Pip and Emily's Sauerkraut

Ingredients

• Cabbage
• Salt (couple of teaspoons per cabbage)
• Carrots
• Ginger
• Celery
• Garlic
• Chilli
• Bay leaf

Other ingredients you can add include: radish, fennel, spinach, kawakawa leaves, mustard seeds, dill, celery leaves, parsnip. Try red cabbage for some colour. Anything that's in your garden you can add.

Measure by taste

Method

Remove core and outer leaves of cabbage.

Chop or grate cabbage finely.

Pound cabbage (use bottle or other implement).

Grate and pound carrot.

Put ingredients, and liquid caused by pounding into a 1.5L jar.

Cut cabbage leaf into a circle and place on top of ingredients and push down until there is 1 inch of liquid above it.

Secure cabbage leaf with a weight (a stone works well).

Screw lid on and place jar in an ice cream container as it will bubble over.

Cover with cloth to keep bugs away.

Leave in a warm place for 3 days then transfer to the fridge or other cold place.

You can eat it after 3 days or leave for as long as you like depending on the desired flavour/texture

Store in the fridge for up to 3 years!

Some key notes:

• If you are short of cabbage juice make a brine out of water and salt to top the jar up.
• Black or red mould is not good
• If it smells bad... don't eat it!