ain’t no thang.
• Sauerkraut pushed around in a pan with juniper berries and sausage
• Kimchi fried rice: If your kimchi grows “overripe”—meaning too sour for you to bear, what you do is fry it up with some day (or longer)-old rice, throw in frozen peas, cilantro, cumin, soy sauce, eggs, and white pepper.
• Make triangles of toast, top with tsukemono, a raw (if possible) or smoked oyster (recommended: Crown Prince smoked oysters in Olive Oil; steer clear of cottonseed, because it is gross) and as many drops of Tabasco on top as you can stand.
• Drink the kraut juice.  Just do it!  It’s good and good for you.

Japanese sauerkraut a.k.a. Tsukemono

Adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
Makes 1 quart

1 head Napa cabbage, cored and shredded
1 bunch green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons naturally fermented soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons whey (if not available, use an additional 1 teaspoon salt)

This is traditionally made with a culture derived from rice bran, but whey serves an identical purpose and is more easily obtained. (You can simply drain it off the top of your yogurt; or if you make your own cheese, you know what to do.) Place all ingredients in a bowl, mix well and pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer to release juices.  Place in a quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage.  The top of the vegetables should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar.  Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.

Interested in sauerkraut or kimchi? My favorite kimchi instructions come from Greg Cooks: his kimchi tutorial is excellent and simple, and the results ultra tasty.  My sauerkraut advice I get, of course, from Sandorkraut.  Check out his Wild Fermentation forums if you’re afraid of poisoning yourself, but really, you shouldn’t be.