How to Make Old Fashioned Sauerkraut with Caraway Seeds
Enjoy this delicious Bavarian-style sauerkraut recipe made with caraway seeds. In this step-by-step recipe, you will learn to make old-fashioned sauerkraut in a mason jar. If you are new to fermentation, this is one of the best and easiest recipes to get you started. Try this sauerkraut in our easy sauerkraut soup recipe!
- Prep Time: 30 Minutes
- Cook Time: 0 Minutes
- Total Time: 30 Minutes
- Yield: 32 ounces
- Category: Fermented Foods
- Method: Fermentation
- Cuisine: German
Ingredients
- 550 grams green cabbage
- 20 grams unrefined sea salt
- 200 grams filtered water
- 5 grams caraway seeds
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.
- Place your kitchen scale on the counter. Turn it on and set it to weigh in grams.
- Place a mixing bowl on your kitchen scale and tare/zero the scale.*
- Add the designated amount of chopped cabbage into the bowl
- Remove the bowl of cabbage from the scale and set it aside. Place a small, empty bowl on your scale and tare/zero the scale. Weigh out the salt.
- Add the salt into the bowl with the cabbage, and mix with your hands until the cabbage becomes wet.*
- Place your empty, clean mason jar on the scale, and tare/zero the scale. Make sure your scale is still set to grams, and measure out the filtered water
- Add the water into the bowl with the cabbage and salt. Add the caraway seeds. Mix everything well.
- Starting with the liquid, add the entire contents of the bowl into your mason jar, and pack everything down using a tamper, wooden spoon, or your hand.
- Place your glass 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 down your fermentation weight below the brine.
- Secure the solid lid to the jar. 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.
- Ferment for 21-28 days, then remove the weight and refrigerate. Don’t forget to burp the jar daily during the bubbly phase, making sure everything stays submerged.
- If you try this recipe and love it, please leave a five-star review below!
Notes
*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.
For softer kraut massage the cabbage vigorously in step 7. For crunchier kraut, gently mix the cabbage.
