Sauerkraut Salad

Some people love sauerkraut. And some people just don't like it at all, but know it's good for them. When you're first introducing a tiny bit of kraut into your diet, you can usually hide it in something, but once you're up to 2-3 tablespoons, it's harder to hide. One way you can make it more interesting is to vary what goes into your sauerkraut - carrots, red cabbage instead of green, some beetroot.

We've recently been enjoying sauerkraut salad. This would be good if you're still easing into GAPS, or later on, when you're digesting raw vegetables well. It's not suitable for the early stages of GAPS Intro.

This is enough for two people:

• About 4-5 Tbs sauerkraut
• A carrot
• Or an apple
• Or 1/2 a beetroot
• A little red onion, finely chopped (optional, if you can digest it)
• 1-2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 Tbs chopped nuts and seeds or homemade dukkah

Grate the carrot, apple and/or beetroot. Or roughly chop them, then zizz in a mini food processor till in small chunks. Mix everything except the nuts and seeds together, then stir those through.

This particular salad looks very carroty, as the original sauerkraut also had carrot in it.

For Xmas, I'd use zizzed beetroot and apple, and some chunkier pieces of almond. Maybe serve it on a lettuce leaf  such as baby cos.

Cabbage and Apple

A couple of weeks ago, we went to an event hosted by Simply Good Food, our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). One of the growers, Frank van Steensel, was so eloquent about the superior nutrition of vegetables grown properly in nutrient dense soil, that it reminded me that there are not many vege recipes on this blog, yet...


So let's get started with our favourite cabbage recipe - Red Cabbage simmered with apples and onions. This is adapted from a  recipe in Nourishing Traditions that doesn't include the onion. So if you can't have onions, it's fine to leave them out. If you're on GAPS or SCD and can have fruit, the apple adds some carbs without adding starch.

• 1 tablespoon butter or ghee
• 1 onion
• ½ medium red cabbage
• 1 bay leaf
• 5 cloves
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon honey
• Sprinkle of cinnamon
• ½ cup water
• 1 apple
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Optional: 1-2 Tbs red or white wine vinegar

Chop up the onion, and sauté in butter in a large frying pan that has a lid. In a small pan, mix bay leaf, cloves, salt, honey and cinnamon with water and start simmering. Cut the core out of the cabbage, and slice thinly. Rinse the cabbage in a colander and add to the frying pan. Pour the now flavoured water through the colander into the frying pan, and mix all together. Put the lid on, turn the heat down low and cook gently for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, peel the apple if you like, but it doesn’t have to be peeled. Cut into quarters, and slice each quarter thinly. Add to the frying pan, stir  and cook for another 15 minutes. Take off the heat, and drain off any excess liquid. Toss with the butter and optional vinegar and serve.

This is a nice side dish with any meat or poultry. Or you can chop up your meat when it’s cooked and toss it through, for a one dish meal. 

You can do something similar with Green Cabbage. Green cabbage doesn't need to cook as long.

• 1 Tablespoon butter or ghee
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, cut in half and then sliced thinly
• ½ a large or all of a small green cabbage
• 1 apple, sliced
• Juice of a lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• sprinkling of paprika

Sauté the onion and carrot  in butter. Meanwhile, chop up the green cabbage, and rinse. Chop up the apple. Add the lemon juice, salt and paprika to pan and stir well. Add cabbage and apple and stir well. Add more butter if needed. Cover and simmer for a few mins till cabbage is soft.

Fermented cabbage juice

If you are doing the GAPS Intro stage where you use sauerkraut juice only, this recipe is a lot easier than making the full sauerkraut recipe. It's also easier to sip this if you don't like eating sauerkraut.

I found this recipe on a NZ website Jacqueline Organics. Here is her recipe with a couple of my own comments below:

Fill a blender with chopped green cabbage and distilled water, which is available at the warehouse - bottom shelf in drink section, called Pure Dew. (Deb: We use artesian well water from the Petone aquifer, and that works fine too)

Add water till 2/3 full - beat at high speed in the blender for one minute and pour out into bowl and repeat with two more batches.

Cover with gauze or stocking and let stand at room temperature. After 3 days, the cabbage juice solution is ready to use. It is preferable to keep this in warm place out doors as it has strong smell and some may find it unpleasant! (Deb: Or keep it in a chilly bin in the laundry or garage.)

Strain the mixture to separate the liquid and the pulp. Place cultured cabbage juice in the refrigerator.

When your supply gets low, make a second batch just like the first one, except, add 1/2 cup of the juice from the first batch to the second batch. Your second batch will be ready in 24 hours.

Drink up to ½ cup 2 to 3 times each day, but start with small doses. Dilute with equal part of water.

The lactic acid in the cultured cabbage juice will purify the G.I tract and kill most strains of fungi, parasites and other pathogens. You should drink this drink until your stools float in the toilet bowl and are odour free. You can gain some benefits from eating the cabbage pulp (which is what you separate off from the liquid).

My experiences so far making it:

Batch 1:

The cabbage I bought from Commonsense Organics was quite small, so it didn't make 3 blender loads - only 1 .5. As she said, it was very smelly, right from the start and did need to be fermented outside. It took about 6-7 days to be tangy enough, rather than 3. It wasn't that great tasting, but not too bad either. Since I bottled it, it has been left on the bench and not refrigerated, and it seems to be tasting better as it gets older. Or I'm getting more used to it. Either way, its all good.

Batch 2:

As she says, I added some of the first batch to it, but since my cabbage was again small, I only added 1/4 cup. Funnily enough, it doesn't smell anywhere near as bad as the first batch and although you can smell it when you get within a couple of metres, I have been able to keep it inside. It's currently on Day 3 and tastes nearly ready.

Later updates:

Another way of controlling the smell is to keep your jar inside a chilly bin, if you haven't got a suitable outdoor area to keep it in.

I have found that you can also ferment red cabbage juice, and it doesn't smell so much. Though I think it's also not quite as effective a digestive tonic.

So I have been doing a mixture of red and green cabbage, which is a nicer flavour and smell, but still helps digestion. Build up to 1/3 or 1/2 glass before each meal.

Another variation:

Add some chopped raw beetroot, and a small amount of salt and extra water to each batch, so you are also getting the benefits of beet kvass.

Sauerkraut

Another important food, especially for the GAPS protocol, is sauerkraut or other fermented veges.

There are a variety of different ways of making sauerkraut, but these are the basic steps:

• Select your veges, wash and, if necessary, peel them
• Chop them - with a knife, grater or in a food processor
• Add sea salt and give them a good squeeze with your hands, or pound with a heavy object, such as a bottle filled with water. You need to get lots of juice out.
• Pack into the container you're going to ferment in, either a large bowl, with a plate on top, or directly in a jar. Make sure the veges are covered with the juice.
• Ferment at room temperature till the sauerkraut is slightly sour
• Store in the fridge - it will keep for ages

Following are three different recipes you can try (remembering at each step there are different ways of doing it, that all work fine). My next post will be a recipe for fermented cabbage juice.

Recipe One:

First is a YouTube video by Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation, so you can see how it works.

Recipe Two: Libby's sauerkraut

• Take a large "white cabbage". Cut off the outside green leaves until you have clean leaves. Wash the leaves you cut off and save them.
• Using a knife, or food processor, cut the cabbage into quarters and slice the cabbage quarters fairly finely [3-2mm slices] into four heaps.
• Optional extra: For each quarter, take about three good sized carrots, about the bulk size of one third of each quarter. Peel the carrots, and shred them into four piles, slightly finer pieces than the cabbage.
• Take a large enamel or plastic bucket or stew pot or similar. DO NOT USE METAL CONTAINERS.
• Place half of the washed cabbage leaves on the bottom of the container.
• Mix in another bowl one quarter of the cut cabbage with its share of shredded carrot. Add some salt, mix in about one level tablespoon per large quarter of cabbage to start with [then use more or less next time to taste]. Use more if you want to use sea salt.
• Place the mix of cabbage, carrot and salt into the container and repeat until all is mixed. As you place the mix in the container, squeeze it as strongly as you reasonably can to draw out any liquid.
• Place the rest of the cabbage leaves on top of the mix to finish.
• Place an ice cream container or similar on top of the leaves, filled with water [NO WATER IN THE CABBAGE MIX, THE WATER GOES IN THE CONTAINER TO MAKE A WEIGHT]. We use an old plate upside down on top of the cabbage leaves to ensure good cover and spread of pressure, and then put the weight on the plate.
• Leave for three or four days, then take off the weight and top leaves, turn over the mix and re-lay the leaves and weight. Sometimes under the weight liquid will rise over the leaves, simply stir it back in when you stir the mix. The product should be finished to eat in about six-eight days. (Note: in colder weather this can take up to 3 weeks)
• When tasting tells you the sauerkraut is ready, take it out of the container and store it in the fridge in any sealed container you want to use.

Recipe Three: Kimchi

Our friend Evan makes his own kimchi, which is a Korean fermented cabbage and is more spicy than sauerkraut. He tells us the best recipe is Ultimate Kimchi.