Making Sauerkraut

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Description

Did you know that sauerkraut can do more than just top your hot dog? In this episode, fermentation expert Holly Howe joins us to share how this simple fermented food can transform your gut health and bring your meals to life. Holly is the founder of MakeSauerkraut.com and the author of a comprehensive guide to making sauerkraut and kimchi right in your own kitchen.

We talk about:

• The difference between pickling and fermenting
• How Holly got started with fermentation after discovering Nourishing Traditions
• Why salt (and the right amount of it) is key to successful fermentation
• Common mistakes beginners make and how to avoid them
• How to eat sauerkraut daily—and why you might want to
• Why fermented food is safe, and how to handle mold
• The 10K Jar Challenge and how you can participate!

Whether you're curious about sauerkraut and kimchi, looking to support your digestion naturally, or just want to preserve your garden harvest, this episode will give you the confidence to get started.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, which help keep the lights on here at Thrifty Homesteader so we can continue to provide hundreds of free articles.

Featured Book

Mouthwatering Sauerkraut Fermentation Made Easy!

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• Buy on Bookshop

Other Resources Mentioned

• Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon 
  • Buy on Amazon
  • Buy on Bookshop
• Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz 
  • Buy on Amazon
  • Buy on Bookshop
• 10K Jar Challenge

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Transcript

Deborah Niemann 0:04
Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever size your living space, you can do more than you think to lead a greener lifestyle. In the sustainability book chat, we are talking to authors and experts about all the different ways that achieving sustainability is within your reach.

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s episode. This is going to be a lot of fun. Today we are talking to Holly Howe, a fermentation teacher and founder of the website makesauerkraut.com where she teaches everyday folks how to take charge of their health, one fork full of sauerkraut or kimchi at a time. Welcome to the show, Holly.

Holly Howe 0:50
Thank you for having me, Deborah. I’m excited to be here.

Deborah Niemann 0:54
Yeah, I’m excited to have you. Fermentation is one of those skills that I have never really gotten very good at. You know, like most people, I think, you know, when I went to preserve the harvest for my garden, I thought about freezing, I thought about canning, but it didn’t really click that fermentation was even a thing. And, in fact, I don’t think initially I even knew there was a difference between fermentation and pickling, you know, I just thought, I’m like, Oh, well, sauerkraut is a pickled thing, right? Let’s just start there. Tell us, what is the difference between pickling and fermenting? Okay?

Holly Howe 1:28
Well, you know, I got into fermentation for the health benefits of it, traditional cultures that were studied by a dentist many years ago, Weston A. Price, found that a common thread through all these cultures was that they ate fermented foods. So that started me down this rabbit hole. I started with sauerkraut, but there is a big difference between pickled, say, cabbage or pickled pickles, and fermented. Fermented is keeping the food alive so that it still has the probiotics and enzymes that feed your gut health. And so if you want to put your gut health on autopilot then you want to be eating some type of fermented food, you know, once or twice with your meal each day. And it can be made very simple by just adding a fork full to your meal.

So with pickling, it’s typically done with vinegar and with heat, and so with that vinegar and that heat, you’re killing off the beneficial microbes and the enzyme, so you’re not getting the gut health benefits from it. With fermentation, you’re relying upon the bacteria to preserve it for you. For like, with sauerkraut, we’re like making coleslaw. We’re slicing that cabbage very finely. We’re adding shredded vegetables or garlic or ginger, whatever, to flavor it, and then we sprinkle it with salt.

That salt is very important; that acts as our preservative. It pulls the liquid out of the cabbage cells to create a brine, and we pack everything into a jar, and it sits below the brine, where then it ferments, and the bacteria that come on the cabbage, they’re there for us to capture and make use of. And thank them for their hard work, they go to work once they’re in that jar without air under the brine, and they start munching on that cabbage and grabbing the sugars out of there and making lactic acid.

So lactic acid is our homemade preservative. That’s what preserves it. That’s what gives it its tang and then acts as a digestive enzyme for us. So as we age and our hydrochloric acid production goes down, we can bring in these fermented foods to bring those levels back up, to keep our digestion where it’s at. So pickling was with heat and does it have the beneficial bacteria and enzymes, whereas fermentation is with the bacteria, creating the beneficial probiotics for our gut health.

Deborah Niemann 3:40
Awesome. Thanks for making that distinction. You kind of touched on this a tiny bit, but let’s take a step back and have you tell us about yourself and how you got interested in writing a book about sauerkraut.

Holly Howe 3:52
I’ve always been interested in health, and always trying to figure out how I can live a healthy, vibrant life to a ripe old age, and looking at the food I ate, you know, I grew up in a healthy home. We had a huge garden. Everything came out of the garden. My mom canned every summer, we’d collect fruit, and that was our breakfast where the fruits that she had canned. And so I grew up in a healthy environment, and always was inspired to continue that, and so delved into a lot of different health books.

And it wasn’t until 20 years ago, I came across the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. And in there, she’s takes what Weston A. Price the dentist I mentioned earlier his discoveries, and shows you how to prepare that food. And so this dentist, who was looking back in the 30s, he was noticing people coming into his dental office did not have the nice, broad palette. Their teeth were decaying. There was a lot more dental issues going on than they had seen previously in patients. So he went and searched around the world for people with perfect teeth, and then looked at their diets. And then it was at a time when food was being processed foods were coming in, we were switching over to white processed flowers and oils and sugars and everything. So he could see a dietary change in families.

And when these people started eating the processed foods, then they ended up with more dental issues. So what he came up with this? What did these people eat and how did they prepare it? And that’s where a common thread was sauerkraut, or some type of fermented food, and all these diets. So that got me into, okay, I’m going to try sauerkraut. So I knew nothing about making it at that time. This is 20 years ago. There was no YouTube channels. There was no Amazon to buy products that you know, for our fermentation vessels, and the only book out there was Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Tradition. And then Sandor Katz had his book Wild Fermentation.

So I made my first batch of sauerkraut, pretty much like I was making a batch of cookies. I had no idea what fermentation was. I had no idea that there were microbes in that jar. I just followed the directions threw everything together and hoped and prayed. And then, you know, gradually wanted to perfect the process. And so over time, I figured out a little nuances, how much salt to add, what kind of salt to add, how to figure out how much salt to add, when to make sauerkraut, how to slice it, etc. And then gradually, friends wanted help with it, so I started helping them with it. And before you knew it, had put a website together, and then the book came next, so I could help more people with the simple, easy food.

And I learned a lot of different ways to ferment, but I stuck to just the sauerkraut. I mean, I ferment other things, but it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by trying to make everything. And so this became, like my one thing, you know, I was raising a family. You can only do so much at home with two kids in the house, so I was trying to figure out, how can I simplify it? So it was by adding just one fermented food to my diet, and that was the sauerkraut, and that’s what I keep in my refrigerator year round to add to my meals, and not feeling I have to make ketchup and sourdough bread and yogurts and kefir and all that, and I still do that, but I found by specializing on one thing that made my life a little bit easier.

Deborah Niemann 7:06
When did you start your website?

Holly Howe
2014

Deborah Niemann
Okay, and then how soon after that did the book come?

Holly Howe 7:12
There was a PDF book that came a few years after that, and I want to say in 2018 I published the book on Amazon, self published. And then a year ago, I was approached by Robert Rose publishing out of Canada, Toronto, and they wanted to republish the book, because they knew that, you know, fermentation was trending. It just keeps getting more and more popular every day. But the original book did not have kimchi in it, so we added kimchi to it and republished it, and they re-photographed everything in it, and came up with this beautiful, simple book that allows you to master sauerkraut and kimchi and add those two foods to your diet.

Deborah Niemann 7:47
Awesome. So tell our listeners a little bit about what kimchi is.

Holly Howe 7:51
Kimchi is comes from Korea. It’s a staple in their diet. It’s part of their culture, and it’s made with napa cabbage, where a sauerkraut is usually made with the green hard head cabbage, and with a sauerkraut, you’re salting everything to create a brine. With kimchi, there’s a lot of, you know, over 400 varieties of kimchi. The one most people are familiar with is a Napa cabbage kimchi. And I make what is called a mock kimchi, which is the chopped up cabbage. So we chop up napa cabbage, we add in dikon and carrots and ginger and garlic, those are the common vegetables. They get soaked in a brine first, and then we drain that brine and squeeze all the water out, because this is a solid state ferment. We’re wrapping those vegetables in kimchi flavoring paste, which is made with gochugaru, which is a Korean red pepper. That’s what gives it that beautiful fiery red color. And that’s where we can also add in the ginger and the garlic. And typically in most kimchis are fish sauce and a salted shrimp.

But if you’re vegan, or if you can’t do the shellfish, another common flavoring umami ingredient can be miso. So those become a red paste, and we wrap we mix that salted and drained cabbage with that red pepper sauce, and then it ferments for up to about a week, whereas cabbage will ferment for three to four weeks, but it’s a short ferment. And then we move it to the refrigerator. You can eat it right away. It’s called a young kimchi, or you can let it ferment for a few more weeks in the refrigerator. Will develop a full of flavor.

So there’s a little bit different fermentation process and a different timeline on it. But they’re both working with cabbage and vegetables. Kimchi has a much greater variety of bacteria in it and different strains of it, because we’re adding in fermented products. We’re adding in the fermented fish sauce, we’re adding in the fermented shrimp or the miso, and those give a much greater profile to the you know, which are consuming microbial from that fermented food. But they’re both beautiful ferments, and they’re just done a little bit differently. And kimchi doesn’t have to be hot and spicy. You can determine how much gochugaru, how much of that Korean red pepper flakes you’re adding to it, so you can temper the flavor of it and the heat of it.

Deborah Niemann 10:13
That sounds wonderful. I’m sure a lot of people are listening and going, how can you like, have a whole website devoted to sauerkraut and like, have a whole book devoted to sauerkraut, like, it’s just like this one little thing, right? So can you tell us a little bit more about how the book is structured? You know, like, list of recipes, and I’m sure there’s a lot of science, how to manual, what kind of stuff is in there.

Holly Howe 10:36
The fun with it is that you can do a lot of flavors with a sauerkraut. Cabbage takes on a lot of you can mix anything with it. I make a Hawaiian sauerkraut that has like pineapple in it and lime and cilantro. So there is over 20 sauerkraut recipes and over a dozen kimchi recipes. And so it’s to give people a large variety of options to choose from, because you have people in your family that may love the ginger-carrot sauerkraut, or like vegan kimchi, or want mango kimchi, and so you can really tailor to your family the different type of ferments you’re going to make sauerkraut and both kimchi are very simple process once you understand the steps to it.

And so I really took the time to make sure people understand, you know, how much salt to add, what type of salts to add, how to get that brine. And the little nuances and tips that I gathered over working with people my website, and the questions they asked over the years and doing workshops, they’re going like I got a question from a reader in Australia who said, ‘Well, what size tablespoon are you using? So the tablespoons are different around the world, there’s a tablespoon out of Australia, which is one size, and then out of Great Britain. So all of a sudden I went, I can’t just dip that spoon into my salt jar and dump the salt on there, because that tablespoon might give me 20 grams of salt, or might give me 16 grams of salt.

And so the bacteria, as they’re working, they like a certain salt percentage, and if we get that salt percentage too high, they slow down. They don’t work at all. They kind of get hot and sweaty. They just sit there, and fermentation doesn’t happen. If we don’t give them enough salt, then the pathogenic bacteria that we don’t want can grab hold, or the yeast and molds can take hold. So we want to use the right amount of salt. So that one question from my reader out of Australia got me weighing everything. So I started using a digital scale and adding in the ingredients, and putting in the cabbage, and then adding a 2% salt solution to that 2% salt by weight.

So those little things are what are in the book, so that you can master this one ferment, be making it in your sleep before you know it. So there’s enough tips in there, so all these little things that can go wrong during the fermentation process are prevented by learning that step by step process. And then you can choose from what flavor you want to work with. So there’s a little bit of background on sauerkraut and kimchi and the fermentation process.

The difference between it, there’s a nice shopping guide of all the material you need and why I go over, like my favorite fermentation weight for sauerkraut, which is a fermentation spring. And so they’re just little things like that that can help give you the success you need. For kimchi, it has a little bit of different special ingredients you need in your pantry, like the gochugaru, the Korean red pepper flakes. So tips on how where to buy that, and what to look for, how it differs from the powder, the different types of flakes you’re working with, and where to find the salted shrimp, and what type of vessels to ferment and etc.

So it’s simple, approachable. You got to go out and buy many ingredients. I want people to be able to grab a jar out of their pantry and use that without having hop on to Amazon and buy 1000 things, you can get started with very simple ingredients.

Deborah Niemann 13:45
That sounds wonderful. What are some of the most common mistakes that you see people making when they’re just getting started?

Holly Howe 13:52
First one would be probably trying to — and with cabbage, you can do it any time of year – but thinking that fermentation came about as a way to preserve the harvest. And so when the napa cabbages were plentiful and harvested in Korea, there in November, that’s when everybody made kimchi, and that’s why they had the beautiful ceramic ongi pots that they would put into the ground to preserve it over winter, and you would eat that all through the winter, because there weren’t plenty for vegetables at the store.

And so we’ve gotten today we can buy cabbage year round, and ideally you are fermenting in the fall when that cabbage is freshly harvested. When a vegetable is picked, it’s coated, it’s ripe, with all these beneficial bacteria that we need for fermentation. Fermentation can’t happen without that bacteria. And so if that cabbage has been stored for six or seven months, say it was harvested in November, and then we don’t get around to making sauerkraut with it until May.

Well, it’s been sitting in a cold storage somewhere, losing its moisture. And losing its plentiful family of bacteria there. So one of the first mistakes that I see, is people are trying to ferment it anytime a year, when ideally we should be looking at it as a way to preserve the local harvest, and working with our local farmers to get that you can learn to ferment sauerkraut anytime a year. You can have good luck with it, but your long range plan should be to look at it as a way to preserve the harvest during the season, when that cabbage is freshly harvested.

And then the other mistake I would see was not weighing things, not adding the right amount of salt. So when you get those salt numbers just right, then fermentation unfolds perfectly. The flavors are nice. There’s not too much salt there. You taste the tanginess instead. And so it’s learning to work with a digital scale. It becomes your friend, because right away, you know how much to add, and you know when to stop, and you put everything in, and then jar after jar after jar turns out so you don’t have to throw things away.

So that would be the other thing would be getting those salt numbers correct, and probably not keeping things under the brine for sauerkraut. With kimchi, is not issue, because we’re fermenting in a pace as a solid state ferment, and you’re only leaving that jar on the counter for up to a week, so we’re not having to worry about the pathogenic bacteria taking hold or molds or yeasts invading your jar. But with sauerkraut, we’re leaving it for three to four weeks, and you want to keep everything under the brine so it’s sometimes people aren’t as conscious about how to keep things under the brine so that can ferment in that anaerobic environment.

Deborah Niemann 16:28
That is a really great point that you made. I want to just go back to that a second where you talked about using the correct amount of salt and having a scale, because if any of my listeners have taken my soap making course, they know. The people tell you you absolutely have to have a scale. Do not even attempt to make soap without a scale. And I will never forget the woman who walked up to me at a conference and asked me what was going wrong with her soap because sometimes it turned out and sometimes it didn’t. And I said, Oh, it sounds like a battery in your scale is probably not good anymore. Like, you need to change the batteries in your scale. And she’s like, Oh, I don’t use a scale. I said, “Okay, that’s your problem.” You need to use a scale. Like, this is really, really important to do it. And she’s like, Oh, but sometimes, it turns out, I’m like, Yeah, because sometimes you get lucky, if you’re okay with just getting lucky sometimes and then throwing everything out the rest of the time, don’t get a scale, but if you want every batch to turn out, then you need to get a scale and use the exact amount.

Holly Howe 17:30
Exactly. And you know, ancient cultures did not use a scale, but we’re talking about a whole different level of the quality of the produce back then. We’re also talking where it was embedded into the family. It was part of the culture. The kids watched the mom making the sauerkraut, and they helped out, and they went down to the basement to dig the sauerkraut out of the big crock. And so it was imbued into their being. It was part of they knew how to do it. And so you can get away with that.

And I know when I first started this is that whole evolution, you just chop the head of cabbage and you sprinkle it with a tablespoon of salt, mix it up. Does it taste salty? Does it taste like seawater? Oops, there’s too much salt in there. Then, uh, add a little bit more cabbage. Does it taste like a potato chip? Then that’s the right amount of salt. Well, there’s a lot of variance in that. And to me, when you grab that scale out, it just becomes so easy. You don’t have that fear, you relax, and it’s just put this together. And, you know, all the recipes are formulated on ratios and how things work together.

Deborah Niemann 18:31
Yeah, it’s definitely a matter of tolerance for failure,

Holly Howe 18:35
Right! And in the recipe, you know, when I the first book that came out, I did by volume. I said, put in a cup of shredded carrots, or I did buy, you know, two to three shredded carrots. Well, your shredded carrot may be twice the size as my shredded carrot, and so you might end up with half the jar filled with shredded carrots, where I might end up with a quarter. Well, if we get too much sugar in that ferment, then it tends toward yeast or alcohol, and it’s not going to turn out the same way.

And so I redid the first book by taking all my measurements and weighing everything out. And so the book now is all by imperial and metric. So it’s 200 grams of grated beets, 20 grams of minced garlic, teaspoon of caraway seeds, and then cabbage to hit 800 grams to fit into that jar. And that made all the difference in the world, to have that nice consistency in there and to be able to repeat it from batch to batch. And like ginger and garlic, the amount you put in a ferment can really change the flavor of it. If you put too much garlic in, it can almost get bitter. And so it’s nice to know this is how much I put in. I’m not really tasting the garlic. Next batch, I’m going to increase it, or take it back and say, you can really refine a recipe to what your family likes and what tastes good to you, also by having those numbers in there.

Deborah Niemann 19:53
Awesome. So are there some myths about fermenting or making sauerkraut that you wish would just go away.

Holly Howe 20:02
Oh gosh, that’s a good one left for me that it’s not safe. People are very afraid to serve their family what they made. And I was that way too. I’m with my first batch of sour cream that I made, because to make sour cream, all you’re doing is taking a pint of cream, pouring into a jar and putting a spoonful of sour cream from a previous batch or from the store, mixing that in, because that’s where the microbes are that are going to transform it. Then you let it sit in a warm spot overnight, or 24 hours til it thickens. The first couple batches I made, I never ate. I couldn’t consume because I had this fear, but I left that cream out, and that’s all we did.

But fermentation is very safe. There’s never been a case of somebody who’s gotten sick or poisoned from, you know, died from fermented vegetables. If your nose works, you’re going to open that jar. If something went wrong, you’re going to know it’s going to be like a noxious smell that hits you, knocks your socks off, and you’re not going to intuitively know to eat it. So a lot of people are afraid to get in fermentation, because they grow up with the food safe rules of you bleach everything, you boil everything, etc. Are coming from Canning, where you’re really working on how long you put in that hot water bath canner and you sterilize all the jars.

Fermentation is very different. It’s much simpler than canning, and we don’t have to worry about all that bacteria in there. Once we learn to work with the bacteria. We know they’re there. We know how they dropped the pH down to make it safe, below 4.0 on the pH scale. And so we almost switch over to really being grateful for the bacteria on our vegetables and how they make our food safe for us when we ferment it. So that would be the fear of fermented foods, and it’s really sorry to see, because it’s such an easily ferment to make sauerkraut to it goes with any meal, and it can dramatically change your health.

I was healthy when I started with sauerkraut, so I didn’t notice a significant health change. But I do know, like if I traveled the first time to visit family, I didn’t want to hassle bringing all my ferments with me. Well, my digestion slowed way down. There was a dramatic difference between my digestion and then a few months ago, we were remodeling our kitchen, things got hectic, and I stopped eating the fermented foods, and all of a sudden, anytime I ate something sweet with a little bit of sugar, it just went right through me, and I’m going, what’s going on?

And so I added the sauerkraut back to my diet that had, you know, for about a month, wasn’t consuming and within 24 hours, I was back to normal, my digestion. And so it’s just amazing how a simple ferment you can master. You can add to any meal effortlessly. You just put it on your dinner plate. You don’t have to go make something with it. You just add it to your meal. You add it to your salad, you add it to your sandwich, and that’s simple. You just need a fork full or two. You’re not eating like cups and cups of this thing. It’s 1000s of bacteria, trillions of bacteria, in that jar, and they know how to go in and take care of your gut health with the probiotics and the prebiotics that are there to help nourish your gut.

Deborah Niemann 22:58
Awesome. So if someone does see mold or they think it smells funky, what should they do?

Holly Howe 23:05
You know, it’s going to be on your comfort level. I’m pretty loosey-goosey in the kitchen, and things don’t bother me, and I’m happy to slice the mold off cheese and everything down below is fine. I’ll consume it because I hate to waste things. That’s what I grew up with. But with the fermentation. The few times that I had the mold on top of my jar, I would dump the whole jar, but then I was like, scooping it off one time. And I go, there’s this layer of mold on top, and what’s below is so fresh and tangy and aromatic. It’s like it smelled fine, because that mold is only growing on that top layer. And so generally, if people find mold, you can scoop off that layer till it gets fresh and tangy and everything below is fine. If you’re sensitive to molds, and you want, might want to be tossing it, but that depends on your personal issues there.

But then you want to be asking yourself, why did I get mold? Because if you have everything correct, there should be no mold growing less. It’s a little piece of cabbage leaf that popped out of the brine, and it’s up in the air where it can be growing mold. But if we’re talking that top of the jar, their mold is growing, then you’re looking at, was it too warm, did I add the right amount of salt? Were the vegetables real old, and there’s not enough bacteria in there to help establish a healthy environment? So you use that as a lesson, and that’s how I got to the point where I am with my book, with so many tips in there, because if something went wrong, like, for the longest time, I was using the Celtic sea salt, and my batches varied quite a bit from batch to batch. Some turned out fine. Some tasted kind of musty. Well, with Celtic sea salt, it’s evaporated. So the amount of sodium in there can vary from batch to batch, depending on how much water was, you know, until you get down to the salt crystals. So I wasn’t necessarily getting enough sodium, enough salt into a batch, because it wasn’t consistent in the salt I was using. So then I switched over to a dry salt, Himalayan, pink salt, Real Salt, etc, and those, I was able to get a much more consistent amount of salt into my batch so that I had consistent batches and the right amount of sodium for those bacteria to do their work.

Deborah Niemann 25:05
Okay, so I know when making cheese, we are supposed to avoid using iodized salt. Is the same thing true for ferments?

Holly Howe 25:13
There’s been some recent new research out there that the iodine really does not impact fermentation. Ideally, you’re not using it. But if you’re getting started and that’s all you have in your house, don’t use that as a barrier. Go ahead and use it. It doesn’t seem to be an issue. But then eventually you want to switch over to using iodine free and chlorine free and fluoride free water, because those are the things that can interfere with the fermentation process. But I want people to get started, and like Sandor Katz, have a quote in one of my articles from him that, you know, he travels around the world. He’s a fermentation guru that helped fermentation get started, say, 20 years ago or restarted. It’s been going around for 1000s of years, and he gets handed all types of salt from wherever, and there’s been no issue with them.

So don’t let people use that as a barrier. But work towards salt is a very processed food. And so if you had that Morton sea salt, it’s all the minerals have been stripped out of it, iodine has been added to it, so it can be free flowing. And all of a sudden you’re working with this processed food, adding it to your beautiful cabbage and vegetables. And so just like trying to look at the oils you consume, the sugars you consume, we should be looking at that with our salt too. And so that’s why I like the mineral rich salts like Himalayan pink salt or real salt, because they haven’t been processed. They’re just the ancient mineral beds that have been ground down into the salt.

Deborah Niemann 26:40
So you mentioned eating sauerkraut at every meal. And I’m sure a lot of people are wondering like, how do you do that? That sounds strange.

Holly Howe 26:50
I wouldn’t say initially every meal, but I would say one to two meals a day. It goes really nicely with anything sometimes, like on top of eggs, you can be putting sauerkraut, your salad at lunch you can add it to, any dinner meal. It goes wonderfully with what’s really neat about it. It’s an umami, rich ingredient. It’s packed with it opens up like your taste buds and brings out new flavors in a meal. So if you have a dish that sound tastes kind of flat, there’s nothing to it the minute you add this sauerkraut to it, just like chefs who use tomato paste and Parmesan cheese and miso and the soy sauce, those are umami, rich ingredients that bring out the flavors in a meal.

So the sauerkraut is doing the same thing. If you have people that are hesitant to eat it, it can be blended into a smoothie. It can be tossed into a big salad. You can take the brine and add it into a avocado toast, etc, so it can be hidden in things, but you get to the point where you almost crave it because it adds such a nice flavor to your meal. Ideally, you’re trying to mix it into one or two meals a day, and that’s the fun of having over 20 sauerkraut recipes or like, kimchi goes great with, like, any type of cheesy dish. It just blends nicely with it, then you have lots to choose from. There’s like a baseball sauerkraut in there, which is mainly peppers and onions and some cabbage in there, and some paprika, etc. And that goes great with hot dogs and hamburgers. Or my husband’s favorite one has jalapenos and oregano in it, and he likes to put that on his eggs in the morning with some sour cream and salsa. You start getting creative with different ways to use it.

Deborah Niemann 28:23
I love that. I love the idea of having jalapenos in there. So do you have any final bits of advice for somebody who’s nervous about starting their first batch?

Holly Howe 28:34
You’ll get more comfortable with it and just start it. Even have a friend come over and go through it together, because sometimes people keep putting it off, and when you have a friend come over, then you’re both there. It’s scheduled. It’s on the calendar, but to trust in it, I always compare it to like a spinach salad, and how we’re comfortable eating that spinach salad, or that green salad, and we don’t have any fear about it. But if there was like E coli on that lettuce, and you rinse it off the best you could, there might still be some E coli on that, depending on your gut health, whether you’re going to get sick from eating that E coli tainted spinach leaves.

But with sauerkraut, we’re putting everything into a jar, and those bacteria are going to lower the pH, and there’s bad bacteria. If there’s E coli on that cabbage, the bacteria get rid of it. So we should actually feel much more comfortable eating that sauerkraut that we left to sit on our counter for a few weeks than that green salad that we threw together because we’ve rinsed and cleaned off those vegetables. But they’re still those guys are tiny. They can be lurking in those little nips and crevices even like chemicals sprayed on during the growing process of that cabbage, or the bacteria in there can reduce it down to almost nil.

It’s that fermentation process. They’re taking care of our food for us. And then you can start with just a strand of it. You can taste your sauerkraut after one week and go, How does this taste? And pull out one little, itty bitty strand and go. And you just gradually get used to it. And we haven’t, as a culture, grown up with tangy foods and sour foods as much as some of the European cultures, maybe, but just try it, mix it in with something. You’re in essence, making coleslaw. And instead of adding creamy dressing on top, you’re salting it to make a watery brine dressing, and then you’re packing that into a jar and letting it work in front of you. It’s artwork. You can see it transform its colors over time, and you can see the bubbles coming up, and, you know, the bacteria at work, and you you know, then you become awesome to see what’s going on there. So it’s a, yeah.

Deborah Niemann 30:36
I love that. I love the idea of comparing it to coleslaw. It really is like a salad, and we hadn’t mentioned this yet, but you should always eat your sauerkraut cold. And, like, you don’t want to turn around and go and can it or something, because when you can it, you’re killing all of the ferments. And even, like a lot of restaurants, like, if you get sausage with sauerkraut, they heat up the sauerkraut, which, again, like that, would kill everything.

Holly Howe 31:00
It depends on how high you’re heating it. And just so people realize that they are excited about sauerkraut and want to try it, and want to go to the store and buy it, make sure you’re looking in the refrigerated section, because if they have shipped this cross country, and they can it and put it in a jar with a screw down lid that gets sealed, or it’s in a can down the middle of the aisle, then it’s not going to have the beneficial bacteria. And there’s nothing wrong with that, except maybe all the nasty preservatives that might be also in there.

But if you’re consuming it for the gut health benefits, which is where I started from, and where I noticed, if I’m not consuming it, I have issues that you want to be looking in the refrigerated section, and you want to make sure that it’s not been pasteurized, that it’s raw. And when you look at the ingredients that you just see salt and cabbage and some other things in there that there’s no vinegar in it with, like you were saying, say they serve a hot dog or sausage and they’ve heated that up. There’s traditional dishes out there that we can’t give up. You know, there’s cooked pork roast with a cabbage, that sauerkraut that adds a wonderful flavor to that dish, that we need that sauerkraut in there. So there’s no reason that you can’t consume those dishes, but have a little bit of sauerkraut, raw, fresh sauerkraut on the side, versus when you have it heated like that.

Deborah Niemann 32:19
That’s a great point. And I love what you said about where to buy the real fermented sauerkraut in the store. In case people want to try it, that is a terrific point. So if somebody wants to connect with you online, where can they find you?

Holly Howe 32:35
They can start with my website, which is, makesauerkraut.com and you know, I’m on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest, and I answer emails, and that’s kind of where you’re going to find me. Via the website’s probably the best place to start.

Deborah Niemann 32:50
Awesome, and where’s the best place for them to get your book.

Holly Howe 32:53
Amazon, your local bookstore. They might have to order it if you want to support your local bookstore. There’s some of the online people that have it listed, so just search around, you’ll find it. But definitely Amazon has it. And then one thing I’d love to just jump in there with, I have, in the book, and it’s called the 10k jar challenge. I want this in people’s homes.

I want people to realize how easily they can learn to make if this is the one ferment they make and they don’t make anything else with kimchi, cabbage or a sauerkraut. And so I’m trying to get 10,000 jars fermented around the world. And so on my website, I had the 10k jar challenge. And so you ferment a jar of it, you take the picture, and you upload it, and there’s prizes and giveaways as we hit, hit different milestones on that. But just to keep it simple, let people know they can do this.

Deborah Niemann 33:40
That’s awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. I bet a lot of people are going to be inspired to go try this now.

Holly Howe 33:46
Yeah, it’s very simple, and most people nowadays do have a digital scale around home. So get started with it, and you can do it.

Deborah Niemann 33:54
And that’s it for today’s episode. You can find show notes at thrifty homesteader.com/book chat, as well as a transcript. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. You can also find Thrifty Homesteader on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. See you next time on Sustainability Book Chat.