PC=Kraut

[Mogorilla]

With growing season approaching, and since I have been eating Kraut all week, I thought I would post this

Sauerkraut: A Not-So-Short History

While typically associated with Eastern Europe and Germany in particular, Sauerkraut, German-literally means "sour cabbage", has been around quite a while.  To understand sauerkraut, pickled cabbage, one must know something about its main ingredient, the cabbage.  The cultivation of cabbage goes back 4000 years.
Horsemen from China and Mongolia learned to preserve this
vegetable in brine.  Like beer for the pyramid builders, brine preserved cabbage was the main nourishment of the builders
of the Great Wall of China in the third century BC. Later,
pickled cabbage arrived in Europe from the East, carried by Hun
and Mongol cavalcades.  (we have 2 things to thank the Huns for, Kraut and Stirrups.)

While these horsemen introduced a new conservation method
and Barbarian flavor to Europe, cabbage had long been the
favorite vegetable of an entire continent, particularly until the
introduction of the potato. In fact, the Celts may have introduced
cabbage to the British Isles as early as the 4th century BC.

For centuries, cabbage was a staple that sustained European populations during great famines. During the Hundred Years War, battles were won or lost depending on whether fresh provisions of cabbage had arrived at the soldiers' camps. Similarly, when General Lee took possession of Chambersburg on his way to Gettysburg, among the first things he demanded for his army was twenty-five barrels of sauerkraut.   More recently, during WWII, sauerkraut, despite its German name, was considered a patriotic food in the US.  Citizens were encouraged to make their own as a way of contributing to the war effort.   

Long before it was considered Patriotic, my Paternal grandmother made kraut.  She had a "Kraut Crock".  This was a 2+' high straight sided crock that had an inner diameter of a a dinner plate.  My grandmother was born in 1888 and my grandfather in 1880.  My grandfather was the 3rd child born to German Immigrants who arrived as children in 1850.  They gave him a fine American Name Christopher Columbus, his younger brother born in 1882 was Jesse James.   The Kraut Crock was a wedding Gift in 1904.   (I think it was older than that.)  She prepared the Kraut in the shade of a plum tree until she was 90.   I unfortunately was only 14 at the time and thought it smelled really bad and would not eat it.  Oh the folly of youth!

Timeframe: 1-4 weeks (or more)

Special Equipment:
-large ceramic crock or food-grade plastic bucket
-Plate that fits inside crock or bucket
-One-gallon jug filled with water
-Cloth cover (like a pillowcase or towel)

Ingredients (for 1 gallon):
-5 pounds cabbage
-3 tablespoons sea salt

Process:
1.  Chop or grate cabbage, finely or coarsely, with or without hearts, however you like it.   Place cabbage in a large bowl as you chop it.

2. Sprinkle salt on the cabbage as you go. The salt pulls water out of the cabbage (through osmosis), and this creates the brine in which the cabbage can ferment and sour without rotting. The salt also has the effect of keeping the cabbage crunchy, by inhibiting organisms and enzymes that soften it. 3 tablespoons of salt is a rough guideline for 5 pounds of cabbage.

3. It is possible to add other vegetables, but I am a purist. Grate carrots for a coleslaw-like kraut. Other vegetables to add include onions, garlic (both garlic and onions make anything taste better), seaweed, greens, Brussels sprouts, small whole heads of cabbage, turnips, and beets. You can also add fruits (apples, whole or sliced, are classic), and herbs and spices (garlic, bay leaf, caraway seeds, dill seeds, celery seeds, and juniper berries are classic, but anything you like will work). Experiment.

4. Mix ingredients together and pack into crock. Pack just a bit
into the crock at a time and tamp it down hard using your fists or
any (other) sturdy kitchen implement. The tamping packs the kraut
tight in the crock and helps force water out of the cabbage.

5. Cover kraut with a plate or some other lid that fits snugly inside
the crock. Place a clean weight (a glass jug filled with water) on the
cover. This weight is to force water out of the cabbage and then keep
the cabbage submerged under the brine. Cover the whole thing with
a cloth to keep dust and flies out.

6. Press down on the weight to add pressure to the cabbage and
help force water out of it. Continue doing this periodically (as often
as you think of it, every few hours), until the brine rises above the
cover. This can take up to about 24 hours, as the salt draws water
out of the cabbage slowly. Some cabbage, particularly if it is old, simply contains less water. If the brine does not rise above the plate level by the next day, add enough salt water to bring the brine level above the plate. Add about a teaspoon of salt to a cup of water and stir until it's completely dissolved.

7. Leave the crock to ferment. I generally store the crock in an unobtrusive corner of the kitchen where I won't forget about it, but where it won't be in anybody's way. You could also store it in a cool basement if you want a slower fermentation that will preserve for longer.

8. Check the kraut every day or two. The volume reduces as the fermentation proceeds. Sometimes mold appears on the surface. Many books refer to this mold as "scum,". Skim what you can off of the surface; it will break up and you will probably not be able to remove all of it. Don't worry about this. It's just a surface phenomenon, a result of contact with the air. The kraut itself is under the anaerobic protection of the brine. Rinse off the plate and the weight. Taste the kraut. Generally it starts to be tangy after a few days, and the taste gets stronger as time passes. In the cool temperatures of a cellar in winter, kraut can keep improving for months and months. In the summer or in a heated room, its life cycle is more rapid. Eventually it becomes soft and the flavor turns less pleasant.

9. Enjoy.   Generally scoop out a bowl- or jarful at a time and keep it in the fridge. By sampling throughout, you can enjoy the evolving flavor over the course of a few weeks. Try the sauerkraut juice that will be left in the bowl after the kraut is eaten. Sauerkraut juice is a rare delicacy and unparalleled digestive tonic. Each time you scoop some kraut out of the crock, you have to repack it carefully. Make sure the kraut is packed tight in the crock, the surface is level, and the cover and weight are clean. Sometimes brine evaporates, so if the kraut is not submerged below brine just add salted water as necessary. Some people preserve kraut by canning and heat-processing it. This can be done; but so much of the power of sauerkraut is its aliveness that I wonder: Why kill it?


Now, my favorite Kraut recipe:

1 onion sliced
4 cloves garlic-chopped
6 cups of SauerKraut-drained
12-16 assorted sausages
1 smoked pork chop
Red pepper sauce
Salt
Pepper


In a large pot, sauté 1 whole onion, sliced, and 4 chopped garlic cloves.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add 3 cups of drained kraut, add about 4 shots of red pepper sauce, the smoked pork chop and half of your sausages.   Now add the remaining 3 cups of kraut, and the remaining sausage.   Cover and cook on low heat for 1-1.5 hours.  Remove from heat and fish out the smoked pork chop.   This will be fall off the bone tender.   Shred the pork chop and return to the pot.  Serve with a cold Pilsner and mustard.   

Possible addition.   I occasionally add cracked caraway seeds.  This is what is found in rye bread and when eating a good rye with this is a good combination.  Another addition is using Italian sausage in the kraut and adding some crushed fennel.   

Another addition.   When I drain the kraut, I do not make it totally dry, always keeping some juice.   A possible addition is to totally drain the kraut, and add about a cup of good beer.   

Kraut has a multitude of cooking uses.  I prefer my corned beef cooked in kraut as opposed to with cabbage.  I am a little weird on this as I like to grill the corned beef first, giving it the hint of a smokey flavor and then slow  cook it in the kraut.   

Cabbage rolls, another eastern European staple.  My family was from Southern Germany and as such, we cooked our Cabbage rolls in tomatoes, but added caraway seed (My grandmother said you could tell where in Germany someone was from by how they cooked their cabbage rolls. The caraway indicated we were from northern tip of Wurtenburg. )  Many areas cooked their cabbage rolls in Kraut, all of it is good.

Enjoy.

[Hemlock Mike]

A friend of mine once made kraut but used a limestone rock for a weight --

Bad news for the batch 

Mike

[deucedaddyj]

Mmmmmmmmmm......... 

Say, is the sweet variety of Kraut an old world recipie, or is it more recent? I prefer the sour kraut, but, just curious.

[Mogorilla]

Not sure of the time, but have heard sweet kraut called Amish Kraut.  It uses a sugar sweetended and thickened kraut juice. Sweet and Sour are big in eastern europe as a whole, so I would imagine if they had the sugar, it was being made.   I have also seena sweet kraut used for brats that used 3 cups kraut, drained.  1 dark beer, 1 cup brown sugar, and a little of the kraut juice added back in at the end.  The kraut is cooked in the beer/sugar until nearly dry, add the kraut juice to desired consistency.  (also seen this with caraway seeds added.)

[Delmonico]

Here's a Czech sweet kraut recipe.


http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,4213.0.html

[deucedaddyj]

Boy, that sounds good!

I guess I'll have to buy some brats and kraut for dinner tonight!

[Dr. Bob]

My favorite kraut dish which I learned in the 1960's is pork roast with kraut.

Brown the roast on the stove, layer on top and around with kraut, then grated potato and sprinkle carawaw seed on each pair of layers.  Roast in the oven at 350 degrees according to the weight of your roast.  Delicious!  May have to fix it when I finish my meat loaf and scaloped potatoes.  So yummy!! 

I cook this in my mothers aluminum dutch oven which is well seasoned.  I brown pork chops, add medium potatoes (peeled) and a cabbage cut into quarters or sixths.  Cook in the 350 degree over for 45 -55 min.  I use some salt and lots of black pepper.  Droooooooooool!

I just love pork!  & chicken! & beef! & the spring food group, asparagus!!!!

[Delmonico]

Dr. Bob, you should know as well as anyone not to eat too much sprarrow-grass at one sittin'.