The first time I made sauerkraut, I wasn’t looking to go all in with a giant batch. A lot of recipes jump straight to 25 pounds of cabbage, and that just felt like too much if things didn’t go right. So I grabbed a 5-pound head instead and figured I’d keep it simple and see what happened. Turns out, it worked out pretty well – and it got me thinking I should’ve tried this a long time ago.

I started by giving the cabbage a good rinse, then peeled off the outer leaves and set those aside for later. Cutting it down was a bit more work than I expected. I tried using a butcher knife at first, quartering it, but it felt like I was fighting it the whole time. I switched over to a meat cleaver and that made things easier.

For slicing, I ran it through my electric meat slicer to get it nice and thin. It did a decent job, but not everything came out as fine as I wanted. Some pieces were a bit chunkier than the rest. Next time I’ll probably try my food processor .

Once it was all shredded, I looked at the pile and started second-guessing things. It seemed like a lot of cabbage for just 3 tablespoons of pickling salt, but I stuck with it and worked the salt through as evenly as I could. After that, I let it sit for about half an hour. When I came back, I started mixing and pressing it down, really working it to pull the juice out.

That’s when it starts to change. The cabbage softens up, and you can actually see the liquid forming. I kept at it until there was a decent amount of brine, then packed everything tightly into a 1-gallon food-grade pail. I pressed it down as hard as I could and poured whatever juice I had over the top.

It didn’t quite cover the cabbage, so I mixed up a little extra brine – about a tablespoon and a half of pickling salt to a cup of water – and topped it off just enough to get everything submerged. Then I took those outer leaves I saved and laid them over the top to hold all the shredded cabbage down.

For a weight, I used a bowl that just fit inside the pail. I pressed it down into the brine so it filled up and held everything underneath. Nothing fancy, just something to keep the cabbage below the liquid. Then I covered the whole thing with a towel and left it alone.

From there, it was just a matter of checking on it once a day. Making sure everything stayed submerged, no weird smells, nothing out of place. By day 12, I couldn’t wait anymore and gave it a taste. It was already pretty good at that point, but I figured I’d let it go a bit longer to see how it changed. I scooped some out and put it in the fridge so I could compare later.

By day 16, it was getting softer than I like, so I figured that was a good place to stop. I packed most of it into jars and water bathed four pints. I kept a smaller portion fresh in the fridge, along with some of the brine to top it up.

One thing I learned along the way is that once you can sauerkraut, you’re losing those live probiotics from the fermentation. But you still end up with postbiotics, which still have some of the same benefits, so it’s not like you’re losing everything.

Ref: PubMed Central

The next day, I cracked open one of the jars just to see how it held up. Flavor-wise, it was pretty much the same, maybe just a bit less brine. As I ate it, I added a bit of brine back from the batch I saved in the fridge, and that brought it right back where I wanted it.

Now that I’ve gone through the whole process once, I feel a lot better about doing a bigger batch. I’m even thinking about growing my own cabbage and going for the full 25 pounds next time. Only thing I’ll watch a bit closer is the brine and the ferment time – I liked the flavor where it was, just want to keep a bit more of that crunch next round.