Trying a New Technique for Making Sauerkraut

The best sauerkraut is said to be made in its own juices. The cabbage is shredded and pounded enough to bruise the juice out of it. The requires extremely fresh cabbage, which I don’t often have, since cabbage moths make cabbage growing a real challenge for me. Cabbage is an inexpensive vegetable, so I don’t mind buying it to make sauerkraut. The trade-off is that it’s usually too old to pound out the juices. So, most often, I make sauerkraut by mixing and adding brine. 

Recently, I ran across a video with a different method for making sauerkraut. It’s a four-part series with the first video here. Instead of shredding the cabbage and adding the brine, the cut cabbage was salted first and allowed to sit overnight. Salt pulls moisture from food (through osmosis, I reckon) and so helps the cabbage make it’s own juice. I decided to give it a try.

The next morning the cabbage shreds looked wet and I found that the salt had indeed pulled some juice from the cabbage.

That squished out more juice. Not enough to cover the cabbage, but the video said in that case, cover it with a light brine. The video used fresh dill and slices of horseradish for flavoring, but I used juniper berries and celery seeds.