What to do with a large cabbage

Recently I was the recipient of a large cabbage. Julie's sister, Miriam, had opened the door one morning and found the beast on the step, although not expected it was a gift from a well wisher. Well it was large, weighing in at 12 pounds, and while not a Guinness book of records entrant, it was non the less a daunting task for any cabbage cook. Any way Miriam decided that it was too much for her and donated it in my direction.

Well I do love cabbage, boiled, steamed, stir fried, stuffed (Julies speciality) or just plain raw; but this was a big 'un. One thing I have always likes was sauerkraut, the tangy European delicacy also well beloved of the North Americans. However legends or requiring barrels and vast amounts of greens had put me off. Any way I started searching on the Internet to see if I could find some ideas and came up with this site Kitchen Gardner's International.



So this is what I did.

• I dug out of the shed a 3 gallon plastic brewing bucket, I don't think you would get away with anything less although that does depend on the size of your cabbage! But it must be food safe! This I washed well and sterilised with boiling water.


• I found a round plate that was a reasonable close fit to the bucket, and a 1 Gallon Demijohn jar which I washed and filled with water


• I removed the outer leaves from the cabbage, cut it into quarters (not as easy as it sounds), trimmed out the hard core, and shredded each into 2-4 mm slices (needs a large , sharp knife and a degree of concentration)


• As each shredded quarter was added to the bucket i sprinkled 2 oz of salt over and pressed down as well as I could. This I repeated with the other 3 pieces, salting and pressing down each layer


• I put the plate on top, the demijohn weight on that, covered it with a cloth and put it in the corner of the kitchen.

I left this for 24 hours, after which I took a peek, the instructions said, if there wasn't a layer of liquid covering the cabbage add brine (2oz salt to pint of water) to cover the plate. I needed to add 2 pints too mine. This I left alone to do it's thing. About 4 or 5 days later i came down in the morning to a terrible smell in the kitchen, a mix of bad egg and 8 pint flatulence. I lifted the cloth to find a crusty layer on the top of the cabbage water. Now it did say in the instructions that I could remove this, but I didn't want to interfere.

A few days later, about a week after starting the smell decreased and i took a sneak taste from the bucket. It was slightly sharp, salty crunchy cabbage! So far so good! I left it another week, tasting every day, well you have too don't you? At the end I had, really fresh tasting, well sauerkraut.

Two weeks later I am still eating it, it has been served Au naturel, cooked in soup, with potatoes and cream and in sandwiches, even Julie likes it, and my family had it as an accompaniment to a roast at the weekend.

Making sauerkraut is that easy, it does smell, I don't think too bad, but Julie doesn't agree with me on that. Guess if you have a utility room it could be a better option.

But it is easy, it is very good and the web site says it is good for me as well!

This is the site, very informative with an explanation for it all.

http://www.kitchengardeners.org/sauerkraut.html