Subject: Re: borsch is not pickled beets :-) From: Beverly Erlebacher The Editor writes: > Brine pickles are often canned after they are fermented or > partially fermented, since the low-salt brining is not > considered sufficient for long term storage. There is also > a heavy brine where the vegtables do not need to be canned > for long term storage. Here the salt is the preservative, but > the vegtables need to be de-salted before they can be used. If you don't want to screw around with canning, you can freeze your sauerkraut. It will lose crispness, but this doesn't matter if you are planning to cook it. In the old days, people just kept their sauerkraut in a big crock in a cold cellar. If you keep eating the part on top, it will keep until spring. once the weather warms up, you eat fresh veggies and give the remaining kraut to the pigs. You can keep sauerkraut for months in the fridge using the following method. After fermentation is complete, pack it tightly in plastic containers (like yogurt or cottage cheese containers). Fill the containers right to the top so that when you put the cover on you can press out all the air bubbles and have the liquid in contact with the entire surface of the cover. Don't bother with heavy brining. Getting the salt out washes out most of the nutrition too. I think heavy brining prevents fermentation of all kinds, but I've never tried it myself, although I have eaten salt-packed vegetables and they are pretty bad. > The process involved here is not a yeast, as I understand it, > but a bacteria. Is it a lactobacilli? Does anybody know? It's a lactobacillus, converting sugar to lactic acid. The scum on top is some other type of microbe, converting the lactic acid to carbon dioxide and water, which is why you have to skim it off. This latter microbe needs plenty of air, so will only grow on an exposed liquid surface, hence my suggestion above to keep air out of the plastic containers. Why don't you go ahead and experiment with a small batch of sauerkraut right now? Buy a head of cabbage and make a few quarts. Some tips: - Red cabbage makes especially nice sauerkraut, not only because of the pretty colour, but because most people are used to the bright white colour of commercial sauerkraut (which may not even be fermented, as far as I can tell by the taste and texture). Home made sauerkraut tends to be somewhat brownish, the darker the more you let it oxidize. Using red cabbage, the kraut stays red. - Don't use anything but cabbage and salt, never add water. The brine may take a few hours to rise over the cabbage, under the weight. Be patient, and use a heavy enough weight. - An aside to the above: you can throw in some shredded apples to get a bit more sugar and flavour in the kraut. Some people like to add caraway or dill seeds for extra flavour. Just make plain cabbage-and-salt kraut for your first go. - A lot of recipes tell you to use a stone for a weight. Stones of suitable size and shape are scarce in the city. I use a gallon glass jug filled with varying amounts of water depending on how much weight I want. I make kraut and brined pickles in a food- grade plastic bucket. You can get buckets like this from bulk food stores, bakeries, etc., since they are used to ship things like peanut butter and pie filling. The diameters of the jug and bucket are such that little surface area of brine is exposed to the air. I don't use a cloth under the plate, I just wipe the scum from the surface around the jug. If the plate is a good fit for the bucket, you can slowly lift the weight, the plate will rise with all the scum sticking to it, rinse the plate and outside of the jug, and put them back. - Don't use a plate that you care about under the weight. It's amazing the way an acid brine can etch a china surface. Similarly, don't let metal stay in contact with the brine. I've found that even the small amount of brine that overflows the jars during canning will corrode the rings on the canning jars. - During the early stages of fermentation, sauerkraut smells rather unpleasant. There's almost an ozone or chlorine character to the smell. So you might want to isolate your project away from living areas for the first week or so, especially in winter when windows are closed. - You can make small batches of sauerkraut in quart jars. Fill the jars to the brim, cover them and keep them in a plastic dishpan because the brine will overflow. I've never tried this, but have read about it. It might work well using quart plastic containers instead of jars with corrodable rings. The kraut shrinks as it develops. At some stage you are supposed to pack n containers of kraut into n-1 jars, n is probably 4 or 5. - I've been making kraut and brined pickles for about 20 years now. I learned how from a book I think by Evelyn Loveday, called something like "Home Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables", published by Garden Way Publishing. It's quite a classic, I often see it in libraries. I can get the exact title for you if you like (I'm not at home now). Anyhow, all these fermenting processes have been used for thousands of years by people who knew nothing about the science involved. I think people should try to stay relaxed about all this. Things usually work out, you really don't need to keep a herd of pigs or flock of poultry to eat your mistakes. Experiment and have fun, try to come up with methods that give you the taste and texture you like, but don't sweat it if your bread or whatever doesn't match your ideal at first. You might inadvertently discover something you like better. A lot of the very meticulous methods are necessary for repeatably getting a standardized product, which is important if you are a commercial producer needing to induce brand loyalty in your customers. When you are doing it for yourself and family and friends, you can be more lax or more free. You'll soon learn when you've gone too far in the laxness direction (nothing like an oven full of overflowing jars of gassy non-yogourt to make you reconsider the quality of your sterile technique or your economy in propagating from your last batch instead of springing 59 cents for some fresh commercial yogourt!). A last tip: start small, and do only a small batch when trying something new. It's a lot easier to pitch a couple of quarts of mushy pickles in the compost than to try to dump a 50 gallon barrel. I can tell you lots of funny-only-in-retrospect stories of friends' adventures in zymotechnics, and a few of my own! :-) yrs, b. Btw, I've got a good method for making yogourt from powdered milk. It was particularly attractive for its cheapness when I started doing this as a student in ancient times, now it is even more attractive for its zero-fat property! I can write it up for the list if people are interested. I can also write up my sauerkraut and delicatessen-style brined pickle recipes, but not all at once... :-)