Sauerkraut - be a rebel and make some

Sauerkraut is fermented cabbage. If you should wander into a small township in Southern Bohemia, you’ll find it served with roast pork and dumplings. In Alsace it shares a plate with smoked sausage and potatoes. On the New York streets, it’s the quintessential topping of a Frankfurter. And, if you’re Sandor Katz living in the mountains of Tennessee, it’s a tonic for everything from an upset stomach to modernism.

​Sauerkraut means “sour cabbage” in German. Efficient, prosaic, hard to spell - typical German nomenclature. But the "sour cabbage" moniker belies the complexity of this food. For all its apparent simplicity, sauerkraut hosts an impossibly vast network of living bacteria and enzymes that thrive in an ecosystem as busy as the spruce forests of the Canadian shield or the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. It’s this culture that lends “sour cabbage” its depth of flavour and its mysterious health benefits.

Finely shredded green cabbage, salted and awaiting fermentation

Just when you thought cabbage was the pinnacle of banality in cooking, I give you sauerkraut.

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