Granny’s sauerkraut is perfect. Recipe will blow your mind

Did your sauerkraut come out too soft again? The fact that the vegetable loses its crispness in the fermentation process is not a rare phenomenon, especially when the cabbage is mixed with carrots. The good news is that this unpleasant surprise is easy to avoid. All you have to do is remember one important rule.

Grandpa always knew how to handle pickles. Whether it was cucumbers or cabbage - everything he pickled turned out to be perfectly crisp and delicious. He had his own secrets for it. However, what he always emphasized and pointed out as the most important was keeping the proportions. And I'm not just talking about the brine. It turns out that when adding carrots to pickled cabbage, it's easy to overdo it, which can result in exceptionally soft and lacking in crunch pickles.

There are several reasons behind soft sauerkraut. Among them are too thinly cut vegetables or storing sauerkraut at an unsuitable temperature. In the first case, it is about shredding cabbage into strips of a width of approximately 0.12-0.20 inches, but not smaller. The thinner it is shredded, the greater the likelihood that it will turn into a cabbage mash and lose its crunchiness.

The bacteria responsible for the fermentation process get activated at temperatures between 68-77 degrees F. It's worth keeping this in mind, because if we put jars with cabbage for pickling in a cool place, we will only cause the vegetable to become soft and acquire an unpleasant taste and smell.

Not everyone realizes that sauerkraut also softens due to too much... carrots. If you ferment cabbage with the addition of this vegetable, do not overdo it. Too many carrots in the pickle disrupt the proportions, as a result of which the cabbage is not able to produce as much juice as needed to ferment the whole. It's best to stick to the rule: 2.2 lbs of cabbage - 3.5 oz of carrots.

Ingredients:

• 6.6 lbs of white cabbage,
• 0.66 lbs of carrot,
• 1.76 oz of non-iodized rock salt.

Preparation:

1. Shred the cabbage, and grate the carrot on a fine grater.
2. Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl, sprinkle with salt and knead.
3. Cover the bowl with the vegetables and set aside for 5 hours. Stir and knead the bowl's contents occasionally, so the cabbage releases as much juice as possible.
4. Transfer the vegetables to sterilized jars. Make sure to add them in batches, pressing down hard on each layer. Leave some space between the cabbage and the lid - the cabbage will rise during fermentation. Importantly, the cabbage should be covered with juice.
5. Close the jars with lids, but do not screw them on yet.
6. Initially, store the cabbage at room temperature - around 68 degrees F for about 10 days.
7. Within 2-3 days, the cabbage will increase in volume. Pierce the cabbage with the sterilized end of a wooden spoon to release the gases. From this point, knead the cabbage once a day with a sterilized wooden spoon, ensuring that the cabbage is always covered with the juice it secretes.
8. When the cabbage is already fermented, screw the jars