Sauerkraut
I recently made my first batches of sauerkraut. It’s a traditional process: one slices cabbage, then massages it up with salt (2 teaspoons per pound). The cabbage slowly wilts and oozes water, which mixes with the salt to form a brine. If it doesn’t extrude enough juice, mix a brine from 1 tsp. salt per cup of water and add. Let the cabbage sit covered for 24 hours, stirring frequently, then put into Mason jars and let ferment. There are three bacteria found on the skins of cabbage which get to work and turn it into sauerkraut.
The first bacterium is one or another coliform, perhaps Klebsiella pneumoniæ, Klensiella oxytoca or Enterobacter cloacæ (mmm, that last one sounds tasty—not!). The coliform produces acid, making the brine more hospitable to leuconostoc, which produces yet more acid along with carbon dioxide. Finally, the lueconostoc is followed by a lactobacillus or perhaps a pediococcus, which finishes the fermentation, leaving the cabbage preserved in a tasty sour brine.
I got my recipe from Jack Schmidling’s recipe, which uses Mason jars instead of a crock. My one concern—I’m writing to a health safety office—is that the sealed lids might encourage botulism, which prospers in anærobic environments, and that his procedure works because he pasteurises the finished sauerkraut. I want to want to eat mine live, but I want even more to live, so I won’t be eating any unless I get a okay.
A biochemical overview of the process is found at the sauerkraut page of a University of Wisconsin professor.
