Sauerkraut, Sea Salt and Free Range Pears

Howdy Ho Everyone!

I came home today to just a foul foul fouuuuulll stench coming from my kitchen.  PeeEwww!

Has anyone ever tried making Sauerkraut?  Can anyone tell me if this is normal to smell such a rotteney stench?  I’ve been told that it smells but I’m just not sure if this is the smell they are talking about.  Aeughh!

I found this crock at Ace Hardware back in August during pickle season and thought I’d use it to try some of Grandma Steiner’s pickle recipes but just ran out of time to hunt down raw pickles and some of the needed ingredients.  As an alternative I decided I’d try sauerkraut.  Seemed like it would be easy enough to do.

This batch started August 26th so it has been now almost 6 weeks.  That should be enough time right?  Well, I rinsed off the cloth (that was stinky too) and re-packed everything.  My liquid was low so I thought I’d add more brine but I’d need to make some when…this happened!  Gosh dangit!  Sea Salt flew everywhere!

The little yipper went nuts!  Fortunately I had the other dog outside and was able to get the vacuum and suck up most of this salt.  Hopefully there won’t be any damage to the machine from sucking up salt?

With all that now cleaned up I finished up adding more brine and I’ll let it sit another week.  If next week it’s just plain ol’ foul I’m just going to call it a fail and move on.

As a side note though, Jim and I picked some free range pears about a week or so ago and they have turned ripe.  Mmmm, mmmm.

I cut up a couple last night for dinner.  I tossed the chunks into a chop salad with veggies, blue cheese, garbanzo’s and bacon.  Oh boy was that good!

Well, once again, if any of you readers have had experience with kraut I’d love to hear it.

~Cathy

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