Ingredients You’ll Need to make Sauerkraut with Blueberries
- Cabbage: I suggest purple cabbage for this recipe, but you can use green cabbage too. I think the purple cabbage looks so beautiful! A small head of cabbage will make about two jars of sauerkraut utilizing this recipe. Look for a cabbage that still has outer leaves at the store. Usually, if a cabbage still has its outer leaves, it’s more hydrated and fresh, making it more brine! I like to use the brine for all sorts of things, including fermentation projects like this one.
- Blueberries: Adding fruits to this recipe was exciting and successful! I’m having a good time experimenting with small amounts of fruit added to my sauerkraut fermentation projects. I used fresh, organic blueberries.
- Caraway Seeds: Caraway seeds add a nice herbaceous flavor and crunch to sauerkraut.
- Sea Salt: I like to use unrefined solar-evaporated sea salt, but any pure sea salt will do. If you like experimenting with fancy sea salt in fermentation recipes, I suggest trying French grey sea salt.
- Water: I add water to all of my cabbage fermentation recipes. Water is still drawn out of the cabbage when salt is added. However, having water in this recipe accounts for seasonal changes in produce hydration levels. So, no matter where you are in the world, what your cabbage is like, or how long you have had a cabbage sitting in the fridge, you should succeed with this recipe.
Fermenting Blueberries
Blueberries contain quite a bit of sugar, so lacto-fermenting them can be hit or miss. Usually, fruits that contain more sugar encourage yeast fermentation instead of lacto-fermentation. However, you can easily lacto-ferment blueberries by incorporating them with cabbage.
If I’m not making cider or vinegar, I’ve found that it’s best to ferment blueberries by mixing them into sauerkraut. The cabbage microbiome is perfect for wild fermentation and the addition of fructan from the blueberries doesn’t change the sauerkraut fermentation process.
Supplies You Need to Make Sauerkraut with Blueberries
Things You May Need:
Fermented Blueberries in Sauerkraut
This Fermented Blueberries Sauerkraut naturally takes time. I recommend fermenting your sauerkraut for at least 14 days before eating, with 21-28 days being the best fermentation time for optimal flavor and health benefits.
By checking the progress of microbial stages under the microscope, we have provided you with a handy timeline below! If you follow our recipe and directions, your timeline of sauerkraut fermentation should approximately match ours!
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.
Fermented Blueberries Sauerkraut Timeline
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.
48 hours – 5 days: After 48 hours, you should start to see lots of bubbles being produced. 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 fermented blueberries sauerkraut 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 light apple and celery smells. Lactobacillus species begin to thrive at this time.
10 – 21 days: Next, Lactobacillus make 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 vegetable 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.
More Sauerkraut Recipes to Try
- How to Ferment Sauerkraut with Orange, Sesame, and Ginger
- Fermented Beet and Red Cabbage Sauerkraut
- Roasted Garlic Sauerkraut with Black Pepper
Fermented Blueberries Sauerkraut with Coriander
Did you know that you can add nutritious fruits, like blueberries, to sauerkraut? Well, you can! In this blog, I’ll teach you how to make my fermented blueberries sauerkraut with coriander.
- Prep: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 504 hours 10 minutes
Ingredients
- 500 Grams Purple Cabbage
- 100 Grams Blueberries
- 200 Grams filtered water
- 20 Grams Sea Salt
- 2 Teaspoons coriander, ground
Instructions
- Wash your fermentation equipment (jar, weight, and lid)
- Remove the outer leaves of your cabbage and lightly rinse with cool water. Using a knife, chop the cabbage to your desired thickness.
- Wash the blueberries.
- 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 everything, including the water, in a large bowl.
- 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.
- It should get bubbly in the first few days. If you have a tightly secured lid, you will need to burp the jar. You can rinse off the lid and re-adjust the fermentation weight whenever needed.
- 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 works best with a 32-ounce jar
- 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, it should read 0.0 with the container on it.
- 100 grams water = 100 mL water
I only have açaí powder. Can I use that?
I haven’t tried it, but it should work. The only issue would be the powder absorbing too much liquid.
Hi Kaitlynn! I also plan to make this but only have açaí powder. Would you recommend I still do the same 50grams of it. Or do I do less since it’ll absorb water?