Sauerkraut (Pickled Cabbage)

A simple classic recipe for pickling cabbage in a jar

There are a million sauerkraut recipes; someone adds marinade, someone adds vinegar, someone basically doesn’t put sugar, someone adds bell pepper, someone adds beets and uses red cabbage. As you see, there are a million options, but mom's cabbage is the tastiest! Sauerkraut according to this recipe turns out to be very crispy and juicy, and you’ll have to wait for only a couple of days.

Attention! You will need a 3-liter jar. If you don’t have it, reduce the amount of ingredients by two or even three times.

Ingredients:

• a head of cabbage (about 3kg),
• 1-2 medium carrots,
• 2 tbsp salt,
• 2 tbsp sugar,
• 1 l water (cold, unboiled).

Process:

• finely chop the cabbage,

• grate the carrots using a coarse grater,
• in a large bowl, mix the cabbage with carrots and knead it as if you are making a dough,

• put it in a clean, dry jar, tamp every 2-3 cm of cabbage with a hands or even potato masher, the denser, the better; leave 2-3 cm from the edge of the jar,
• put salt and sugar on top,
• place the jar in a larger container (bowl) - juice will be poured out during leavening, and nobody likes the flood,
• gently, with a thin stream, going through salt and sugar, fill the jar with water,
• cover the jar with a plastic lid (put it upside down), so that dust doesn’t get inside; the lid mustn’t be sealed,
• after 2 days poke the cabbage to the very bottom with a wooden stick, skewer or thin knife, in order to release the gases,

• a day later, poke the cabbage again and put it in the refrigerator,
• after cooling, you can close the lid - the fermentation process is over.

You can start eating cabbage earlier, but it seems to me that after 3 days it is just perfect! You can add vegetable oil, onions, or cranberries.