A couple weeks ago we bought a huge cabbage at the farmer’s market.  Usually we keep our ferments covered tightly, opening the jars about twice a day to let out accumulated pressure.  Because this was such large batch of ‘kraut, I decided to try the Sandor Katz method of fermentation: leaving the cover off and weighing the vegetables down with a heavy weight to hold them under the surface of their liquid.  It looked like this:

We let them ferment for a little over a week, and it was barely any effort at all.  I got one out and tasted it a couple times just to make sure it was getting sour.  We did get some foam on top, which we just scraped off when we added covers and transferred to the fridge.  No dreaded mold to report.

There was only one part of this that was a big mistake: I placed the jars in a metal 9×13 cake pan to catch any overflow and save my hutch from water damage.  Unfortunately, the acidity of the liquid that overflowed from these jars pretty much ruined my cake pan.  It is covered with rust now on the inside, and I can’t scrub it off.  Should have used a glass one.

If we don’t give these away as Christmas presents, this should be enough saurkraut to last us the entire winter.  Theoretically.