Sauerkraut Ferment from Start to Finish || Black Gumbo 

My grandfather and grand mother were from Poland and made a 50 gallon barrel every year. I remember when I was a boy opening the door to the cellar and the smell of sauerkraut, kobalsi, bacon, vodka, and curing cheese. The grand kids liked to drink the sauerkraut juice and snitch a piece of kolbasi. I had the greatest grandparents in the world. Both long gone, but alive in my mind.

Im a wild and healthy 82 year old. Every Sunday, for the past 10 years I buy shredded cabbage in a plastic bag and I add a heaping teaspoon of Himalayan salt and massage the bag several times throughout the day. The next morning I stuff it all into a clean 1 pint jar and lightly seal it and set it aside (in a very WARM corner of the room) on a plate to catch the drips. By Friday it's fermented! Great probiotic! Good to eat a scoop every day till the next weekly batch is ready. Healthy gut. Healthy life. Bless yourself with this easy csbbage ferment!

So glad you are showing this. My ancestors were "professional" sauerkraut makers, it was something you made every year in giant wooden barrels. My mother's parents in Poland used to make such a barrel, seal it with wax and then store it at the bottom of a lake! The barrel was attached to a chain so that when it sat at the bottom for a while, it was easily accessible. In my mom's village, everybody had such a barrel in the lake each with their own chains. In the 50s when food was scarce, it was the sauerkraut and other pickled things that helped my parents and grandparents survive. We uphold these traditions with our own pickling, especially with the war in Ukraine next door to us!

I love this man crunching on fermented cabbage happily while his family is annoyed by the smell. Keep it up sir, you are awesome.

just a mexican guy who heard about sauerkraut from a health channel (dr. berg) on youtube. I tried it and loved it. I thought I was eating the real stuff at first and then I realized that the sauerkraut sold at stores has preservatives, artificial coloring and flavors, and it's also heat treated. I'm trying to do my own sauerkraut now at home. wish me luck!

Love the no-nonsense approach, nothing finicky, no overly specialized tools, very accessible. Thank you for posting this.

We make several batches of sauerkraut every year. A woman i work with recently had her mid 30s year old son move back home and tells her to buy him dinner every night so she has been making things he hates, lol. One of those things he hates is sauerkraut, so naturally i gave her a jar and she said it was the best she has ever had, and the son said if she makes another jar he will leave. I helped her out and sent her a case! Glad to share the wealth with friends! She wants to join in on the next batch!

I'm half Russian from my mother's side and she makes fermented everything bless her heart, your method is just like hers thank you for spreading the good word, people really don't know what they are missing out on.

Had an uncle who was in the occupation forces in Germany after the second world War. He used to marvel at how in the German outhouses there was no odor, it was as clean as the outside air! Asking around he found out it was from the heavy use of sauerkraut, the healthy bacteria kept the people's intestines clean and there was no foul odor.

Last August I made this fermented cabbage following your exact recipe and instructions, it was my very first time fermenting anything by myself from start to finish. For comparison I also made another fermented cabbage recipe (from another channel) with brime. Both made on the same day and fermented side by side in the kitchen. Verdict: your recipe and method was the high winner in my household! I fermented for 6 weeks and then moved to the fridge. My family preferred your recipe because 1- the cabbage remained a bit crispy 2- it was not too salty 3- the overall appearance of it was more eye pleasing. Also, with your recipe I didn't get any Kham Yeast in the jars, whilst with the brine recipe Kham Yeast formed, note that all jars were cleaned the same way and the ferments were side by side in the same conditions. Thank you for this video, this is a recipe we love!

I remember a time, when traditional butchers here in Germany always had a wooden barrel with Sauerkraut in their shops (Sauerkraut and pork go so well together) and kids often got a small bowl out of it, and it was crunchy and salty and yummie - eaten with the fingers of course, just like you do 😉 Now, food regulations make it nearly impossible to have big containers with open food any longer. Another tradition from centuries gone... Strange when a RU-vid video suddenly brings back memories from 60+ years ago.....

Never too late to learn, the amount of information available is mind blowing. Yet so many people are so sick in the world when so much healthy foods are known to exist.

My mum was Polish and made this in a wooden barrel in the kitchen. When you grow up with this, you don't notice the smell so much. She also fermented small cucumbers too, much tastier than pickled in vinegar. Fermented foods are so good for you. Sauerkraut improves digestions, boosts your immune system, reduces stress and increases brain function

Honestly it's the first time I actually understood the difference between fermentation and pickling, and you explained it all beautifully, thank you!

As a northern Ontario, Canada girl I can confirm the cabbage does sound like walking through the snow in March. We call the “Broken Snowshoe Moon” in my people’s languages of Nipissing and Ojibwe.

FYI - I've found that an old-school potato masher works well for punching down the fermenting sauerkraut. Just make sure it's "clean" beforehand. Works perfectly, and is likely something that everyone has in their kitchen arsenal.

My dad is making perfect fermented cabbage for 40 years.. we add a bit of cranberries and keep cold pressing with a heavy stuff over the wooden plate. As it requires cold and we always make like 5 litres we do it when first colds start somewhere in November and keep in balcony throughout the winter.. it always comes out very crispy and extremely tasty.. I love the juice of fermented cabbage:) and soup made of it with some meat and potatoes :) also we stew it with potatoes and onions in a pan during the winter, perfect tasty dish for cold days

My grandpa would grow cabbage in his garden the size of bowling balls, literally! He would slice it on an antique meat slicer that had what looked like a steering wheel with a handle that stuck out. The table would go back and forth as you turned the wheel. He sliced it about an 1/8" . Grandma had a couple of 5 gallon crocks on the back porch she would make it in. I remember taking off the cheese cloth and eating it. She can it an put it under the house.

I add a handful of juniper berries to supply the proper starter for fermentation. The white powder on the berries is the good mold. Juniper berries also help to reduce unwanted top scum. They are a wonderful burst of flavour in the sauerkraut. Ancient German secret.

We make similar sauerkraut in northeast area of China, hundreds of served family vegetable need in cold monthes from December to April,several hundreds pounds of Chinese cabbage fermented in few big pottery jars that higher as 1 meter!!! We stew sauerkraut with pork，the simplest of its recipes is just mix the duo with water then boil 30m, delicious all of it, the sauerkraut, the pork or its bones, and the soup!!!

Dad’s recipe was 1/4 cup salt to 10 lbs of cabbage layered and weighted in a crock. Delicious!

Sauerkraut with ginger a sliced green apple! Yeah!

I'm thrilled to see someone make sauerkraut the way my mom did. Thank you 😊

This traditional food-preserving knowledge is so valuable to have and thank you for passing it on! We take all our modern Western luxuries such as supermarkets, electricity/refrigeration etc for granted however all it takes is a war or natural disaster such a flood, hurricane, wildfire etc and peaple may find themselves cut-off & isolated and having to fend for themselves for an extended period. Then those with the knowledge to grow & hunt their own food and then be able to process and preserve these raw materials will be the ones with the best chance to ride things out. Was watching footage from Ukraine when rural town & villages were being liberated after months of Russian occupation and they were interviewing the mainly elderly residents who had survived through it. Many proudly showed-off their root cellars full of pickled, fermented and preserved foods that had allowed them to survive for months on end when no outside food supplies were available. Meanwhile many of the larger towns & cities were deserted, as the population were forced to flee when the supermarkets ran out of food and they had none of these traditional food sources to draw on.

Haha, I never noticed your pockets. I was busy watching and learning how to do cabbage/sauerkraut , 🤣

I am Dutch and we are traditionally eating sauerkraut and mashed it with potatoes. I Holland you can by it on every street corner. But....we are living in Greec now and it is rare here. Cole on the other hand we have plenty! So now I am going to make it myself! Thank you!

Germans often add some more ingredients for fine tuned taste : onions (quartered), bayleaves, juniper berries, black pepper corn, dry white whine, some sugar, honey or sweet redapple (for balancing the acidity). Try it out to your taste .

Phoebe Sharona is a little doll; nothing better than Sauerkraut with a fur buddy.

Interesting and very well presented! Not the average hysterical presentation we all have to endure. More of this, please! :)

53 years old and think I just figured out why no other sauerkraut taste as good as my Grandmothers on my dad's families side. I just don't like the vinegar taste. I am going to try this. And just subscribed.

As a sauerkraut enthusiast,, I'll make a few recommendations. 1) Get a mandoline and shred it thinner. 2) Use 1 cup of (unchlorinated) water to dissolve the salt and adjust salt to 2% accordingly. 3) use the kraft pounder to bruise the cabbage. Much easier and better that crushing with hands. 4) Sprinkle a few probiotics on top to jumpstart the lactobacillus 5) Use a kimchee box for fermenting. It's perfectly designed to submerge the cabbage and prevent smell. It's a game changer

I made your style of Sauerkraut with Purple Cabbage and Caraway seeds three weeks ago. I got it all packed and into refrigeration today, and it is very very tasty. Thank you.

For the first time I had fermented sauerkraut and I’ve just recently gotten into making fermented foods. You were absolutely right there’s no comparison with fermented foods and pickled foods. I just recently found your channel I’m from North Mississippi.

Mmm.....yummy. Tip - It' s much safer to remove your ring before handling the kraut. Rings on fingers ( or any decorative items on hand and fingers) contain crazy amount of pathogen that are not removed with regular hand washing.

Pretty much every meal at our house growing up had homemade kraut on the table. My father would make kraut all year long and occasionally horseradish a couple times a year in our basement. You could always tell when my father stirred the horseradish by his big bugged eyes.

I always use the core. That is my treat when it is all finished!

Great video. Your salt ratio is a bit off though since you weighed it before you took the cores out. I always weigh my bowl so I have a tare weight, cut the cabbage and put it in the bowl and then I can either subtract the tare weight or zero it out with the bowl and then do the ration so that I have a more exact weight. Love that you stress the cleanliness as I've seen many who I shudder to think people are eating their food! :)

Get a large strong (250 micron) plastic bag (poly) a big one is best 24X36 inches, put the cabbage and salt in, and shake thoroughly, give the bag a good scrunching, then wait till it is ready to pot, simple.

My only experience with fermenting was with five pounds of japanese plums i had growing on a tree in my yard. I layered the plums with rock salt(ice cream maker salt) at a 20% ratio. Then covered the plums in a pot using a dinner plate. The plate was weighed down with a five pound brick. after 10-14 days i had what the Japanese call UmeBoshi. Very salty which is good for a hard working man on a very hot and sweaty day. Try to only eat 3-4 per day

fried cabbage. cut 1/2 inch square of salt pork. cut the pork into tiny pieces. put pork in frying pan cook until oil renders and the little pieces are crispy add chopped onions cook half way then add sauerkraut cook until kraut starts to turn brown enjoy. can add this to pierogi

thank you for doing a very basic walk thru - This is probably the most comprehensive video done in the easiest to understand/follow I've seen. I have been afraid of doing this myself out of fear of doing it wrong. I now feel comfortable enough now to do this myself. Thank you!

Wow - and he even grew the big gorgeous cabbages.

German way is juniper berries, and caraway seed. I didn't like bitting into the caraway seeds so I left them out on my second batch. I use the bigger leaves from the out side of the cabbage to put on top with a ceramic weight to hold it down below the water.

You can eat the core of the cabbage row, my mother gave me always the core when I was a child and I LOVED IT ! It taste a bit sweet and can literarily taste all the vital vitamins and packed minerals in it. some part of the core taste nice and small kids usually LOVE IT to eat next to it is healthy... do not give the child if they are lacto sensitive

Reminds me of my grandmas house, in the cellar the wooden Vat w.the " Sauerkraut". We use to put a wooden top and a heavy stone to hold it down. Grrat memories.

My late father made sauerkraut fairly often when I was a kid. I wish I had paid attention to how he did it. I am going to try your method. Great video. Thank you!

I made MY first batch ever. I added apples. YUM

Thank you, I loved this video. It is great to see someone so happy with their fermenting results. Great stuff.

As a child, I remember so well how I helped with canning. Love Sauerkraut!

Cute corgi. I love saurkraut with frankfurters. Good job.

Highly recommend a mandolin slicer to get uniform thickness to the cabbage slices. Also helps to make short work of slicing up a few heads. Just take care of your fingers. Another tip for fermenting other veg: put a cap of cabbage at the top of the vessel to help create an air-tight seal of whatever you're fermenting. Cabbage is a natural habitat for lactobacillus, and cabbage leaves will serve as a mother for the desired population.

Great video. Thanks for sharing your recipe. I like to use Red Cabbage which is nice to.

I think I have found my people! LOL I will try celery seed in mine. Looking forward to ideas for what I can do in my back yard!

Great looking kraut! Just finished a class on fermenting, and asked the professor a question about my mother’s habit of eating directly out of the kraut container and sticking it back in the fridge, drinking directly out of her kefir bottle and putting it back in the fridge. He said that will set up a whole new set of harmful bacteria, and to throw the fermented food out if a person has contaminated the container (unless they’re going to eat/drink the entire container within a day or two), even if it is only THAT ONE person eating/drinking from the container. Thought that might be helpful for others to know.

Eating sauerkraut right out of the gigantic jar is very much something I would do. You're a funny guy! 😂. If your family doesn't like the smell, my guess is they don't like the taste either, so more for you! I look forward to giving ferments a try some time soon.

Thank you! I'm making a half gallon tonight.

My family comes from Bavaria. It was tradition to make sauerkraut in the fall and then freeze it. (In the old days they would simply leave it outside). Given as gifts for Christmas, it was eaten on New Years Day to bring good luck. I'm going to try this.

I'm a new subscriber. I enjoy your gardening lessons. Thank you for putting up videos. This is how I make mine...I'm eating some now. It's good stuff! It's not just for topping a sausage. You can even get it on salad when you're in Germany. Everyone should eat or drink something fermented everyday for good gut health.

In the late fifties and early sixties, we made sauerkraut in three earthen ware crocks about twenty gallons each, when full they were covered with a pottery plate and then a cover and left out side all winter or at least until the kraut was gone.

In my family in Ukraine we would also add a little bit of carrot strips (cut to strips on a small grate of a cheese grater, maybe like 2mm thick) and some whole black pepper. Not exactly sure what carrot adds, but pepper adds nice hint of black pepper flavor

I LOVE your food inspector. She's so cute! She's doing a good job too!

Don’t worry about that pocket Scott, you’re a proper dapper Dan. I was very impressed by your video and your own cabbages too! I’m definitely going to try making this. Very best wishes from the U.K.

This is exactly the video I wanted to see. I love sauerkraut with caraway seeds. Who in their right mind doesn't like the smell of freshly cut/chopped cabbage? That is a delicious smell. I've never made kraut or coleslaw, but I have had the pleasure of being around when slaw has been made and the cabbage smell is lovely. I really want to try my hand at making some sauerkraut.

I really loved seeing how much this guy really loves and enjoys home made raw fermented saur kraut. 👍😁 I really appreciate his enthusiasm as it's contagious - that and the instructions on how to make it helps me to want to try this myself and gives me the confidence and encouragement to know I'll be able to not only do it successfully myself but that it will be worth it. Also, I love caraway seeds too! Of COURSE I'll want to add them! 👍😁

I LOVE to eat the core! It's a llittle bit hot, cruchy and a little bit juicy. I think it's a great snack while I'm making cole slaw!!

1) I weigh my cabbage AFTER cutting the cores out. 2) I cut the cores into chunks, boil them with water, and add miso [to taste]. Then turn off the heat. After it cools for a few minutes, I take a stick blender and make a sauce. Then freeze and add it to soups or sauces when needed. 3) I add the large leaves and a fermentation weight to keep the cabbage under the liquid. You don't need to watch the cabbage and worry about it going above the liquid. (If needed, you can add 2.5% water on top.) BTW: I found that soaking the fermentation wood pounder in vegetable oil prevents it from cracking.

Cabbage core is perfectly edible. Just chop it into chunks and boil for a few minutes with other vergetables, Broccoli stalks chopped up go into the same pot. Add other conveninet vegetabls.

FYI ... you should cut up that core and put it into the mix because it has a lot of probiotics and nutrients. Also, I would not use metal ... use a glass bowl ... and generally, I only use one tablespoon of salt per head of cabbage. When I crush the cabbage with the salt the brine is produced without any problem. In fact there is enough brine solution to cover up the cabbage unless you get a dehydrated one. I love the stuff ... and yeah ... I did enjoy your video ... learned some things too by the way. Thanks.

Great instructions. Thank you.

I prep cooked at a Bob's Big Boy when I was fifteen. One trick I learned was to core heads of lettuce and cabbage by firmly and sharply slamming the stem down on the stainless steel tables. Then you can grab the stem and give it a twist, and it should come right out. I had to chop two boxes of each every morning. But that trick and an autofeeding deli slicer made it much quicker.

That was great! Thanks! I mixed purple and green cabbage together.

Toast the caraway before tossing it in- you can really taste it then. I had never made sauerkraut until last year, it is so much better than the stuff in the can at the store. Nice work!

Great job Scott!...from garden to table, it's so important that we don't lose these basic life skills. We recognize more multinational corporate logos than local plants these days...

I use that same jar for making kombucha. Now I can make sauerkraut too. Thank you!

Ive just finished my first batch using home grown cabbages with your recipe scott, it turned out amazing thankyou for sharing with us

I've been researching / looking for good how to videos on this and this video might be the best and most helpful one I've found (and there are good ones out there). His enthusiasm is contagious and encouraging especially for someone like myself - a newbie to raw saur kraut and making homemade fermented foods in general - who hasn't made this yet.

Your family is lucky to have you! Excellent job.

They have lids for the mason jars that have airlock flaps in them. They work great.

I used to blend the cabbage and then add it to a brine mix. Put it into Maison jars and hide them from sunlight for 48hrs. I would then drink it and it would pass through my system very quickly ( so be near a toilet at all times) my preference is this one shown above. I can at least enjoy the benefits and the taste. Thank you.

Thank you so much for producing this video showing from start to finish. I like to see different variation how people make sauerkraut. This video was simple. No fancy that I keep seeing in so many videos that just seems sort of arbitrary yet I know they are helpful . It’s also lovely to see it shines your happiness . Thank you.

Yeah 🎉. Two years later found your wonderful video. I enjoyed so much! And I will try your recipe. And thanks from Panamá 🇵🇦!!!

Many thanks for showing this Scott! I just made my first sauerkraut exactly as you told and it tastes great. It' s crunchy as you said,15 days, spot on. Thanks!

I like sauer kraut now I learn how to make it thank you for showing it .

I complement you on expressing cleanliness on food preparation mate! It's a rarity! 🙏👍🇭🇲

My love of sauerkraut is from my love of reuben sandwiches. My dad will eat it straight out of the jar

Mom used a well seasoned oak plank with a brick to hold it down inside a 5 gal crock when she made hers. She said we need to eat something fermented 3-5x a week to keep our health. Thank you Sir for sharing this. Wish I had paid more attention when she was canning our winters food. As for cramps, I woke up around 2am cramping so bad I had to roll out of bed in the fetal position, a quick home remedy lookup and a few swallows of pickle juice and I was right as rain in about 15 mins. Salt tablets from then on when sweating a lot.

Awww...live with folks in peace. Love it! Thanks for sharing your skill!

My cousin eats something fermented every day. Huge believer. My dear mother in law made kraut this way. Taught me so much. Still hooked on your channel. Already telling everyone I know!

Looks wonderful! I love sauerkraut, and cabbage in general.

We always made sauerkraut for winter in Poland in 60s

Back in the early 60's my father and grandfather used to make a 15 gallon crock of sauerkraut each year. I don't remember them measuring anything. Just cored the heads and run them through a bandolin. Then they sat and drank beer and layered cabbage and salt to the top, tamping each layer. Topped it off with a lid of maple that sat down inside the crock with a brick on it. It was kept in the basement and my dad would go down once a week or so and "skim the top"...and taste test it...every time. I remember he kept the crock in a washtub because whenever there was a full moon the brine would run over the top of the crock. Good stuff!! He would let it go about a month. To this day I like raw sauerkraut more than cooked. But you just can't buy it like that, it is truly an artisan product.

I just recently tried my hand at making sauerkraut. Your method is so much easier than the method I used! Thank you thank you, because I've been putting off doing another batch even though I enjoyed the results. (And you are right. It tastes so much better than the store bought pickled stuff.) Thank you for sharing. Best wishes from the northeast. Subscribed!

I'm watching this video again. I watched multiple other videos and it seems you make the most sense. Easy to understand and just enjoyable! I think I'll wash my cabbage and hands and glove up. Thank you for the great video!!!

Looks delicious! I know what I'll be doing with my next head of cabbage.

Good video, I'm approaching 3 weeks on my current batch so just about done to my liking. I do just a quart at a time, 2 lbs. of cabbage to 1 tblsp. of salt which about equals your 2.5% ratio by weight. I also use jars and venting lids made for this, with a spring inside to hold the cabbage down into the brine (which is where the big retained leaf comes in handy, layered on top).

I watched this video a week ago, and the expression of delight on your face and obvious love of the taste when you sampled your sauerkraut made my mouth water! So I've made my first ever batch, and am just loving the crunchy taste. Thank you so much for such a great instructional :-)

My mouth is watering. Kraut and a Johnsonville, jalapeno brat, and a splash oh dijon mustard. OMG

I made some yesterday and saw your video today. I haven't made any for a few years and I forget to add the caraway seeds this time. I use a jar with the lid that latches down and just release the gasses a couple times a day.

This is what I call good food, good guy, good knowledge sharing, good goodie. Thank you.

Thanks Cobber from Downunder Christchurch New Zealand, I love sauerkraut and make my own but you gave me a few tips to help my process, so thank you. Yes I agree properly made Sauerkraut made the fermented way! Apparently Abel Tasman and Captain James Cook both brought large quantities of Sauerkraut on their voyages as it retained Vitamin C, Cook was also known for his use of lemons and limes, hence the reason why the Yanks called the British Limeys! They recon it is a way of keeping bowl cancer away!