[Ag-eq] A fate worse than death: was: Re: Sauerkraut

[Jewel]

I don't know if our neighbour was making sauerkraut, but I remember the, absolutely, dreadful smell 
when they had packed cabbage into milk cans and left it to its own devices.  If I had been starving 
to death and I had been offered that cabbage stuff which would have saved me from death, I would 
have chosen death because the very smell of that fermenting cabbage represented a  fate worse than 
...!

      Jewel

from our neighbour's place when

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Susan Roe" <dogwoodfarm at verizon.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 8:32 AM
To: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>; "Agricultural and Equestrean Division List" 
<ag-eq at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [Ag-eq] Sauerkraut

The recipe we used was from the "Country Side" magazine and it was a small
recipe.  Basically here is how it went.  Take 5 pounds of cabbage and shred
it small, but not too fine.  Place it in a clean kitchen trash bag with so
much rock salt.  This is where it gets fun for kids; place the closed bag on
the floor and with your sock feet, walk all over the bag and smash the
cabbage.  We then had gotten a bran new circular plastic bathroom trash can,
thoroughly washed andpacked the cabbage in the container.  Yu have to put
down a layer of cabbage and then take something like the flat head of a
wooden meat malit and tamp each layer down tight.  Do this until all of the
cabbage is packed.  Then take a saucer, turn it upside down on top of the
cabbage to hold it down and take a quart jar full of water and set that on
top of the saucer.  cover everything with a towl and let sit for about 3
days.

In this time period, the salt draws liquid from the cabbage and creates its
own brine.  The level should just come over the rim of the saucer, if not
there by 3 days, add enough water to get to that level.

Here is where the ferminting part comes in.  Take your washed and sterolized
jars and fill them with the cabbage, packing as you go and fill an inch from
the top.  Loosely put lids and rings on jars.  Now you need to put them in a
cool dark place and let them fermint away.  Here is where I know I would
need sighted help because you are watching for the fermintation bubbles to
begin and end as well as the color to change.  You must not seel the lids or
the fermintation gasses can't get out.  Also, you will definitely be getting
loads of cabbage gas, oh what a lovely smell.

Then you take the jars into your kitchen and take the lids and rings off.
Wipe the jars down with a clean wet cloth and rince the lids and rings
before putting them back on tight.  Then you would process the jars in a hot
water bath just like canning other pickels.

I have also heard of people taking crocks and filling them with a pickeling
brine and cutting up vegetables and putting them in to be pickeled.  They
would just add fresh vegetables and stir as they ate the pickels from the
crock.  They could have half brined vegetables all year round.

Susan
dogwoodfarm at verizon.net
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tracy Carcione" <carcione at access.net>
To: "Agricultural and Equestrean Division List" <ag-eq at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2013 6:30 AM
Subject: [Ag-eq] Sauerkraut


> All you guys who made sauerkraut with your moms, what equipment did you
> use?
> I've been looking at Amazon and Gardeners Supply.  Some people use a
> crock. Some seem to just use wide-mouth canning jars. It seems like people
> put the cabbage and brine in a crock, leave it a while, like 2-6 weeks,
> and then put it in jars.  The putting in jars bit seems like what Susan
> was describing.
> Tracy
>
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