Time To Make The Sauerkraut
(remember the old ad about making donuts, it’s time to make
the donuts, Dunkin Donuts. )
I have been busy trying to get things
done. One of the projects I am going to update you on and hopefully in this
order is making sauerkraut, and then a short story , an anecdote so to speak
related to the sale of sauerkraut equipment and how family can be at times. Estate
sales can sometimes bring out the good and the bad in most people if they let
it
Sauerkraut is the process of fermenting
cabbage in a crock or as in my case, a food grade five gallon bucket which is disinfected.
Whole cabbages of a rather huge size of around 5 lbs. each , when stripped of
outer leaves and just leaving the inside. These I bought at Hartville flea market for
1.50 each or total of 4.50 for all the cabbage needed. I just happened to stop
at papa gyro’s a couple of days later and saw some food grade five gallon buckets
behind their restaurant and asked the manager if she would give or sell me a
couple of buckets . They were cleaned out and can only be used once a
commercial basis. She told me they normally sell their buckets and said .75
cents apiece and I said I would surely do that, so I add another 1.50 to my
total cost despite only using 1 head.
I think to do over again I would say you
could almost crowd four large heads of cabbage in a five gallon bucket, but will go with what
I have and still it will be more than I need and some to give away if it turns
out good. At this point I will go into process and then tell a little story
about a kraut slicer we have here on the farm that has a tale behind it. Only
the tale has nothing to do with making kraut, just bad feelings that kind of go
on, sometimes to the grave.
Back to the process, basically remove the
outer leaves till it gets down to the cleaner whiter inner leaves, even if
clean and green it is ok. I still wash the head and keep work area clean or try
to as I go along. My Ball canning book
says you can use a food processor to make your cabbage slices but after shoving
a couple hunks through the processor I wasn’t too pleased with the fineness and
discontinued using the processor. Maybe there is a way to do more of shred then
a chop on yours and yours may be ok. Instead I just took to slicing by hand
trying to slice and shred as thin as I could, making sure I went back to grab oversize pieces. I also cut the
heart or stem out and discarded these from the cabbage. I did this according to
the book also, I imagine because they are harder and denser and texture would
not be good in final product. That is just a guess. I quartered and chopped into smaller chunks
and then using a paring knife reduced the pieces to shreds in a large bowl intermittently
adding salt according to where I was in the process. This I would mix thoroughly
with the shredded lettuce. It says in the book it is important to use canning
salt or pickling salt as the case may be. I happened to have the right salt and
it was ¾ ‘s of a cup to 10 lb of cabbage . So in total I used almost one and
half (1.5 cups), for fifteen lbs. of cabbage.
Of course this is an educated guess and
the major thing you will notice in the process is the brine solution coming out
of the cabbage as you process it into the bucket. Failure to see a brine
solution will cause air to spoil your cabbage. So if you do not see natural
water and salt solution come to surface of kraut as you pack it add some more
salt and let it set awhile before packing in your fermentation vessel , be it a
crock or bucket. Once shredded it is important to let bowl set for about five
minutes . Pressing on cabbage and kneading the surface will start the juice flowing.
Then once it is visibly on surface then start packing in the bucket. Again I used
my fist and constantly spin the bucket while adding more cabbage and salt
solution trying to pack it tight as I can and to also get the brine to the surface.
So I would cut up cabbage and set in bowls,
taking a break in between each head to allow the salt to do its thing. Eventually
I finished all the shredding and salting and packing and ended up with just shy
of ¾ of a bucket of kraut. This is still over twenty pounds of kraut or seems
like it when I left it. When finished and if packed well enough you should have
a layer of brine up to an inch deep all over the surface of the cabbage. I took cheese cloth and placed it over the top
bucket and then placed a plate that just fit into the bucket and pushed it down
into the brine till the brine completely covered the plate and then I folded
the cheese cloth in around the plate forming a porous seal of sorts. On top of
that I took an empty milk jug and added water and placed on top of the plate to
keep weight on the plate and reduce the amount of oxygen getting to the kraut.
At this point it is ready to enter the
first phase of making sauerkraut. It will have to ferment. They say a cool dark
place is good, and you also have to watch your brine level. If all is going
well the plate should go down as fermentation occurs. They say some foaming and scum may occur on
the surface of the brine. If that is the case then just remove the scum to a bowl
and discard. As long as brine is over the plate and the plate is submerged ,
then your kraut should be ok. When it looks like there is no action or anything
happening with your kraut then you are ready to can your product. I am not
there yet and will let you know what has to be done as I go along.
So after this long explanation I need
to make my story about a kraut cutter short and sweet if I can. Sometimes that
is hard for me. My grandpa was executor of great grandfather’s estate and was
having an auction to settle the estate. This required that all household items
be sold and included in this was a kraut cutter, a long sliding box on a board
with a knife that would allow you to slice on a much larger faster scale, kraut
for storing in large crocks. Well grandpa as the story goes , had carried the
kraut cutter and a ram used to pack the kraut in crocks outside and placed on
the lawn so the auctioneer could sell it.
For some reason grandpa returned to the
basement later, and in a different place
he found the kraut cutter and ram , again he carried it back out to sell ,
knowing someone had deliberately brought the kraut cutter back in to the
basement to avoid its being sold . Not knowing who had done it, my grandpa
issued orders to my grandma to buy the kraut cutter when it came up for auction,
no matter the price. Grandpa kept an eye on the kraut cutter as well grandma did
also as the auctioneer would go from
item to item before finally coming to the sale of the kraut cutter.
My grandma was in a crowd of people an
rally couldn’t see well but once the bidding started, grandma couldn’t see who
she was bidding against but the price of the kraut cutter soon soared as a
battle between two bidders was evident with no end in sight. At one point the
auctioneer stopped and remarked how he had sold a lot of those kraut cutters
but never saw one fetch such a high price, as now they were hovering around the
ten dollar mark. A lot of money in the early 1940’s . Grandma was on one side
bidding and it just so happened it was my aunt Myrle , my grandpa’s sister who was
the one bidding against grandma and neither could see who they were bidding
against. Eventually Myrle relented and let grandma have the kraut cutter. A big laugh on our side of the family was
always had for winning the bidding war against your own family. Especially since
grandma rarely would spend that kind of money for something so simple. But it was
the principle of it, grandpa found out who was trying to get around the estate sale,
and grandma had the satisfaction of one upping my grandpa’s sister.
This seemingly harmless feud between them
would manifest itself in showing off of cars and food at the annual family reunion
where one family would try to outdo the other with one- upsmanship as if that
was all that mattered. I can remember some members of our extended family that
never showed any of that type of that behavior at family reunions and seemed to show up with the same utensils ,
old car , and clothes , year after year as if
they seemed to be locked in poverty. Both the husband and wife always
seemed happy and content and never complained. They were the opposite of all
the others were in subdued way, that always made you wonder how their life must
truly be , and why things were the way they were. To this day there is no clue
why things were that way for them. Yet they seemed happier and content, funny how
family can be at times.
