Hello, I'm Elka Wilder from bohemianelk.com
and today we're going to make some sauerkraut
and I've already got this started here If anyone knows anything about sauerkraut,
you know it's made with cabbage and salt
and those are the most essential ingredients But there's lots of things you can add to it.
This one today, I'm keeping pretty simple..
I'm adding just a parsnip and some preserved lemon And so yeah, I'm going to finish chopping up
the cabbage, and I'm just using one head
of cabbage Chopping that up.. And you can kind of chop it up any way
you want. You can experiment and see what
works best for you In different batches and see if you like it
super thin or a little bit thicker I use to think it only came out really well
if you sliced it super thin, but I've been
showed by friends of mine that it's
not really the case So I've been having fun playing around with
different textures. I really love to use
whole slices of root vegetables And this is something that I picked up
from my friends Monica and Kat in Ashland
and it's really, really fun to put Whole slices of turnips or parsnips or beets
in the sauerkraut.. and this is parsnip we're using
today, I might have already mentioned that And so far what's already in the jar
already has kind of like a two thirds of the
table spoon of salt so I'm going to put the last Third of the table spoon of salt into this
and mix it in And then it probably looks like this is not
going to fit in that jar so this is kind of
the fun part Where, what I think is the fun part of sauerkraut
is how much cabbage you can actually pack into
a jar, it's pretty cool So I'm just using this wooden spoon and
packing it in It's even better if you something that has
a flat end or a mallet or a pestle of some sort.
So, now that I'm getting to where it's a little harder I'm going to scoop my hand in there and
pack it a little more. Check it out, it's like
barely half full now Kind of amazing.. Alright, so now we can put the rest of this
bowl into the jar. No problem Got to do it in stages, but yeah I usually
take out the funnel when I'm doing the
packing part, it's a little easier And you always kind of strew some all over the counter
while you're doing it, it's just kind of part
of the fun As the salt works into the cabbage, it will
create a liquid that's called brine which is
simply salty water And the brine is what makes sauerkraut sauerkraut.
The pro-biotic bacteria get going in it and that's what
preserves the vegetables that you can keep this At room temperature for days and days, and just
eat on it whenever you want. It keeps a little
bit better if you keep refrigerated But, if you're in a situation where you're camping
or anything like that, it's great to know that you
can have ready made fresh vegetables Any time of day or night even without a refrigerator
if you have sauerkraut around, it's pretty cool Alright, here's the last bit Here we go, yeah easily fit into the jar
and what I'm going to do now is just let this sit
for a while after I pack it down a little bit more And then as I'm doing other stuff in the kitchen,
every so often I'll just take this tool and
push on it a little bit and that will help The brine get flowing, and before long there will
be a brine that will come up all the way up to here
above the cabbage, it just takes a little while And a little bit of pushing on the cabbage
and that's really all there is to it.
Then it just needs to sit until there's bubbles That come up to the surface and that usually
takes two or three days in the Spring and Fall
two days probably in the heat of the Summer
if your kitchen is kind of warm And in the Winter, it might take an extra day
or two because it's really temperature dependent.
But yeah, super simple, super yummy Alright, thanks so much for watching :) This is the amount of kraut you will get
from one Average USA cabbage and one parsnip