Episode: 2374
Title: HPR2374: How to Make Sauerkraut
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2374/hpr2374.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 01:55:36

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This is HBR episode 2,374 entitled How to Make Sour Crout and is part of the series
cooking.
It is hosted by Tony H.1,212 and is about 10 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, this is a short show on making Sour Crout.
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Hello, hi Republic Radio listeners, this is Tony Hughes in Blackpool in the UK, and this
episode is about how to make Sour Crout.
First off, I have to admit to being a bit of a foodie and I love Sour Crout, but getting
naturally fermented Sour Crout here in the UK in my experience is almost impossible.
And if you can, it tends to be expensive.
So I went and had a look on YouTube for instructions on how to do it, and my first efforts were quite
well.
I just made another batch and I took pictures as I was doing it.
So this is a house to show on making Sour Crout.
Just to say that this is about making basic Sour Crout, but you can add additional flavours
with garlic, other veg and spices at some point.
I will try chili, but this week I want the clean taste of a basic Sour Crout, so that's
what I made.
I used a large white cabbage which you need to strip off the outer leaves that are blemished
or any dirty that can't be cleaned, then quartering the cabbage and cut out the hard
core.
Now be full shredding it, wait a cabbage, it's easy to do at this stage when it's still
in large lumps, rather than when it's shredded.
As you need to work out how much salt you will need to add for each kilo of cabbage and
other vegetables.
The recommendation is about 2%, so for each kilo you'll need about 20 grams of salt.
It doesn't have to be a fancy salt, but don't use one with any additives like anti-cake
and agents or anything like that, just a pure salt, either a sea salt, I use a rock salt
which I then grind down in a pestle and mortar.
This cost me about £1.35, £350 in the local supermarket, so after you've done that you
can start thinking about shredding the cabbage.
You'll also need a little bit of salt as well for making a little bit of a top up brine,
again 2% solution of salt to liquid, so for about 100 ml of water you'll need a little
2 grams of salt, if you need a bit more, then it's just 200 ml, you need 4 grams of salt,
and this is to make sure that when you've jar up the sauerkraut you've got enough liquid
to make sure that the veg and cabbage is all covered by at least a centimetre liquid.
OK, so shred the cabbage, put it into a bowl with salt, and now the fun bit starts, you
need to get your hands in and start to crush and mash the cabbage and the salt together
to start drawing out the moisture.
It's going to take several minutes or longer depending on the quantity you've got, but
you'll feel the texture starting to change quite soon after you've started doing this,
and you'll feel it starting getting wet in your hands, and this is the moisture starting
to be drawn out.
You can continue with this process until the cabbage seems to shrunk about half and
is juicing the bottom of the bowl.
If you want to, you can mash the cabbage for about 5 minutes or so, then cover it, pass
it down, and then cover the bowl with a bit of food wrap, or in the UK we call it cling
film, and leave it for up to an hour, and this, the salt in the liquid that started to
come out, and it's surrounding the cabbage, you'll start naturally drawing out the moisture,
and it just saves some of the hard work, but you test it when you've left it for half
an hour, test it again, and the cabbage needs to be fairly, fairly pliable when you're
crushing it, and you can tell when it's at least half the volume it was prior to starting
to crush it, and you'll have a decent amount of liquid at the bottom of the bowl.
Now you need to jar it up at this stage, and like I say, one of the things is you need
to make sure that when you compress the cabbage in the jar, that there is enough liquid,
that it comes up to about a centimeter above the top of the, the veg in the cabbage.
If you're worried about sterilizing the jars, you can either give them a hot rinse in
soapy water, and stick them in the oven for a little while, or you can use a sterilizing
solution, I don't bother, I just use hot soapy water, rinse them out, drain them to make
sure that there's no water left in there in the jar, give them a wipe on the outside, obviously,
and then just use that, the salt solution itself actually kills any bad bacteria, and
encourages the good bacteria in the cabbage, and on surrounding the cabbage to start growing
and fermenting the cabbage, and listening to people on the internet that have done this,
that doesn't seem to be a problem with it.
Okay, so if you can get a big enough jar, that it will all go in to the same jar, pack
it down, and like I say, make sure that the juice is coming above the cabbage, you can
use something to push it down, because you'll see in the photos that I include in the
show notes, I've used the lid of a smaller jar inside the jar, and I've used that to push
down the cabbage, so it's submerged below the liquid, and I did have to top it up slightly
with some saline solution, and finally you just need to seal it up with the lid off the
jar, but when you put the lid on the jar, don't put it on, so it's dead tight, tighten it
up, and then just release it a fraction, you need to allow it not to be quite airtight,
because what's going to happen over the next week is that everything's okay, the natural
bacteria that surrounds the veg will start to ferment the cabbage, and whatever else
you've added to it for flavour, etc, and you'll get carbon dioxide coming off. It's a bit
likely making wine process, and if you don't, if you have a lid that's too tight, then obviously
the pressure in the jar is going to build up, and you can get the jars breaking, exploding,
if you're going to be doing a lot of fermenting, some people who are fermenting kits with
the lids that have got one of these pressure bubbles on them, like they're using wine
and making, but again, it's not strictly necessary, and it's an added expense when you're
trying to just make something that's nice to it, so as long as you're careful, you keep
an eye on it, after two or three days, well, when you've finished it, took the jar away
in somewhere to store it, preferably somewhere that's not too warm, not too cold, roughly
room temperature, but in a dark place, you don't want it in somewhere that's fludgy
then light, I stick mine in the enemy storage cupboard for all my jams and marmalades and
stuff, and it's the storage cupboard under the spheres. Every couple of days, just go
and have a look at it, if you can see that the saline started to evaporate a bit, you
may want to get a little bit more brine and just top it up again, so it comes above the
sauerkraut. After about a week, gradually you'll start to see bubbles appearing, and
that's the fermentation process going. After about a week, take the lid off, have a ferret
around and just give the sauerkraut a taste, and you'll taste that sourness that the brine
started to take on. Now some people like it, very sour, other people like it, mildly sour,
so this is the time when you decide whether it's ready, that you're ready to eat it or
not. If you're not quite ready, if it's not quite ready for your taste, stick it back
it, make sure there's enough brine over the top of it, stick it back in the cupboard
and leave it for another few days, but once it's ready, you need to put it either in the
bottom of the fridge or in a cold place, but if you've got a cold garage or somewhere
you keep things cool, maybe even a cellar, somewhere where the temperatures have round
about four or five degrees, so that stops the fermentation process, and you can just keep
it, store it there, and it lasts that ages. The only thing you've got to do now is start
eating it, oh, and make your next batch ready for when it's all gone, because once you get
used to it, you used to it, and you like the taste of homemade sauerkraut, you're going
to want more, I can guarantee so, so that's how you make homemade sauerkraut, like I
say in the show notes, I'll put some photos in that I took as I was going through the process
today, but that's it for today, I'll be back soon, bye for now.
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