Six Heads of Cabbage and My Hubby. . . .

My husbands family has a little German in their history and he loves German food.  Now back to the cabbage, we do not normally grow this much cabbage but this year they all survived.   We have had stir fry, soup, stew, and have given some away.   My hubby has not found Pinterest yet, thank goodness, but he knows how to Google.  He found a recipe for homemade sauerkraut and has been preparing for it all week.  Yesterday was the big day and I could not pass up the opportunity to share this adventure with you.  I have not ever had sauerkraut before so this really is going to be an adventure for me.  The hubbs loves the stuff and he is a pretty good cook so this is going to be very interesting.
Sauerkraut is not something that is fixed in one day, it is a process and in some areas they bury it in the ground.  We did not bury ours, it is just sitting on the counter processing.  We started by peeling the outer layers of the cabbage and then slicing the head thinly then adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of sea salt.

After adding the salt you mash the cabbage, almost like kneading bread.

This what your cabbage looks like after kneading it for five minutes.

You take that and put it in a clean mason jar and tamp it down to get the air out of it.

You then add the liquid that you made by kneading back to the mason jar to cover the cabbage.

You place a smaller jelly jar filled with rocks or beads to weight down the cabbage.

The cabbage needs to stay under the liquid.

You then cover the jar with cheese cloth to keep dust and anything else out of your cabbage.

This is what the cabbage looks like this morning all veiled in cheese cloth.

As you can tell I have it sitting in a bowl, they said the liquid may bubble out of the jar.

I am not sure how long we have to wait, but stay tuned, I will keep you updated on the cabbage process.  I said we had six heads, this is only a quarter of a head.  I see more stew in my future but, that is ok, because it will go in the freezer for the winter.   Stay tuned potatoes will be coming in soon.