Red Cabbage Kraut


Homegrown Neighbor here:

Red cabbage sauerkraut is my new favorite condiment. I put it on everything including stir-fry, pasta, eggs, salads and soups. The kraut is salty so it is a great addition. No need to add salt or soy sauce to anything- kraut will kick up the flavor.
Then of course there is the color. Sure, I could eat ordinary green cabbage kraut. But where is the fun and excitement in that? Green cabbage turns grey and colorless when it is fermented. Red cabbage however, turns a bright shade of purplish pink. The liquid around it dyes all of your food. I like to eat it on eggs. It stains the egg whites a lovely shade of blue and purple. Plus I’m sure the bright color represents some kind of potent cancer fighting compound. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables are good for you. Artificially colored foods, not so much.
And of course sauerkraut is a naturally fermented food. This means it contains live bacteria. Don’t worry- bacteria are everywhere, you just have to cultivate the good kind. And kraut is full of lactobaccili, a beneficial bacteria in this case. I had never liked the sauerkraut I tried as a child. But now I am converted. I think if the kraut on my hot dog when I was a kid was bright pink, I would have liked it a lot better.
This is my weird and wonderful urban farmer breakfast: raw kale, pinto beans, a spoonful of homemade pesto, eggs and kraut. Trust me, its delicious. I need a nutrition packed breakfast to go clean the chicken coop and garden all day.
I got my kraut making ideas and recipes from Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods.

Also, thanks to the neighbors for letting me use their sauerkraut crock. I have also made smaller batches in a simple glass bowl. So there is no specialized equipment required. Just try fermenting something delicious.

Leave a comment

11 Comments

  1. Love this! I’ve been thinking so much about pickling lately(is that similar to fermenting. I’m new to the whole thing.) You’re post has inspired me to really get on it. I will be sure to try this kraut. Thanks for the post!

  2. I have been making this for awhile… funny my kids started only wanting to eat white “sour cabbage” but I make every batch a little pinker than the last.

  3. I love unusually coloured vegetables of all kinds, but especially purple ones! Purple cabbage, purple potatoes, purple peppers are endlessly exciting to me. I love using purple cabbage to make accidentally purple soups or purple ham and cabbage.

  4. >my kids started only wanting to eat white “sour cabbage”

    People can be funny about the color of their food sometimes. I bet they’ll like it once they try it, but my experience is mostly limited to ham & eggs.

  5. I canned kraut a couple of days ago and it sealed but now they are unsealing what can I do to fix this?

  6. Anonymous–my Ball canning books says and I agree, “Use food immediately, refrigerate immediately or correct cause and reprocess within 24 hours.”

    Some things that could have gone wrong: not heat processing long enough, not enough headspace in the jar, bits of kraut on the jar rim.

  7. I just packed a few jars of red cabbage kraut, as well as regular white, and then a mixture of red, white, with some shredded carrots… anxious to taste them!
    @ the above comment from Anonymous:
    From what I understand, as far as kraut and fermenting in general, there is no need to process or seal anything. the reason it wont seal is because of the gases release during the fermentation process. Those gasses need to escape, your kraut will be fine unsealed as long as it remains under the brine. Heat processing your kraut will kill all beneficial bacteria and render your kraut “dead”, edible, but “dead”…. you want all those good bacteria right?!? of coarse!

Comments are closed.