Sauerkraut

A wonderful fermented food with a ton of health benefits SAUERKRAUT.

Did you know the number of bacteria in human body outnumber your cells by about 10 to 1? These bacteria in turn are comprised of both beneficial ones and harmful ones. The ideal balance is about 85 percent good bacteria and 15 percent bad. Maintaining this ideal ratio is what it’s all about when we’re talking about the importance of probiotics. It’s important to understand though that probiotics are not a new concept. The only thing that’s new is that one can take them in pill form. But historically, mankind has consumed large amounts of probiotics in the form of fermented and cultured foods, which were invented long before the advent of refrigeration and other forms of food preservation.

Fermented foods not only give a wider variety of beneficial bacteria, they also give far more of them, so it’s a much more cost effective alternative. Here’s a case in point: It’s unusual to find a probiotic supplement containing more than 10 billion colony-forming units. Fermented vegetables produced by probiotic starter cultures,  have10 trillion colony-forming units of bacteria. Literally, one serving of vegetables is equal to an entire bottle of a high potency probiotic! So clearly, you’re far better off using fermented foods.

The fresh cabbage leaves, if it’s organically grown (not the one from chemical farming), will be covered in Lactobacilli—lacto-fermenting bacteria. You don’t need to add anything. Just chop it up. Add some salt in the initial stages. (The salt is added in the initial stage in order to stop putrefactive bacteria from multiplying.) Then as the Lactobacillus stop working and start multiplying, they produce lactic acid. That’s why they’re called Lactobacillus. That’s just lactic acid.

If we look at the research in lactic acid, it is one of the most powerful antiseptics. It kills off lots and lots of bacteria.... So as the lactic acid starts producing, it will kill off all those putrefactive and pathogenic microbes and preserve the food. It’s a great preservative... A good batch of sauerkraut can keep for five to six years without spoiling or rotting, as long as it is covered by its own juice.


This anaerobic process (fermentation) does more than just preserve the food, however. It also makes the nutrients inside the food more bioavailable. The amount of bioavailable vitamin C in sauerkraut is 20 times higher than in the same helping of fresh cabbage!

This is because in the fresh cabbage, vitamin C is bound in the cellulose structure and various other molecules, and our digestive system is just not able to cleave it off and absorb it. Lots of it goes undigested and come out right out of you. So despite the fact that cabbage may be very rich in vitamin C, a lot of it we will not be able to absorb. But if we fermented that cabbage and made sauerkraut, all the vitamin C becomes bioavailable.

So that was lot of info about this wonderful food. Here is how we make it:

1. Shred the cabbage to the preferred level of coarseness.
2. Pack a layer in the container and sprinkle with a little salt. 
3. Tamp each layer firmly to press water out of the cabbage.
4. Continue until the container is filled to within 1 inch of the top. 
5. Fermenting crocks typically come with stones to weight down the sauerkraut. If you’re using a different container, place a plate over the top of the cabbage to compress it. A jug or jar filled with water works well as a weight. It’s fine if the cover doesn’t fit edge to edge within the container because the brine will cover the fermenting cabbage. 
6. The most critical aspect of making sauerkraut is the brine. The vegetables have to be submerged under liquid.
7. Typically the cabbage and salt combination will produce enough water to form a natural brine, but if the liquid doesn’t rise above the plate or stone level, make a brine by dissolving 1 tablespoon of salt in 1 cup of water.
8. After the sauerkraut is packed and submerged, replace the lid on the crock or place a cloth over the container and set it in a secluded spot in the kitchen. Check on it periodically to track progress. Fermentation varies upon temperature and how much salt was used. The hotter the weather or the less salt used, the more quickly the sauerkraut will be ready.