Hi, I am just making my first jar of sauerkraut with cabbage, red onion, carrot, chilli flakes in a salt water brine. I have read online that it should not be sealed air tight but I also read that it should be sealed air tight?
What would you guys do or what have you guys done if you have made sauerkraut in the past?
Thanks!
by trentypoopy1
2 Comments
I’ve not made sauerkraut or kim chi, only read recipes.
But there *will* be a different microbial community depending on how scarce oxygen is in in the ferment. Historically, most ferments were permitted with some oxygen exchange with ambient atmosphere. And as higher oxygen is toxic to some pathogens (think *Clostridium botulinum*), this perhaps prevented food poisoning incidents.
I mostly became interested in the field because of my interest in the gut microbiome, and the consistent failure of food fermenting microbial strains to persist in the low-oxygen environment of the human colon. It’s just a radically different environment for microbes from food fermentation. When microbiologists look for reasons for why fermented foods offer health benefits, its hasn’t been ‘they colonize’ for decades. It’s been ‘the antimicrobial nisins and other bacteriocidins they produce in their constant chemical warfare with other species selectively kill pathogens’. Eat sauerkraut, you’re eating a microbial battlefield.
The one time I made sauerkraut I used a big glass crock. It had a glass lid that fit loosely like a cookie jar. At the time there was this brand of live sauerkraut called Saverne or something like that. I found the ratio of salt to cabbage on the Internet, and then mixed in the prepackaged live kraut. I covered the crock with plastic wrap, and put the lid on. There was still plenty of headspace above the cabbage. I weighed it down with a plate, and a stainless steel weight on the plate. It worked out great. I had kraut for a long long time once it was finished.