Sauerkraut

After having a few good months in Germany behind me, I gathered enough courage and tried my luck with making Sauerkraut. After making a short research, I understood that actually, it's all – literally, in my hands. The peak of this recipe is the relaxing massaging process and the intimate connection with the cabbage, which by the way, unlike the "sweetness" that usually is connected with the word Massage, here it's more of a sourness result, and that is actually good.

The whole process is very simple, and the only challenge is waiting those few days until it is ready. I have to admit, it is very hard. Each morning, after my wife of course, I greet the jars with a smiley Good-Morning. Like music has an effect on flowers, also a smile and a bit attention effect jars full with cabbage. It's a fact.

The cabbage has many benefits. It's rich with vitamin C and many anti-cancer ingredients.  ( Sauerkraut offers a spectrum of health benefits ) And of course, after the pickling process everything intensifies significantly, and the body enjoys a big portion of support.

The ingredients :            

 

Fresh cabbage

Sea salt

Pepper

Caraway (if you don't like it it's not a must, but it's really adding a nice flavor)

You leave one leaf of the cabbage and cut the rest. Try to cut it to long and thin stripes for a better result. Put it all in a big bowl, add about a spoon of salt, some pepper and the caraway. Mix it a bit and leave it like this for about an hour to release some liquids. After an hour the fun starts. You massage the cabbage, and massage and massage, until there is a nice amount of liquids. It takes about ten minutes. After the massaging process you transfer it to jar and compress it.

A few important things. First of all, the jar should be clean and sanitized. (In this recipe you can see how) It's also important that the cabbage will stay the whole time in its own liquid, so no mold will grow. For this we kept a leaf of cabbage. You cover the cabbage with this one leaf and try to make pressure and press it all down. You can also try and use a small shot glass and by screwing the lid on, create pressure. It's also very important to leave a few centimeters empty for the air that's creating in the process, so the jar will not shatter.

That's it. Leave it outside for four days and one more day in the fridge and it's ready. If you make more after it, you can use a bit of the liquids from the old one, to make the process shorter. Enjoy!