This gourmet vegan sauerkraut is a gorgeously rich iteration of the generally rather bland (although no doubt healthy) standard version. It has a base of red and white cabbage, but a host of other interesting veggies too. There’s red & white cabbage, of course. But you also get turnip, carrot, ginger, garlic, beetroot & turmeric which all adds to the richness & depth of flavour. Call me old fashioned, but personally, I find standard sauerkraut a bit one-dimensional – this is the complete opposite.
It doesn’t take a huge amount of extra effort to add in the extra veggies, but it’s well worth it. Sure you have to wash a few more things, but then it’s just a question of using the food processor! It does help if you have one of the more recent food processors with an extra wide feed tube.
Do the cabbages first and give them a good squishing and mixing with your hands after you’ve added the salt. That’s really the hardest part – after 10 minutes of that you need a rest and cup of tea. Then you can add in all the other shredded veggies and give it a good final mixing. I gave it a couple of days in a large pan and then decanted to kilner jars. I’ll probably skip that step next time.
I found that there wasn’t enough liquid to cover the veggies, which is important to exclude rogue/unwanted bacteria. To that end I would recommend making up a 2% salt solution to add enough to cover the veggies. You will also need to burp the jars every few days.
Once you have it packed into glass jars, leave it for around 3 weeks to ferment. Ideally, at between 20 to 25°C. That’s the sweet range – too hot and you can get off flavours – too cool and it won’t ferment properly.
Once it’s finished fermenting – put the jars in the fridge and eat at will. You can also add it to dishes like this vegan Hungarian Goulash as a side/accompaniment. This gourmet vegan sauerkraut is also great for regulating and improving one’s microbiome – eat often!
Gourmet Vegan Sauerkraut
Equipment
- 2 2 litre kilner jars
- 1 Food processor
Ingredients
- 1 kg Red Cabbage anywhere between 900g and 1kg is fine
- 1 kg White Cabbage as above - but use a dense firm white cabbage
- 200 g beetroot or red beet
- 400 g carrots
- 40 g fresh turmeric
- 40 g fresh ginger
- 30 g garlic I may use 40g next time......
- 200 g turnip
- 60 g seasalt use a good quality one
Instructions
- Discard the outer leaves if at all damaged. Quickly wash the cabbage and then split in half. Remove the thickest part of the stalk as a wedge shape.
- Cut each half into wedges that will fit in your food processor feed tube - probably 1/3's. Use the finest slicing attachment to slice the chunks finely. When you get down to the ends - they won't slice properly - so fish them out and set them aside.
- When you've done all the slicing, take the bits that didn't slice properly, and put them back in the main bowl with the standard blade and give them a pulse blitz to get them roughly as fine as the shredded ones. It doesn't have to be exact, but it's a shame to waste it - so this is a good work around. Some people suggest using a mandolin for slicing - but good luck with that!
- Tip all the cabbage into a large stainless pan or glass bowl. I use an 11 litre pan, but use what you have available. It's best to sterilize it first, but no need to go overboard. Add the salt, and then massage well for about 10 minutes. You will probably want a cup of tea afterwards..... Cover the pan and get on with the rest of the prep/grating.
- Wash and scrub all the other veggies and trim any manky, diseased bits off as you would for any dish, but be particularly rigorous with this as we don't want loads of unhelpful bacteria in the mix.
- Then cut them to the sort of sizes that will fit in your feeding tubes of your food processor. I would recommend using the finest grating disc - most are not that fine - unless it's very fine in which case use the next one up. You want to end up with shoelace/string thick strands of veggie. As with the cabbage, put any bits that don't get properly shredded aside, and pulse blitz them with the main processing blade afterwards to a similar size. No-one will notice.
- After you've grated all the main veggies - that's carrots, beets & turnip tip them all into the main pan. There may be some others you could use like mouli - but I haven't tried.
- The last three veggies - garlic, ginger & turmeric are a bit tricky unless you have one of those very handy Cuisinart mini blender/grinders. This is amazing for larger quantities of garlic/ginger/turmeric. Roughly chop and then a quick blitz and your done. If you don't have one, I would suggest roughly chopping all three, and putting them all together in the main processer with the blade, and pulse blitzing/scraping down until a pretty fine pulp has been created. This is part of the fermenting mix and does need to be quite fine - more like a paste/mush than small shreds.
- Add this to the main pan and give it a really good stir and mix to distribute everything evenly. You could give it a bit of a whacking with the end of a rolling pin or potato masher to compact it a bit if you feel it's necessary.
- This is what it will look like when it has been fully mixed. Then pack it into your two Kilner jars. I did ferment mine for a bit in the larger pan - when I first made it, but I think that's a superfluous step - so I won't bother next time.
- Close the jars and put a label on them of the date on which the fermentation started. They will need to be kept at between 20°C to 25°C for between 3 & 4 weeks to fully ferment. Bubble should be visible from the side of the jars. It's quite a slow fermentation as there's no added sugar as there is with kimchi.,
- Once the fermentation seems to have been completed, store in a refrigerator and use as you wish. Avoid double dipping - always take a portion using a clean spoon, and then close the lid and return to the fridge.
