Fermentation Series Part 1- Sauerkraut

In this new podcast series, we’re diving into the world of fermentation—starting with our first topic: sauerkraut. Tune in as we explore its history, nutritional benefits, and how you can make it at home.

Resources: 

https://foodsafety.ces.ncsu.edu/fermentation-and-pickling/#:~:text=Fermentation%20is%20practiced%20at%20home,safely%20fermenting%20foods%20at%20home.

https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/ferment/recipes/sauerkraut/

https://foodsmartcolorado.colostate.edu/food-safety/safe-preparation-handling-and-storage/understanding-and-making-sauerkraut-2/

Transcript

Lindsey Edwards: 0:01

Welcome back to the Extension Connection podcast series where we connect our listeners to research-based resources to help them build better lives. Hello everyone. This is Lindsay Edwards, your family and consumer science agent in Polk County, and I'm coming at you today with a new topic and possibly a new series for me about fermented foods. Now the world of fermentation. Or the world of fermented foods is a large and vast and a little bit scary world filled with bacteria, yeast, and probiotics. It can be exciting, but it can also be as scary, food group to start eating and to start producing in their homes. But it's really not as hard as a lot of people think. And there are many types of. Home fermented food and beverages that you can consume and produce very safely at home. So in this series, I would like to talk about, first off, what they are and the benefits, and if you're interested in starting the process a little bit about that. And at this point, I'm not really sure how long the series would be. I know for sure I would like to talk about kombucha and sourdough. Today I am gonna start off with sauerkraut, which I believe is the easiest thing to start fermented. And I may touch on a few more of those fermented products, but for now, we'll start with those three. And I have made those three at home, so I know you can do it too. So again, I want to kick off today's episode with probably the easiest fermented food again in my opinion, which is sauerkraut. A little bit of history about sauerkraut before we get started. It has origins that date back as far as the third century BC in China, and it's believed that the people who were actually building the Great Wall of China. Ate a fermented cabbage dish they used a rice wine vinegar to create. While it's not the exact same product as the sauerkraut like we think of today, it is our first idea of people fermenting cabbage and they believe that the Mongols actually. Spread this idea of fermenting cabbage to eastern European countries. And, by the ninth century, there's evidence that shows that the Slavic people were fermenting cabbage with salt, which is really what, sauerkraut is. And this process spread to Germany, which is where we get the word for sauerkraut, which in German translates to sauer cabbage, which is really what I think as Americans. We think of sauerkraut today. While we most often think about this being an addition to foods, especially heavy foods like pork, like brautwurst, or pork chops in that German tradition, it can be a great. Addition to many different types of cuisines, it has a tangy sour flavor, and it can be added to things like, Asian inspired dishes or even like a grilled cheese. People use it with breakfast dishes, with hash browns and salty, heavier foods to kind of lighten it up. And it can even be used on things like a taco, instead of some sort of pickled ingredient, you might wanna put sauerkraut on it. So it is very versatile. You can use it in a lot of different ways. Don't just think of it as a bratwurst or a hotdog topping. Try to figure out and look up recipes'cause you can find all kinds of different ways that people use sauerkraut in different types of cuisine. So the process of creating sauerkraut is a pretty simple one, and I kind of wanna go into the science just a little bit about it, to help people understand what is actually happening and how it is producing a probiotic and how it works. Is that, you basically, the whole thing that you're doing is you're adding salt to cabbage to create a brine. And it uses lactobacillus, bacteria that's found naturally on the cabbage to break down the sugars in the cabbage with the absence of oxygen and then the sugars produce lactic acid, which changes the flavor to that sour flavor we think of and is that beneficial probiotic that we have come to know and love from our sauerkraut products. A study out of the University of California Davis showed that when you ferment the cabbage, you're changing the nutritional profile and you're increasing the things in the cabbage, which can help your gut. And they suggest eating some every day to help reduce inflammation. Now, while we do hear a lot about gut health with probiotic food there's not necessarily enough research out there for us at extension to give a definitive answer on whether or not it's helping your gut. But there is certain research out there, to suggest that, it does contain probiotics. Sauerkrauts nutritional value also is very low in calories. It's about 42 calories per cup. It also is high in vitamin C and has about four grams of fiber. So overall, it can be beneficial to a diet, even if you're not worried about the probiotic benefits of it. So let's look at how we make this and when you go grocery shopping, you will see. Pre-made Sauerkraut at the store. And it looks like it's sitting in water or what it is, is a brine, but in reality, they're not adding any water to that product. What they are doing is they're salting the cabbage, letting it sit, and having the liquid out of the cabbage draw out, and then they're mashing it down to produce a brine. From the cabbage itself, so I do wanna always remind you and point you to the National Center for Home Food Preservation out of the University of Georgia for any type of home food preservation. They are tested, lab tested recipes, and they are safe. And they do have a sauerkraut recipe on there. There's other fermented products on there as well. But their recipe calls for 25 pounds of cabbage and then three fourth cup of canning salt. I personally, I don't know about you, but I personally. Have never fermented 25 pounds of cabbage at one time.'cause I'm the only person in my house that eats it. So I do small batch. I found a resource out of Oregon State University where they do a one quart mason jar measurement. They use one in a fourth pound of cabbage to two and a fourth teaspoons of canning salt if you don't have exactly one and a fourth pounds of cabbage. What I do is at home I measure my cabbage on a scale and I use a two to 2.5% salt to cabbage ratio. So what that means is I weigh out my cabbage and I usually do it in grams, and then that'll give me a number. I multiply that gram number of cabbage by 0.02, which gives me 2%, and then that's. How much salt that I need to add to it., Side note, you'll notice that I said canning or pickling salt. You're not really supposed to use any type of salt when doing sauerkraut because certain salts can have anticaking agents in them or they can be colored and it can change your brine. If you go to the store and you buy canning or pickling salt, which I've found it locally and it's not expensive, and it's usually in a really large box, so it lasts you forever. It is just salt. There's nothing added to it. And. Just FYI, it can clump together. So if you have it for a long period of time, you may need to break it up before you use it, but that is the type of salt that I'm talking about anytime. I'm talking about this sauerkraut, fermentation process. So we just wanna make sure it's pure free of any agents. Back to how to ferment the cabbage. So once you salt. The cabbage and you can use red or green cabbage for this. Well, let me go a little bit further back that I skipped this. This part, you chop up your cabbage as small or as big as you would like it. Once you know your ratio, you add the salt to that chopped up cabbage, and you let it sit for about 20 to 30 minutes and stir up that salt. So it's covering every part of the cabbage. This part of the process is gonna start to draw out some of the liquids. The fresher the cabbage, the more juice and brine it will produce. So just aim to buy as fresh, local cabbage you can possibly buy because it will produce more brine. If you do this in the off season. It will produce brine, but it might not be enough to cover it and you might have to make some of your own brine, which you wanna try to avoid. You let it sit there for 20, 30 minutes and using clean, gloved hands. All parts of this needs to be really be clean and sanitary so you're not introducing any weird bacteria or fungus in there. You're gonna start to massage and break up the cabbage, break down those cell walls and what that is gonna do again, draw out more of that brine. Then once you've massaged it a lit little bit, you are then gonna add it to your fermentation vessel. I usually use a large mouth quart size canning jar, and then I'll start to mash down my cabbage. I have used a wooden spoon to do this process. I recently bought a, muddler to, push down my cabbage. You can buy actual sauerkraut like dampers that push down the cabbage. It's not necessary. You can do it even with your hands if you can reach your hands inside of the jar. What you're doing at this point is you're just applying a lot of pressure down on that cabbage to push the cabbage down and to bring the liquid out and push it up. Then once you've filled your jar, you have probably about an inch lip space. And your brine is completely covering it, you're gonna weigh down the cabbage. You don't want the cabbage floating to the top, because what that can do is if there's little bits at the top, it can start to mold. So you're gonna weigh it down. I have purchased fermentation weights, which are glass weights that push down the cabbage and allow that liquid to, to sit on top of it. If you don't wanna purchase one of those, you can buy a Ziploc bag and put it in there and fill that up with extra brine. And if you don't have extra brine, then you can make a solution of water to 2% salt, just like you did with the cabbage and fill that. And so push that down to submerge the cabbage and it kind of locks the top of your jar too. You can use a fermentation lid if you wanna buy them. Or I at home use a plastic jar lid and I just make sure to open it up once a day and what's called burp it, which basically means you're letting out that carbon dioxide so that your jar doesn't explode and you are checking it to make sure there's nothing funky growing on top. It is important to remember that when you are. Doing the fermentation process for sauerkraut that you don't use anything metal, you don't want anything metal touching your fermentation. And that includes like the utensils you're using to push down the kraut with, and that's why I said a wooden spoon instead of something metal. Because it can hinder the fermentation process. Once you have your sauerkraut done and then a jar, you can let it sit out at room temperature. Fermentation likes the temperature, 68 degrees to 72 degrees for proper fermentation. If it's colder in your house, it's gonna take a lot longer. If it's warmer, it's gonna go a lot faster. After about a week, go ahead and taste your crout. See if you like the flavor. If you like it more sour, let it keep fermenting at room temperature. If you're good with the flavor of it at that point, then you can refrigerate it, it will continue to ferment in the refrigerator, but it's gonna slow way, way, way, way, way down so you don't have to worry about it. Get like super tangy, super fast. It's gonna take a much longer time in your refrigerator. I hope that this presentation on sauerkraut helps in that you try out this first ferment. It's a really great place to start and it's fairly easy if you have just cabbage and salt and to dip your toes into the world of fermentation. This is definitely where I would suggest you start if you have more questions. Or like more resources, please reach out to me and I can get you those. I'm going to be adding a list of resources, including the recipe I'm talking about in the show notes. So please go look for those and please join us next week as our four H agent. Jessica comes at you with another episode and I look forward to talking to you next time on the Extension Connection.