Healthy for the guts!

Also, the most fantastic way to keep white and red cabbages. And all kind of root veggies.

Easy and fun to do. Again, there are a hundred ways to do this. Just described two….

Sauerkraut

Supplies:

These are the ingredients for one white cabbage – multiply as needed

Fermenting buckets

Lids with waterlock

Clean rocks or slates

Clean buckets for preparing

Magimix

Colanders

Salt

Cabbage

• 1 white or red cabbage
• 2 tbsp of sea salt
• 1/2 tsp caraway seeds
• 5 juniper berries
• 5 peppercorns

Method

1. Was thoroughly. Shred the cabbage thinly – the magimix makes light work of this. Layer the cabbage and the salt in the tub or bucket. Start to squeeze the cabbage with your hands. This breaks up the cellular structure of the cabbage and helps it to start fermenting quicker. Massage the salt into the cabbage for 5 mins, wait 5 mins, then repeat. You should end up with a much-reduced volume of cabbage sitting in its own brine. Mix in the caraway seeds and the juniper berries and peppercorns.
2. Transfer the cabbage to your pot, jar or bowl.
3. Lay a whole cabbage leaf on top of the shredded cabbage and pack it down as tight as you can. Put a weight on top (slate/rock).
4. Cover with a lid with water lock.
5. Allow it to ferment for 3 to 4 weeks, checking it periodically; if the cabbage is not submerged under liquid, add a little salt water to the pot – the cabbage must be submerged under liquid for the recipe to work. In this period, it needs to be on room temperature preferably. The panty could be the place to be.
6. If any scum appears on top of your sauerkraut, just skim it off
7. When the sauerkraut has collapsed and has become soft, it can be moved to the freezer room. You could decant it into clean jars and keep in a cool place for up to a year

Kimchi

When you’d want to make this in big quantities, then you need the same equipment as listed in the sauerkraut section. (This recipe is written to that amount). If you’d want to make smaller portions, scale down and then you’d need sterilised jars.

No worries! You can make this in small quantities, too! You can leave out the porridge if you’d want to. Actually, you can experiment with all kind of combinations and vegetables.

Ingredients

water

1 cup sea salt

10 pounds of large white or Chinese leaf cabbage (preferably Chinese, as these leaves are a bit softer)

½ cup sweet rice flour

¼ cup sugar

2,5 cup hot pepper flakes, depending on how hot you want it!

1 cup garlic cloves peeled and minced

2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger (if not organic, peel first)

1 cup minced onion

2 teaspoons gochujang or paprika (hot or sweet, depending on the desired level of spiciness)

1 cup soy sauce

¼ cup carrot, julienned

2 cups radish (or any bit bitter root), julienned

Prepare the cabbage

• Trim the discoloured outer leaves of the cabbage.
• Cut the cabbage lengthwise into quarters and remove the cores. Chop it up into bite size pieces.
• Soak the pieces of cabbage in cold water and put the soaked cabbage into a large basin. Sprinkle salt.
• Every 30 minutes, turn the cabbage over to salt evenly (total salting time will be 1½ hours).
• 1½ hours later, rinse the cabbage in cold water 3 times to clean it thoroughly.
• Drain the cabbage and set aside.

Make porridge

• Put 3 cups of water and sweet rice flour in a pot and mix it well and bring to a boil. Keep stirring until the porridge makes bubbles (about 5 minutes).
• Add ¼ cup sugar. Stir and cook for a few more minutes until it’s translucent.
• Cool it down.

Make kimchi paste

• Place the cold porridge into a large bowl. Now you will add all your ingredients one by one.
• Add soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, crushed garlic, minced ginger, and minced onion.

*tip: it’s much easier to use a food processor!

• Add radish, and carrot.
• Mix all ingredients well and your kimchi paste is done.

Mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste!

Put the kimchi paste in a large basin and add all the cabbage. Mix it by hand.

Put the kimchi into an air-tight sealed plastic container or glass jars.

Keep it at room temperature for one or two days. Look in the container and see if there are bubbles. In case you keep it in glass jars, open the lid every day to deaerate. When the bubbling starts, the fermenting has started. You can now store it in a container (put a cabbage leave and weight on top) or put it in sterilised glass jars. Ready to eat!