Red Cabbage Sauerkraut with Fermented Beet
Homemade sauerkraut is the best fermented food to make if you’re new to fermenting vegetables at home. This red cabbage sauerkraut is particularly easy for a first fermentation project since cabbage ferments exceptionally well. Cabbage’s water content and microbial species richness make it optimal for wild fermentation! This recipe teaches you how to make probiotic red cabbage and beet sauerkraut with ginger in a mason jar.
Can you make sauerkraut with red cabbage?
I love ginger beet sauerkraut with red cabbage. Some people call it purple cabbage, but it’s the same thing. It’s especially great for fall and winter, aka cold and flu season, since it’s so packed with antioxidants. With just a few simple ingredients and a few weeks of fermentation, you can craft a nutrient-dense, probiotic, flavorful sauerkraut.
The key point is that red cabbage and beets are higher-FODMAP ingredients. This means there’s more sugar in the mix than with something like Jalapeno Sauerkraut. As long as you use the recommended amount of salt, keep everything submerged, and keep the lid clean, you shouldn’t have any issues.
Supplies
Red Cabbage Sauerkraut Fermentation Timeline
Note that temperature will influence how fast or slow sauerkraut ferments. This timeline is applicable between 70-80° F. If you keep your home colder, the process is slower. If your home is warmer, it will be faster.
- 24 – 48 hours: All contents in the jar should be submerged beneath the brine. At this time, there are still Gram-negative bacteria and possible pathogens present. (not to worry, any unfriendly microbes die off quickly!)
- 48 hours – 5 days: After 48 hours, you should start to see lots of bubbles being produced, and the color will change from deep purple to a lighter reddish magenta. This is when the ferment enters stage two of vegetable fermentation. Leuconostoc bacteria begin to thrive, and Gram-negative organisms die off.
- 5 – 10 days: The bubbles in the brine will decrease as the ferment leaves stage two and enters stage three. The ferment will become cloudy, the color will change, and a pleasant sour smell will develop. You should also recognize some earthy beet smells. Lactobacillus species begin to thrive at this time.
- 10 – 21 days: Next, Lactobacillus makes up most or all of the microbial population. They produce copious amounts of lactic acid, making the fermented cabbage smell even more pleasantly sour. This is when the cabbage mixture becomes sauerkraut and is preserved.
- 21 – 28 days: This is when you want to smell and taste test. Wait for the kraut to smell and taste as you like, and refrigerate when you find the smell and taste most pleasant! We like ours best when we refrigerate at about 25 days.
What Temperature Should I Keep My Red Cabbage Sauerkraut At?
Keep your fermenting cabbage at a temperature between 70-80 degrees F. Keep out of direct sunlight. If it’s winter and your kitchen get’s below 70, don’t fret! It’s fine to ferment in colder conditions; it will just take longer to finish fermenting.
How Long Should I Ferment Beet Sauerkraut?
After 3-4 weeks, remove the fermentation weight, smell, and taste test. Your fermented cabbage should smell pleasantly sour and taste tart, lightly salty, and beety + cabbagey.
Do I Need to Refrigerate Beet Kraut?
After fermenting for 3-4 weeks, remove the weight and place a regular mason jar lid on the jar and refrigerate. Consume within six months for full probiotic benefits.
Homemade Beet and Red Cabbage Sauerkraut Tips
- During the first few days of fermentation: carbon dioxide and bubbles will be produced. Sometimes jars will become full of liquid, which can seep out. Keep the jar in a bowl of dish to catch spills. Remove the lid and tamper everything back down using a gloved hand, tamper, or spoon. You can rinse the lid with hot, soapy water to keep it clean. Ensure everything, including the weight, is submerged below the brine and replace the lid to continue fermenting.
- Always Trust your sense of smell: Fermented cabbage should smell pleasantly sour and like strong cabbage. Never eat anything that smells repulsive or yeasty.
- Never eat anything with mold growing on it: You should not encounter this problem if you follow directions. Ensure you use high-quality, organic beets and ginger root. Roots grow under the soil, and it’s best to use ingredients from healthy soil.
- Taste test at three weeks: If you prefer the sauerkraut to be more tart and sour, let it ferment at room temperature longer.
Fermented Beet and Red Cabbage Sauerkraut with Ginger
This fermented beet and red cabbage sauerkraut recipe is the best way to make fermented beets and cabbage. This beet sauerkraut is great for beginners and is ready to eat in three weeks.
- Prep: 15 Minutes
- Ferment: 21 days
Ingredients
- 500 grams red cabbage
- 100 grams shredded beets (organic)
- 1 Tablespoon fresh grated ginger (organic)
- 20 grams sea salt
- 200 grams filtered water
Instructions
- Wash your fermentation equipment (jar, weight, and lid)
- Remove the outer leaves of your cabbage and lightly rinse the cabbage, beets, and ginger with cool water.
- Chop the cabbage and beets and grate the ginger.
- Place your kitchen scale on the counter. Turn it on and set it to weigh in grams.
- Measure out all of your ingredients using your kitchen scale.
- Mix all the ingredients, including the water, in a large bowl. Lightly massage the cabbage and break up any large pieces.
- Pack it all, including the water, into a clean jar with a rust-proof lid. (a 32-ounce jar works best)
- Place a fermentation weight in the jar, making sure to submerge the cabbage pieces and weight fully into the liquid. If you don’t have quite enough liquid, place your glass fermentation weight in the jar and submerge as much as possible. Over the next 12 hours, the cabbage should release more liquid and you can press the fermentation weight down below the brine.
- Secure the lid (You do not need to tighten it all the way. Just secure the lid but leave it ever so slightly loose, so the gas doesn’t build up too much). You can keep the jar in a glass dish to catch any spills.
- Burping the jar: It should get bubbly in the first few days, and the color will change. If you have a tightly secured lid, you will need to burp the jar. You should also wash off the lid to keep it clean and re-adjust the fermentation weight whenever needed. Anytime the weight comes up out of the brine, with clean hands press hard on the weight to tamper everything back down into the liquid.
- Ferment at room temperature for 21-28 days, then remove the fermentation weight and refrigerate.
- If you try this recipe and love it, please leave a five-star review below!
Notes
- This recipe contains roots/rhizomes (beets and ginger). It’s essential to try to use organic roots from high-quality soil in fermentation. Conventionally grown roots from poor-quality soil can lead to mold.
- When things are bubbly: If it looks like you’ve lost brine and cannot re-submerge the contents by pressing down on the weight, top it off with raw apple cider vinegar. It slightly changes the flavor, but it doesn’t harm the sauerkraut’s microbes and prevents mold. You need to give it a good stir when it’s done fermenting to mix up the flavors.
- See fermentation tips and timeline above this recipe.
- Taring/zeroing the scale with a container on it subtracts the weight of the container, allowing you to weigh only what is added to the container. After taring/zeroing the scale, the scale should read 0.0 with the container on it.
Hi Kaitlynn, thank you so much for all the knowledge you shared on the website and all the wonderful recipes. I have tried few other recipes with success and loved. I tried this fermented red cabbage and beet a week or so ago and maybe I packed it too full, I had a lot of leftover brine but didn’t keep it. Few days after I started, the brine seeped out and the top part of the cabbage and beet turned black and brine level were only half way up the jars. I made more brine according to the salt and water ratio and fill the jars and took out the weight. Few days later now and they dry out again. I use screw on lids but did not screw on tight. I do live in dry climate and wonder if I should keep filling with brine water and if the cabbage is still good. They were dry for at least a few days and the top turned black. Smell fine to me. 😁 I made three jars and half way through…. It would be very wasteful to throw them all away but I don’t want to get sick from spoiled food either. Thank you!
You should not be adding in more brine as you go because the fresh brine is oxygenated and will keep decreasing the acidity of the sauerkraut. If something like this happens you should open up the jar and tamper everything back down to get the brine level to come up again.
Hi! I love your blog, and have tried the traditional sauerkraut and it was delicious. I Just made a big batch of this red cabbage recipe a few days ago and now i have noticed there is some Brown ish foam on top of the ferment. Should i remove it, and is the ferment still safe to eat?
you can scoop the foam off. The brownish color is from the breakdown of the purple color compounds.
Delicious recipe!! I had a majority of the brine bubble out in the first week. Enough still to cover the kraut- but not any extra.
Is it ok to add more water now that it is in the fridge?
Question please. Day three of the fermentation, mixture is bubbling nicely. But it’s so salty! Measured everything precisely with commercial kitchen scales, but in all my previous kimchi and kraut making I’ve soaked the cabbage in brine then rinsed before placing in the pot. Will the salty taste fade during fermentation?
It should be a little less salty than seawater, and a little less salty but similar to brined olives.
I loved your Bavarian style kraut so much! This is my first time trying this recipe. After a few days some liquid has overflowed from my jar and the cabbage at the top has started to look brown, like it’s oxidizing. I just pressed the weight back down so it would be under the brine again. Is browning at the top a problem?
The brown color is just from it rising up out the brine. Super common with purple cabbage. Should be fine. You can scoop the brown bits out. Test the pH at the end with a pH strip if you have any concerns!
I just made this recipe and carefully measured everything. The brine doesn’t cover the cabbage though. Should I make and add more brine?
no, more water will be drawn out of the cabbage over the next few hours. Just open up the jar and press down hard on the weight and the brine level should come up.
This one was REALLY bubbly and pushed out about 1/3 cp of liquid by day 3. I tamped it down to get everything submerged again, should I add more liquid of any sort?
Thank you for providing such good info and great images. Beautiful.
Hello!
I made the fermented beet and red cabbage sauerkraut on May 31 and it seemed to be doing well for a while but then the liquid in the top quarter of both jars has turned a displeasing brown colour. As well, the cabbage at the top is turning a brownish colour as well. Everything is submerged.
Is this normal? Or is this showing something is off?
Thanks for your thoughts and thank you for all of your wonderful recipes!
Gwyn 🙂
this is normal with purple cabbage! It’s the anthocyanins oxidizing at the top a little. Not harmful. I usually just scoop out any brown bits.
Ok wonderful, this is great news! Do you wait until it’s done fermenting to scoop the brown bits out? Or do you do that beforehand? And the brown kraut juice, do you discard this as well? Thank you so much!
I have a question regarding they type of jars used. Can I use the clip-top jar instead of the Ball canning jars for fermenting? You said to not secure tightly, but this isn’t possible with the clip top lids. Should I just burp the jar more often??
Like a weck jar? yes, those work great. I usually leave the gasket off so its self-burping
Hi, I made this recipe exactly as written. For the first few days, it was bubbling like crazy, now it has stopped. Is that OK?
Hi! I just made this and spilled the brine when trying to pour it in. Can I remake it with the same measurements and top off my jar? Thank you for this recipe! I’m a first timer but very excited.
If you just started it, you can mix 2.5 grams of salt per 100 grams of water to make a brine, and top it off. Only do this if you just started it in the last two days though.
My wonderful work colleague has been supplying this goodness to me for the last few weeks now. And it is sensational!! Please everyone do yourself a favour and make this ASAP! Life changer
Hi Kaitlyn, thanks so much for this recipe. I’m based in the south of New Zealand and tried this recipe during our winter months. It would have been less than your recommended 70 degrees for much of the fermentation period. I have left the sauerkraut for around 6 or 7 weeks before putting it in the fridge. It tastes amazing, but just thought I would check if there’s any issues or risks with a longer fermentation period in cold climates? Thanks, Jayne
no risks at all! Sounds like you did it just right!
Thank you so much for your wealth of information, Kaitlynn. I usually use a starter culture with my ferments. Would I still utilize your salt % figuring method with my starter culture? (I’m used to using 3 T. salt for 5 lb. vegetables with 3 c. water plus 3/4 T. per 1 quart of additional brine water needed, but I prefer your instructions with the mathematical percentages.) I actually make myself eat fermented vegetables for their benefits, but I don’t like the taste/saltiness at all. I was hoping in my research, to find the lowest salt concentration rate I could use that was proven safe. I’m looking forward to trying this recipe; thank you again!
The lowest I would recommend using is 2% total salt! so that would be: (weight of all vegetables + weight of water) X 2%
Unfortunately this resulted in a layer of mould for me even on the liquid so I’m not sure what went on (I’ve made lots of sauerkraut before)
so sorry it didn’t work for you. Mold is usually from not keeping the lid clean and not keeping everything submerged. Since this recipe incorporates root vegetables, which grow under ground (where fungi naturally live), you need to be extra sure your ingredients are good quality too.
I love the flavour!!! Thank you for the recipe. Now waiting the 21 days for the cabbage to ferment 😋
I added water to this to ensure all was covered. Will that mess up the process? Thanks 🥴
It will dilute the salt concentration a little, but it will probably be okay. Just make sure the salt is even throughout, you don’t want just plain non-salty water at the top.
Harika
Hi! This recipe looks great, but I was wondering if I could use green cabbage instead of red and then use the same salt brine amount? Thanks!
yes, you can evenly sub with green cabbage
Great 👍
I just made this recipe and I could not for the life of me fit everything into the 32 oz jar? I’m perplexed…I followed measurements to a T. I hope it comes out ok…I’m very much looking forward to it! Thanks
Are you sure your kitchen scale was set to grams? Sometimes you need to really tamp it down into the jar. These are the amounts I’ve used with a 32 ounce jar for over 10 years.