Red cabbage ginger kraut

Ingredients

1 red cabbage head

1 thumb of ginger (about 5cm)

2 garlic cloves

Salt

Ustensiles

Sterilized glass jar

Scale

Big salad bowl

Chef's knife

Grater (optional)

Instructions

1) Sterilize jar in boiling water. It has to be perfectly clean.

2) Chop cabbage into thin and medium/small slices (or shred with a grater), keeping one leaf aside. Finely mince ginger and garlic. On the scale, tare weight of bowl, and place cabbage, ginger and garlic in it. Measure total weight and write down that number. Set bowl aside.

3) For the salt, calculate 2% of the final weight of the cabbage (eg: 20 grams of salt for 1kg of cabbage). Measure salt, add to cabbage and firmly massage. Juices should be coming out at this point. Let rest 30 min to an hour. After rest, firmly massage cabbage again. Take handfuls of cabbage and squeeze out juices before placing in the jar. Pack cabbage tightly in jar, by pushing down firmly with your fist. Cover cabbage with juice and weigh it down with the cabbage leaf you previously kept aside. If you don’t have enough juice, you can make a salt water mixture: (1tsp of salt and 1 cup of filtered water).

4) Close and place jar in pantry, with no direct sunlight, at room temperature. Open lid daily to let gas out (burp it). After 3 days your kraut should be already fermented. You can leave it longer (I recommend 2 weeks) depending on the flavor you want, always checking that it’s well submerged. For safe fermentation, the cabbage has to always be submerged in juice. Once consumed place jar in fridge and keep indefinitely.