Red cabbage and beetroot kraut
A truly glorious color, zhuzhed up with lime, ginger, and garlic.
This red beauty is a staple on my fermentation shelf, alongside golden kraut. They share certain ingredients, but a few key players make all the difference.
I always like to add some fruit and/or sweet vegetables to my krauts, which provide more food for the bacteria (who eat those sugars to produce lactic acid!). It also helps counteract the acidity that develops over time, resulting in a more balanced flavour profile. I’ll usually add an apple and carrot for these purposes, but for this recipe I’ve chucked in some raw grated beetroot instead of the carrot - in line with the “red” theme, and adding a wonderful earthiness to the equation. Lime juice and peel* contribute a beautiful floral freshness, too.
This recipe follows a standard sauerkraut technique: dry-salting and squeezing the cabbage to extract the liquid that’s naturally present to create a brine. If you want to avoid the 5-10 minutes of squeezing - which can be a workout on the hands - you can salt the cabbage and let it hang out, covered, for a couple of hours. When you get back to it, the salt will have done a lot of the legwork and it’ll be much easier to extract the liquid!
*A note on adding citrus to your ferments: the pith can impart an incredibly strong bitterness to the mix, so unless that’s what you’re going for (i.e. in preserved lemons where the whole citrus fruit gets fermented), stick to the juice and the zest or peel, leaving out the white pith.
Red Kraut
For 1 lt jar
Ingredients:
1 head of red cabbage (approx. 800g)
16g unrefined sea salt, or 2% of the total weight (2 tsp)
1 whole apple
1 small beetroot
2 garlic cloves, grated
1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp lime zest, or 3 lime peels
1 tsp crushed coriander seeds
1 tsp crushed cardamom seeds
Instructions:
Remove the brown end of the cabbage’s core, and remove any brown or damaged parts of the outer leaves. Quarter the cabbage.
Shred the cabbage very finely, either by hand or using a mandolin.
In a large bowl, combine the shredded cabbage and salt.
Squeeze the cabbage with the salt to draw out the liquid, until the cabbage loses volume, goes limp, and there’s a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.
Grate in the apple, the beetroot, and add the cloves of garlic, the ginger, lime juice and peel/zest, and seeds. Mix well.
Grab a handful of the cabbage mix and place in the jar; using your fist or a blunt-tipped object (like a rolling pin), compress the layer down to get rid of air pockets and to make the liquid rise to the surface.
Continue packing all the cabbage in, bit by bit, until it’s well-compressed (leaving two inches from the mouth of the jar).
Wipe down the sides of the jar, both inside and outside, to remove any bits (which can get contaminated if exposed to oxygen for too long).
Add the remaining liquid to cover the surface of the mix.
Cover with a tea towel secured with a rubberband and let ferment at room temperature for 7-14 days. Push the veg down every day to re-submerge it (or use a fermentation weight).
Taste every day, and when it’s to your liking, seal the lid and refrigerate. Label your jar with the date and contents.
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