How to cook and store sauerkraut at home?

Knowing how to store sour cabbage without a refrigerator, you can prepare a lot of this healthy and tasty product. Well, if you live in a private house: sauerkraut can be stored for a long time in a cool and dark cellar, making sure that mold does not form. In a city apartment, long-term storage is only possible in the refrigerator.

Traditional sauerkraut

There are a lot of ways to cook this tasty product at home. Some use vinegar to spice up the cabbage. In other recipes, chopped vegetable is poured with hot brine to speed up the cooking process. In order for cabbage to be healthy and stored for longer, it is better to cook it according to the classic recipe, using only cabbage, carrots, salt and spices. Mid-ripening and late varieties are better for picking.

Ingredients:

chopped cabbage - 3 kg;
carrot - 80 g;
table salt - 60 g;
bay leaf and caraway seeds (optional).

The cooking process is conditionally divided into 4 stages.

The head of cabbage is washed under running water, cleaned of green or damaged integumentary leaves. Thinly chopped.
One large carrot is cut into thin strips, like a Korean salad. Mix vegetables on a plastic cutting board (you can do this in a separate convenient container or on a clean oilcloth).
Add two full, with a small hill tablespoons of salt. Grind chopped vegetables with salt well and put into a clean glass bottle, carefully sealing with a wooden rammer.
The jar is filled five centimeters below the edge of the neck. Tie on top with a clean cloth or gauze so that the cabbage “breathes”. The jar is put on a plate. During fermentation, air bubbles are released, and cabbage juice will overflow over the edge of the jar into a substituted container. If you pierce the cabbage with a wooden skewer in several places to the bottom, air bubbles will come out faster.

After two or three days at room temperature about 20 degrees, the dish will be ready. The jar can be stored in a refrigerator so that cabbage is not peroxide. To store at a temperature from 0 to 2 degrees such a workpiece can be several months. But in the refrigerator it takes up a lot of space, it is inconvenient to keep several cans for a long time on shelves intended for perishable products. Below we will consider a recipe for preparing this dish, which will allow harvesting at the dacha in the fall to make preparations until next year.

Some housewives take out preparations in the cool season on the balcony. This is convenient if the balcony is well insulated and there is a wardrobe. In severe frost, banks will still have to be brought into the apartment. If cabbage is stored in an enamel pan, it can be left on the balcony during frost. But during defrosting, such a product must be eaten as quickly as possible, which is not always possible.

Many housewives use a freezer for storage. Put the product in plastic bags and put in the freezer. Such cabbage is stored for a long time, but when thawing, the taste may deteriorate, and it cannot be re-frozen. If sauerkraut is stored in brine, its beneficial properties are better preserved.

Tip
Choose juicy varieties for fermentation to get a high-quality and tasty finished dish. In the fermentation process, the role of cabbage juice is very large. If it is deficient, the cabbage placed in the jar may turn black, an unpleasant odor and bitter taste will appear, the product will be spoiled.

Sterilized sauerkraut

This recipe will allow you to store the workpiece at home without a cellar and a refrigerator for several months.

Ingredients:

shredded cabbage - 5 kg;
salt - 85 g;
sugar or honey - 75 g;
bay leaf –5 pcs.

Cooking

The head of cabbage is cleaned of green leaves, the stump is cut out. Shred with a thin straw. Add three tablespoons of salt and the same amount of sugar or honey, bay leaf, mix everything well.
Place the cabbage in clean glass jars or an enameled pan, ramming tightly. Set the load on top (a plate turned upside down and a jar of water). Maintain until ready at room temperature for 3-5 days.
In prepared, steamed glass jars with a capacity of one liter, lay ready sour cabbage - three centimeters below the top of the neck. Cover the cans with prepared lids.
Put the filled cans in a pan or bucket of water, heated to 30 degrees, and sterilize for 40 minutes. The water level in the pan should be three centimeters below the neck of the can. Sterilization time begins to count from the moment of boiling water in the pan. Boiling does not have to be stormy, the fire is reduced to minimize heating. At the bottom of the container for sterilization, you need to put a wooden grid or put rags.
After sterilization, the jars are carefully removed from the water with the help of special forceps or a towel. Quickly roll up.

Make a harvest according to this recipe after harvesting in autumn. Without peroxide, without changing the taste, cabbage will stand on a shelf with preservation until the very summer. Perfectly garnished with boiled potatoes, porridge, meat and fish dishes, for making vinaigrettes and cabbage soup.