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3 simple steps to make perfectly salted sauerkraut every time

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3 simple steps to make perfectly salted sauerkraut every time. Have your recipes been leaving you with super salty kraut? Here is a method to change that.

Have your recipes been leaving you with super salty kraut?

I’ve had my fair share of super salty krauts too. When I first started making sauerkraut I tried many different recipes. Some good, some bad and many were just too salty. I tried to save my overly salted krauts with little success.

I tried leaving it out longer to ferment. Supposedly, it gets less salty the longer it ferments, but it never made enough of a difference for me.

I tried using the kraut sparingly as a way to salt my food, but that totally defeated the purpose of getting a good dose of sauerkraut a day.

I tried washing the extra salt off before eating it, but that was a pain in the butt.

Other advice I received included buying a food scale and weighing the salt to the ratio of cabbage each time, but seriously I didn’t want to buy any fancy equipment or do calculations.

So, instead of going through the salty kraut dance again, I learned a method that makes it perfect every time.

Even if you follow a recipe exactly you can still get the salt measurements wrong

Why? Cabbage heads vary in size from small to very large. A small head of cabbage will require less salt than a large head of cabbage. And if  you add more veggies to the cabbage mixture like I often do, you may need to add more salt.

The type of salt varies. Course salt is heavier than fine salt. A tablespoon of course salt is not the same as a tablespoon of fine salt.

3 simple steps to make perfectly salted sauerkraut every time

I learned this method from “Fresh & Fermented, 85 Delicious Ways to Make Fermented Carrots, Kraut, and Kimchi Part of Every Meal”, by Julie O’Brien & Richard J. Climenhage.

Step 1 – Prepare your cabbage

Shred the cabbage and put it in a big bowl. Generally there are about 12 cups of shredded cabbage in a 2 pound head.  Add 1 tablespoon of sea salt to the cabbage and mix it up. Let it sit for 15 minutes.

Step 2 – Your training wheels/ The brine

While your cabbage is sitting, make a brine by mixing 1 cup of water with 1 teaspoon + 1/4 teaspoon sea salt. Mix until it dissolves. Now taste it. This is how perfectly salted kraut should taste like (kind of like the ocean). This brine is like your training wheels and with a little practice you won’t have to use it anymore.

Step 3 – Taste cabbage for salt

Go back to your cabbage mixture and massage and squeeze with your hands. When you squeeze the cabbage and liquid comes out, it’s ready to taste. Taste the cabbage at the bottom of the bowl and compare it to the brine you made. The salt level should taste similar.

If it’s not salty enough, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, massage it into the cabbage and taste it again. Repeat this until it’s salty enough.

If it’s too salty, add 1 – 2 tablespoons of purified water to the cabbage mixture. Mix it up and taste. Repeat until it’s salty enough.

I promise after making a few batches of sauerkraut, you’ll have the hang of this and won’t need to compare it to the brine. I don’t use the brine anymore and have perfectly salted kraut every time.

The Importance of getting the salt right

I can’t stress enough how super important it is to get the salt amount right. Too little salt can cause the sauerkraut to get mushy or moldy and too much will slow the fermentation down significantly. Always start with the least amount of salt required and add more if needed. This will ensure you will get perfectly salted sauerkraut each time.

So, now that you know how to make perfectly salted kraut every time, try this method over the weekend and comment below to tell me what you’re going to make. You can find my popular sauerkraut recipes here.

Please do me a favor and share this with your friends and family if you think they’ll benefit from this advice too.

Happy Fermenting! Danielle

References

“Fresh & Fermented, 85 Delicious Ways to Make Fermented Carrots, Kraut, and Kimchi Part of Every Meal”, by Julie O’Brien & Richard J. Climenhage.

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  • Sharon Faith

    Thank you so much Danielle, both your emails and webpages are filled with just the information I want to know.

  • Azra Saric Arikan

    There is an easier way and that is to use whole cabbage heads with just the roots cut out and filling the holes where the roots were with coarse salt and then just placing them in a large bucket and finally covering the cabbage heads with boiled water. After about a month of keeping the bucket tighty closed you will get a perfectly salted sauerkraut which then you can cut in stripes or which ever way you like.In Bosnia we use the whole leaves to stuff it with rice and mince meat when making cabbage sarma.

    • Thank you for sharing Azra! The stuffed cabbage leaves sound delicious too :)

  • andrew

    hii,
    i am a very specific person, it is just wired in my brain. when
    i do fermentation or wine or any work, i need to be very precise when i
    first try it. i failed previously many time doing salt fermentation,
    either too salty or mold due to not enough salty.
    i purchased a 0-25% salinity refractometer
    just for this purpose. according to your above basic brine recipe, 1
    cup water to 1 1/4 tsp (self grinded) fine seasalt , the saltiness is
    not salty enough as sea water .. i measured it is only 2.5%.
    my
    aunty taught me to pickle chinese sour mustard leaves at around 7%
    salinity.. that is salty.. to the point feeling bitterness..
    but the
    vege that fermented after 1 month is less salty.. when use direct
    without rinsing, i added in more water when cook the sour vege and put
    in white noodle, it taste enough salt..

    but if cook mere with a bit of meat and not watery, it will be too salty.. then one must rinse it before stir fry.

    2.5% seems really low to me.
    is it possible for you to get me a reading of salinity of brine that you made so that everytime a success ?
    i hate failure.. very discouraging.

    andrew

    • Kory Smith

      No worries Andrew. A 2% brine is actually perfect for Sauerkraut.

  • Kory Smith

    I disagree with not buying a cheap digital scale. If you’re going to ferment foods and generally be serious about cooking you NEED a scale for perfection and consistency. They are cheap and accurate. You should also get a little one for small measurements such as salt. 2% brine is perfect for kraut so for every 1000 grams of cabbage you add 20 grams of salt. Simple as that.

  • Ren Ramirez

    Made/started my first batch yesterday. One thing I have been noticing in most of your recipes (like the cauliflower) as well as your reference solution is that they are all 4% salinity. I sprung for a 30 buck salinometer from Amazon. Is it supposed to be 4% looking at the other poster (K. Smith) seeing 2% for kraut is lower than what you are showing. Any rules to this?

    • I don’t measure salinity in my recipes, because most people don’t have access to or want to buy a salinometer. I try to make it as simple as possible, so I’ve been using a basic brine recipe for all my pickles and then adding spices. Pickles need more salt then kraut if you like your pickles crisp. Less salt makes mushy pickles which most people don’t like.

  • BOKinLarksville

    I’m a newbie.. Can’t you brine the cabbage like David Chang’s, owner of Momfuku restaurants, recipe for Kimchi suggests? It seems much easier.. Your opinion? http://www.eater.com/2016/1/17/10782284/how-to-make-kimchi-momofuku-recipe

  • Ingrid Eklund Laubach

    Thank you so much for this article. I am so, so tired of having sauerkraut that is so salty that neither I, nor my family, nor any unfortunate soul to whom I try to give it away wants to eat it. I have four heads of organic cabbage from my co-op sitting on my counter and I hope to treat them to a proper salt bath, and then in a few weeks time, gobble them up with relish.

  • Yvonne Forsman

    The text says: “make a brine by mixing 1 cup of water with 1 teaspoon”.

    With 1 teaspoon of whaaat???
    This was the worst recipe I have ever seen online. Maybe I should ask: should the spoon be edible..? lol