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Tag: fermentation

Making Sauerkraut Made Easy – GF Video
Making sauerkraut is the gateway recipe to fermentation success. Here’s how to make sauerkraut: shred cabbage, add salt, put in jar. Done. In this recipe video i wanted to show that making sauerkraut does not have to involve large fermentation crocks and lots of work. This is small batch kraut made easy.

Making Sauerkraut Is Not Rocket Science

I’ve heard from a few people about their fermentation failures, usually with a recipe for making sauerkraut. The first time I tried to make it, it didn’t work out. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is using tap water that has been chlorinated. I figured this out when I was baking bread, I found that using water from our Brita Water Filter Pitcher allowed the yeast to work much better.

This sauerkraut how to is based on the methods laid out by Leda Meredith in her book, Preserving Everything. I think a lot of people have this impression that you have to have big fermentation crocks and tons of cabbage to make this. Leda’s method uses mason jars. You can use most any glass jar, you just need to be able to cover the jar in some way. Either with a lid or maybe plastic wrap with a rubber band to cover the top – whatever works for you. What does not work is metal containers, use only ceramic, glass, or food grade plastic. If you use a plastic container, it will smell like fermented food forever after, in my experience.

How you chop the cabbage for making sauerkraut is a matter of preference. Basically, do you like chunky or fine kraut? If you cut the cabbage with a knife, you can get chunky cabbage. If you use a knife, mash and crush the cabbage before adding it to the jar, you want to break down the cell walls of the cabbage leaves to allow the fermentation to start quickly.

A box grater works, but I suggest a food processor with a shredding blade.

You want the cabbage to start making a brine fairly quickly, which is why I like to use a food processor to shred the cabbage. This method lets a lot of liquid out of the leaves and mixes with the coarse salt you’ve added to make the brine.

If the brine does not start by itself within an hour, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to a cup of filtered water, and top up the jar. Some cabbage will always float a bit, but you want most of the cabbage submerged.

Press down the cabbage, if you see some bubbles come up out of the brine, you are making sauerkraut. If you don’t see bubbles, be patient, wait up to 4 days, just be sure the brine is topped off and keep the jar in a dark place. You can start eating the kraut after it has been fermenting for 3 days, but I like to wait at least 1 week. Some people wait a month.

Small bubbles means fermentation has started!

After the initial 3-4 days of fermentation, I keep my sauerkraut in the fridge, I think it mellows the kraut, and it will keep for 6 months. Visit Leda’s website for great foraging info and food preservation recipes.

Bonus! I got to interview Sandor Katz on GardenFork Radio, Some fermentation books we recommend:

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How To Make Sauerkraut Recipe

Author: Eric Rochow

Small batch fermentation in mason jars allows you to make sauerkraut the easy way. This sauerkraut recipe is based on Leda Meredith’s single jar kraut in her book, Preserving Everything.
Ingredients

One small head green cabbage

1 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

Filtered water

One pint mason jar
Instructions

Remove any wilted parts of the cabbage

Cut cabbage in half lengthwise, then cut each side into quarters.

Put shredding blade on food process and shred the cabbage.

Layer the cabbage into a pint mason jar, adding about 1″ of cabbage, then some of the salt.

Press down the cabbage a few times while adding the layers.

Add cabbage until the level reaches about 1/4″ below the rim of the jar.

Let sit for 1-2 hours.

If brine does not develop, add 1/2 teaspoon salt into 1 cup water, and add to top of cabbage.

Keep cabbage submerged in brine, add saltwater mix as needed.

Put on jar lid loosely, let sit in a dark place to ferment for 3-4 days.

Tighten jar lid and refrigerate.

Kraut keeps for 6 months.

If you use a quart mason jar, double this recipe.
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September 2, 2015
Easy way to make yogurt by Tish

From a GardenFork Fan, an easy way to make yogurt using your oven. You don’t need special equipment, its easy to make, here’s how. Below this yogurt recipe are links to our how to make yogurt videos and more fermentation stuff.

I recommend one special tool; a probe thermometer with an alarm that notifies you when your food has reached the desired temperature. I use this one. There are lots of them on the market ranging from $15 to $60. However any thermometer that will read from 100 to 200 degrees will tell you what you need to know.

Tish’s Easy Way To Make Yogurt Recipe:

Warm your milk in a non-reactive pan over moderate heat to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. go slowly with this step for two reasons. First you don’t want to scorch the milk and second, slow warming allows for some evaporation of water in the milk and that makes a thicker, creamier yogurt. The probe thermometer is a big help here because you don’t have to stand over the milk and stir it. I set this up when I have other kitchen jobs to do and give the pan a quick stir every now and then.

Once the milk has reached 180 degrees, you can hold it there for more evaporation or remove it from the heat right away. You do not want your milk to boil. Allow the milk to cool to 110 degrees (re-set your programmable thermometer to alert you when the milk has cooled). Spoon some of the warm milk into your yogurt culture and stir it in. Keep stirring in milk, a spoonful at a time, until the mix is smooth and thin enough to blend easily with the full pot of milk. Add the culture to the milk in the pot and stir it thoroughly. Pour the cultured milk into your clean containers and cover the containers.

Many ovens can maintain a perfect temperature for yogurt, just by keeping the oven light on. Before you begin, test this by leaving the oven light on for several hours with the probe thermometer sitting on the rack. If the bulb keeps your oven at 100 to 115 degrees, you’ve found your yogurt machine. If this doesn’t work, use a personal sized cooler – the ones designed to hold one or two six-packs of drink cans. Wash the cooler out with hot tap water, even if it’s already clean because you want to warm it. Set the containers of cultured milk in the cooler, add enough hot tap water to come right up to the tops of the containers, cover and move the cooler to a quiet spot in the kitchen.

Leave your yogurt alone for 8 to 12 hours then move it to the refrigerator. Enjoy!

I use pasteurized milk. Many national brands of milk are now ultra-pasteurized and I don’t know how that will do for yogurt. It won’t make cheese so I haven’t tried it with yogurt. You can use any fat content you like from whole milk to skim.

You can buy yogurt culture from New England Cheesemaking. I have done that. However I have had really good results using plain yogurt from the grocery store. In the past I have had problems with the flavor of the yogurt (made with grocery store starter) changing from batch to batch but for the last year that has not happened. Any unflavored yogurt with live cultures will do, but I use the Giant grocery store house brand. Look for live cultures and an ingredient list that includes no more than three items (Milk, live cultures, and maybe milk solids). You need about a tablespoon per quart of new milk.

If you like your yogurt thick, you can add non-fat dry milk to the milk while you warm it. I add a lot – a cup of dry milk per quart of new milk. This gives me yogurt that is almost like Greek yogurt. I get very little whey separation with this much added milk.

I warm my milk while I fix dinner, cool it while I eat, and leave it in the little cooler overnight. I make two quarts every ten to fourteen days.

I just want you to know that you don’t need expensive tools or yogurt-specific equipment. Yogurt is a simple food and it’s easy to make.

Our How to make yogurt video

Listen to Sandor Katz talk about fermentation, how to make sauerkraut and yogurt on GF Radio here.

December 7, 2014
Homemade Sauerkraut – Fermentation Progress Report

We are basing our new homemade sauerkraut how to on Leda Meredith’s new book, Preserving Everything, which shows how one can make sauerkraut in a mason jar. We talked with Leda recently on GF Radio: listen here. Links to buy book at end of post ↓

I like this mason jar sauerkraut method, it makes it less daunting than having to go find or buy a big glass jar or crock. Most of us already have a couple of mason jars somewhere. I might have too many jars, according to some family members…

But this is pretty simple, chop up cabbage, add salt, put in jar, wait.

I couldn’t find the shredding blade for my food processor – not surprising – so I cut up the cabbage by hand. Its my experience that shredding with a food processor will yield a much more shredded cabbage, and that will start fermenting much faster than cabbage cut up with a knife.

The reason for this is that with a food processor, the cabbage is cut finer, exposing more leaf surface area to the salt. The salt draws some moisture out of the cabbage, and the brine starts to form. With the knife sliced cabbage, this process is much slower. Its also important to basically massage or kinda crinkle the cabbage to break down some cell walls and allow the salt to do its work.

After your cabbage in a jar has let out enough water to create a brine that covers all the fermenting kraut, we will let it sit in a dark place for a few days. We’ll be looking for bubbles, a sign that the lacto fermentation has kicked in.

In our case, because of the knife cut leaves, I had to add salt brine to the jar. I set out a pint of water overnight – because our water is chlorinated – and then added a teaspoon of kosher salt to it, and topped off the kraut so that all the leaves were covered in liquid.

You can get Leda’s Preserving Everything book here:

Buy Preserving Everything On IndieBound
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October 15, 2014
Sandor Katz on Fermentation – GF Radio 316
https://gardenfork.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GFR316.mp3
Sandor Katz join us to talk fermentation, and how to make sauerkraut, and just how much of our food is a product of fermentation. Sandor Katz is the author of The Art of Fermentation, An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World.

We talk about the ubiquity of fermented food in our world:
- Cheese
- Bread
- Chocolate
- Coffee
- Condiments
“So many of our food staples and gourmet treats are products of fermentation” Sandor points out. Eric brings up the bread starter he is working with based on the Tartine Bread book. Sandor points out how just adding water to flour will start fermentation. He has a starter and makes pancakes with his starter.

Buy Sandor Katz’s Books Here (affiliate link)

Sandor Katz on Food Safety

“Fermentation is actually a strategy for safety” says Sandor, explaining how fermentation wipes out the bad organism that can cause food safety issues

How to get started in fermentation

Sandor suggests starting with vegetables and a container you have in your kitchen. You don’t need any special starters. Any kind of vegetables will work, you can mix them together, add seasonings. Chop up your vegetables, add some salt, enough for it to taste good, squeeze the vegetables, bruise them to allow the salt to interact. Stuff them into the glass or ceramic jar you have, get them submerged under the liquid. You can put a plate with a weight on it to keep the vegetables under the brine. Leave it on the counter in a darker corner, with the jar slightly open. If any mold appears, scrape it off and allow the vegetables to ferment more.

You can let it ferment a week or month, and then when it tastes to your liking, you can move it to your fridge.

Sandor then talks about the cabin he is restoring with volunteer help, and the workshops he hosts. You can get more info on his site about where he is hosting fermentation workshops.

Watch our fermentation videos here

Listen to Daniel Gasteiger talk fermentation on this GF Radio episode

Easy Fermentation Recipes & Foraging Tips with Leda Meredith – GF Radio 355
October 28, 2013
How to make Sauerkraut Kinda Sorta – GF TV

We made a sauerkraut how-to video today. Fermenting green or red cabbage into sauerkraut is an easy recipe to make, and the possibilities are endless. Fermentation and fermented foods are on the rise, with their probiotic organisms and all around healthy food reputation. Making sauerkraut should be on the to do list of all urban homesteaders, and i imagine most homesteaders already make sauerkraut.

Inspired by Daniel Gastieger, author of Yes You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too, we make a simple sauerkraut recipe that is the basis for all sorts of combinations. Daniel was on GardenFork Radio, you can hear his interview here.

If your idea of sauerkraut is that greyish stuff you see in the store, try making sauerkraut yourself. Take red or green cabbage, or a mix, add salt and go from there.

Basic Sauerkraut Recipe

this is based on Daniel’s Yes You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too book.

1 head of green or red cabbage

pickling or kosher salt

Glass, plastic, or ceramic fermentation container

Remove the outer leaves from your cabbage, just the dinged up ones.

Chop up your cabbage, you can do this by hand or use the food processor to coarsely grate the cabbage.

Put the cabbage into a clean large bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt for each pound of cabbage.

Use your hands to mix the salt into the cabbage, you want to crush and crinkle the cabbage.

Put the cabbage into a fermentation container, mash the cabbage down and put a clean plate or something similar on top of the cabbage to keep the cabbage down in the container.

Cover the top of the container with a plastic grocery bag and put the container in a dark cool area.

Check the sauerkraut after 24 hours, there should be enough brine to cover the top of the cabbage. If there is not, boil a quart of water, add to it 1.5 tablespoons of salt. let the salt water cool, the top off the sauerkraut so the cabbage is covered.

Ferment the sauerkraut for at least 5 days, you can go a month if you want to. any mold that forms should be skimmed off.

When you are happy with the fermentation, put the sauerkraut in a clean closed container in the fridge. ©2011 all rights reserved

December 4, 2011
Fermentation Sauerkraut How To update

Inspired by Daniel Gasteiger’s new book Yes, You Can! and Freeze and Dry It too book on canning, freezing and more, we are now fermenting cabbage into sauerkraut.

And we are shooting a video on how to make sauerkraut. Above are the two jars we are fermenting for the video. I did one batch with just green cabbage, carrots and caraway seeds, and started a second batch of sauerkraut with a mix of red cabbage and green cabbage. From what i’ve read, it seems best to use an earthenware crock or plastic container; i used two large glass canning jars.

we are fermenting cabbage into sauekraut and making a how-to video on making sauerkraut

The fermentation jars are covered with a towel and sitting on the kitchen counter, I check them every day, and watch these bubbles come out from the cabbage. You can see some bubbles in the jar of red cabbage in the above photo.

I asked on our Facebook Page for suggestions on what ingredients to put into sauerkraut, and got some great responses:

Thom: I make two types, one with just cabbage,onions and salt and the other a spicy type with cabbage,onion,garlic,carrots,radish or daikon,pepper flakes,fresh ginger,dill and salt.

Dennis: love making sauerkraut, apple and cumin is a good combo!

Woodwife: Green Just cabbage and salt.

Josh: cabbage salt and sugar to sweeten it up a bit

Michael: Juniper berries

Joe: I all ready made mine for the year its canned and put up. I canned 12 quarts I use just salt and a little sugar and a few apples.

Janet: I haven’t made sauerkraut yet, but I plan on it. I listen to your radio show podcasts on Itunes and recently purchased the book “Yes You Can”. I can’t wait for it to come in the mail. Thank you for everything that you do!! It is truly inspirational and entertaining. Keep up the good work!!! 🙂
Sunday at 6:41pm · 1 person

Claudia: you wanna get Gundelsheim or Midlessa Sauerkraut, put a McIntosh apple (cut up), bay leaves and Juniper berries as well as sugar and a beef boullion cube and let it cook for about an hour, Oh yeah, cut up an onion and put it in there as well
Sunday at 10:58pm

Gerald: We do 3# cabbage to 1 tbsp salt. Pack it down til brine forms (maybe top off) Weigh it down so the cabbage stays under the brine. Cover and wait. Sometimes we add caraway seeds, but plain ol’ kraut is best. This year we used 80# cabbage total.
Monday at 8:02pm

Gerald: I have also used the lacto-fermented brine in your artisan bread to make it sourdoughish.

Neat, all sorts of ideas here. next batch will have apples in it. I’m curious about canning the sauerkraut afterward, does that reduce its health qualities? Let me know what you think below:

October 12, 2011
How to can, dry, freeze, pickle, ferment preserve vegetables – GF Radio 223

Daniel Gasteiger, author of Yes, You Can! and Freeze and Dry it too; The modern step-by-step guide to Preserving Food, joins Eric on GF radio to talk about how to can vegetables, how to freeze food and vegetables, how to dry herbs and plants, and how to ferment cabbage and more neat stuff.

We talk about canning in a pressure canner and using the water bath method. Daniel doesn’t think the high pressure canning is that much more involved than hot water bath method. The pressure canner has a shorter canning time, but it takes a while to get up to pressure and you have to let it cool down.

We also go in to fermentation of vegetables. Daniel talks about how to ferment cabbage and other vegetables that you wouldn’t normally think were fermentable, like chickpeas.

I have on the to-do list of GardenFork shows and experiments, fermentation. Not just fermentation of beer, but I want to do sauerkraut, and it sounds like its very straightforward, according to Daniel.

Daniel’s blog is http://www.smallkitchengarden.net/ You can follow him on www.twitter.com/cityslipper You can buy his book here

Sandor Katz on Fermentation – GF Radio 316

September 28, 2011
Foods we don’t like : Erica Wides on GardenFork Radio

Today an interview with Chef Erica Wides of the Institute for Culinary Education.

We talk about fermenting foods like cabbage, sous vide cooking,

Chef Erica Wides

what its like to work in a kitchen, sharpening knives, and the foods we don’t like.

Chef Wides has a weekly radio show, Why We Cook, on the Heritage Radio Network,. You can learn more at her site, ChefSmartyPants. The food education program Chef Wides talks about is Streets International

May 19, 2010
How to make yogurt in a cardboard box – GF Video

Want to learn how to make yogurt? Here you go, yogurt video on how we make it. Making yogurt is fun, and in a cardboard box its even easier. and kinda green as well.

What i like about this is the simplicity of this and i think kids would like to do this, with supervision, of course. watch our gardenfork.tv episode on making yogurt in a cardboard box and then tell us how you make yogurt below.

The Gardenfork.tv Yogurt Making Recipe

Our how to make yogurt recipe is based on 1 quart of milk, which will fill up two 8 oz mason jars, which is what i use to make yogurt. You can use skim, part fat, and whole milk, it just depends on your preference. Whole Milk will taste better, but you know that. You can add powdered milk to the mix, which will make the yogurt thicker. Add too much and it gets like custard.

1 quart of millk

1 talbespoon of plain yogurt, the more natural the better.

optional: 1/4 cup of powedered milk

Put the milk in a pot with a thick bottom, or use what I call a waffle, or heat diffuser between your pot and the burner. Burned milk is no fun.

Heat the milk to 180 degrees F, bubbles will gather around the edges of the pot when the temperature is right.

Put the pot in the fridge, or put the pan into an ice bath to lower the temperature.

When the temperature is between 90-110 F, add the plain yogurt and if desired, the powdered milk.

Pour into clean glass containers, screw on the cap, and place in your cardboard box yogurt maker. You can also use a large stock pot with the heating pad placed in the bottom of the stock pot. Make sure the heating pad is a waterproof one.

After pouring the milk mix into the jars, you can add maple syrup, honey, or other sweeteners if you like.

Let the yogurt ferment at about 110F for 3 hours, check for doneness.

Temperature is important when making yogurt, too high or too low and it wont work. Do not move the yogurt jars while incubating them, it wont end up being good yogurt if you do.

October 7, 2009