Fermented SauerKraut, Carrots & Caraway

 

Bigger is always better right? This is a slightly different version of my other Kraut recipe except I made about 9 liters worth. See all those heads of cabbage, well that's what 20.194 lbs (9160 grams ) look like. These heads were somewhat small. They ranged from 2 lbs to 3 lbs. In my last batch, the heads were huge. So as previously mentioned I like being precise and I wanted to add exactly 1.5% of salt. After trimming and shredding it would have been a pain in the ass to weigh so I had an alternate idea. I saved all the scraps and cores and subtracted them from the total weight. That was more efficient and easier to do. 

Organic Veggies..... they were cleaned but were not peeled. For fermentation, it's better not to peel. I want to keep all the good Lacto Bacteria on the carrots. 

I used a veggie spiral cutter...... not a fan so far. We will see. 

My daughter helping Dad shred the cabbage. This container is 24 inches across.

Lot of garlic..... they were chopped up fine. 

Everyone in the pool.....

This carraway seed...... we added this too. 

After calculating the salt necessary it was added to the veggies and we went to work. 

Special Jar- My buddy's Mom back in the day use to add apple to the kraut so that what I did in this vessel. One apple to a 32 oz or 946 ml Jar. 

It's been 6 days and the Ph is at 4.04 which means things are on track. I've been running my A/C and it's colder in my house. I've rotated them into the garage a few times over these last few days. My last batch of Kraut the Ph. was 3.59 and it was done. 

Ok, it's been a few more days and we are still on track. 








I think we are close enough. I ate a couple of samples and it was really good. 

I have to do some research and oh Ph. Meter readers too. Maybe I am getting too picky. This meter was less than a $100 and they go up from there....I've seen ones that I like that are in the $600 range but I think that might be overkill. 

Note: Once your fermentation has hit its sweet spot and you are satisfied you must refrigerate to stop the fermentation process. 

Ingredients 
20.194 lbs or 9160 grams of Cabbage Heads 
Now you need to subtract the waste to calculate percentages. 
After I removed the core and some bad leaves there were 1135 grams of waste. 
9160-1135 = 8025 grams 

Cabbage= 8025 grams is the number we use to calculate the additional ingredients. The specificity in this recipe is not necessary but if you want to make adjustments or replicate this is the easiest way to accomplish that.  

Carrots 8%. (642 g)
Jalapenos 2.5%  (201 g)
Garlic 1.25% (100 g)
Caraway Seeds .65% (52 g)

It's easy math... To find out how much carrots you need multiple  8025 g X 8% or 0.08 = 642 g

Now add up all the ingredients above.. Cabbage 8025 g + Carrots 642 g + Jalapenos 201 g + Garlic 100 g + Caraway Seeds 52 g = 9025 g. 

To Calculate Salt needed... 1.5 % (note some people go as high as 2.5%)

Total Weight of everything 9025 g X 1.5 or 0.015 = 135 g 

Review- It was outstanding. I love the addition of Caraway seeds. It needed some more Jalapenos and Garlic though. The Apple version was good but the apple did not come through.