Secrets of cooking tasty and crunchy sauerkraut

Make sour cabbage as easily as to spoil it. These tips will help you choose the right ingredients and dishes and organize the fermentation and storage so as to achieve an ideal result.

What is suitable for pickling cabbage

It is best to choose the medium and late varieties of cabbage. They more sugar, which is necessary for fermentation. Cabbage should be solid, with sturdy leaves. All the rough upper and the affected leaves for pickling are not used.

What to make sour cabbage

Required ingredients:

1. Salt. Typically, to 1 kg of cabbage was added 1 tbsp. But you can increase or decrease the amount of salt to taste.
2. Carrot. 1 kg of cabbage about 100 g

The cabbage can also add:

1. Sugar. It will accelerate the fermentation process. To 1 kg of cabbage sufficiently ½ tsp.
2. beet or pumpkin in combination with carrots or instead.
3. Apples. Coarsely chopped apples cored better laid between layers of cabbage.
4. Cranberries, lingonberries.
5. Bay leaf, allspice, dill seeds, cumin, horseradish, currant leaves or other spices at your discretion.

How to cut the cabbage

Cabbage often fermented in shredded form, although you can use quarters, halves and whole heads of cabbage. If you choose to shred, it is best not too finer: very thinly sliced ​​cabbage can get soft, not crispy. The thickness of the slices should be approximately 5 mm.

As the shredded cabbage with a knife, shown in this article. However, if you want to cope with the task faster, you can use a slicer or food processor. But in this case, most likely, cabbage narezhetsya thin.

What kind of packaging to choose

Cabbage is traditionally fermented in wooden barrels or casks. Also suitable for this purpose glass jars and enameled container without chipping and damage.

The main thing - do not use for pickling aluminum cookware. It cabbage becomes gray and unpleasant taste.

How to make sour cabbage

Shredded cabbage and grated carrots (or other vegetables that you are using) put into a clean bowl and stir.

If you plan to make sour cabbage a lot, do not cut all at once: it will be difficult to stir. It is better to cook batches.

Pour the vegetables with salt and grind their hands. It is necessary to highlight the cabbage juice.

Begin to lay the cabbage in a well-washed and treated with hot water tank for fermentation. Cabbage lay parties and rammed her hands or a wooden tolkushkoy.

If you are Kwasi cabbage in a pot, cover it with a lid or a conventional lid with holes. Fully closing the bank can not, because the gas emitted when fermented, must go outside.

If you are Kwasi cabbage in a bowl or pan, cover with clean (preferably prokipyachonnoy) with gauze or washed cabbage leaves, put a clean plate and load: suitable jar with water or pure a rock.

If you use a small container, be sure to put it in some kind of container to collect eye-catching juice.

KVASOV need cabbage at room temperature (19-22 ° C). You can put it in a warm place. Since the fermentation process will accelerate, appetizer cooked faster.

A few hours after the bookmark, check whether all the cabbage juice covered. If not, add cold boiled water.

Kwasi cabbage from two to seven days. Every day it is necessary to pierce her to the bottom of a clean wooden stick to release the gas. Otherwise, cabbage will taste bitter. If you are Kwasi cabbage in the pot, gently pierce: the glass may break. daily as necessary to remove the foam that appears on the surface.

Towards the end of fermentation gas evolution ceases, the foam disappears from the surface, the brine becomes lighter, and cabbage itself acquires a pleasant sweet and salty taste. In order not to miss this moment, and try to check it every day.

Cabbage can kvass and without salt. To do this, simply fill it with cold boiled water and leave under pressure.

But in this case, the shelf life is considerably reduced, since salt is a preservative.

How to store sauerkraut

Cabbage should be kept in a cool place in the same container in which it was pickling. At a temperature of 2-5 ° C it can be stored for about two weeks or more.

For long term storage it is recommended in pasteurized or canned cabbage, but in this case it may lose its beneficial features.

Another important condition when stored brine should completely cover cabbage, so that it does not dry and does not change flavor. Therefore, it is better to keep under pressure.

And of course, you need to trust your instincts: if the taste, odor, color change, or there was mold, the dish is definitely not necessary to use.