Just in time for your Octoberfest parties, CBC’s food and cooking columnist, Cinda Chavich is here to fill you in on the finer points of fermentation – and making sauerkraut.

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SO WHY IN THE WORLD ARE YOU INTERESTED IN LEARNING HOW TO MAKE SAUERKRAUT?

Well, it is fall and in many parts of the world, that means it’s time to ferment grapes and make wine.

And while we don’t have grapes in Alberta, we do have all of the same fall conditions for “wild fermentation” – that is the wild yeasts in the air to start the fermentation process – and here in Alberta, what was historically fermented in the fall, along with maybe some dill pickles and some chokecherry or saskatoon wine, was sauerkraut.

In fact, I just came back from a Sauerkraut Festival at The Jungle, a U-pick farm just outside of Innisfail, where I learned everything you’d ever want to know about making, and serving sauerkraut.

A SAUERKRAUT FESTIVAL – THAT SOUNDS LIKE AN INTERESTING EVENT

Yes, it was the first annual Sauerkraut Festival at The Jungle, a lovely family farm where they grow vegetables, pumpkins, and have all kinds of things that make a visit with your family an interesting outing.

In September they had their Sauerkraut Festival, and coming up this weekend, on Saturday, is the annual Fall Festival, complete with wagon rides, fortune telling, a corn maze, duck races, a Mini Cooper car show and, of course, pumpkin picking, in their massive fields of pumpkins.

It was a similar day at the Sauerkraut Festival – with the addition of cabbage bowling, sausages and sauerkraut to eat, and, of course, a demonstration in making sauerkraut from scratch.

SO HOW DO YOU MAKE SAUERKRAUT?

Well, there are two kinds of sauerkraut, as it turns out – the old-fashioned home-style method of making fresh sauerkraut, and the more commercial style. The latter is pickled in a salt and vinegary brine, and sealed in jars – basically cooked and pasteurized.

But the old-fashioned kind of sauerkraut – the kind that many people from Germany and Poland and Eastern Europe might remember making – is simply made by slicing fresh cabbage, salting it and letting it ferment in barrels.

At The Jungle, Leona Staples showed me how she was making sauerkraut, using sliced cabbage and pickling salt – about 3 ounces of pickling salt for every 10 pounds of sliced cabbage – and fermenting it in large food-safe plastic pails.

The cabbage and salt is pounded together, using a large wooden stick, to bruise the cabbage and release the liquid from the vegetable. The cabbage and juices are then weighted down – Leona Staples uses a big bag of water but traditionally they’d use a board, weighed down with a rock – the idea is to make sure the cabbage is down below the level of the liquid.

Because you want it to ferment, but you want an anerobic fermentation – that is, without oxygen. Leona said she only fills her containers about half full because the fermenting sauerkraut will bubble and foam up while it’s working. She keeps the pails in a warm place during fermentation – it takes about two weeks to complete the fermentation process which gives the cabbage a slightly sour, tangy taste.

Then you can keep the sauerkraut in a covered container in the refrigerator for several months. Or you can pack it in canning jars, seal them and process them for about 10 minutes for pint jars, for shelf stable storage.

WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF MAKING SAUERKRAUT IN ALBERTA?

Traditionally, sauerkraut was make is big glazed clay crocks, the kind that were made at the Medicine Hat potteries. Many people made their pickles in open crocks, and sauerkraut was a similar process.

Any families with German, Ukrainian or Eastern European heritage might have had a big wooden slicer for sauerkraut – something that looks like an oversized grater with a box that slides across the top, to hold the cabbage for cutting it into thin slivers.

I talked to Lothar Twardzik at the Sauerkraut Festival on the farm. He was there with his accordion, to play German music to set the scene for the festival. He grew up in Germany, in Hanover, and remembers that sauerkraut making season was a big family affair – they used a large wooden box grater to shred the cabbage and, when he was a kid, his job was to stomp around in the barrel to release the juices from the vegetables.

Some people also put other vegetables into the cabbage with the sauerkraut – shredded carrots or peppers. But coarse pickling salt is the only other ingredient – the natural, wild yeasts in the air and on the cabbage start the fermentation that pickles and preserves it.

YOU MENTIONED WILD FERMENTATION?

Yes, this means using the wild yeast that are naturally in the air to ferment – whether you’re making sourdough bread, wine or sauerkraut.

Using wild yeast is a trend in the artisan wine making business these days – while it’s risky to use wild yeasts, because it’s harder to control the fermentation, they can give you unique flavours in the wine, and a real sense of place or terroir.

It’s wild yeast that also ferment your sour dough starter for making bread – this is actually the best time of year to yet that kind of a starter started. You can use grapes or apples as a base for sourdough, then use and feed your starter indefinitely.

A lot of chefs have been experimenting with Wild Fermentation, thanks to a book of the same name  by Sandor Katz, that came out a few years back. Fermentation is also something that happens in the sausage-making process – when you’re making dried sausages like salami or yogurt or natural cheeses – it’s the fermentation that creates the acidity that preserves the meat, and gives the sausage or yogurt or kimchi its unique tangy flavour.

It’s the same thing that sours sauerkraut. This naturally made fermented cabbage is actually quite healthy – the microscopic bacteria and fungi that ferment foods, things like lactobacillus, are actually very good for you, they aid in digestion and protect against disease. In unprocessed sauerkraut, you get that live culture, which is what you want.

I KNOW SOME LOCAL CHEFS ARE EXPERIMENTING WITH THEIR OWN SAUSAGE AND CHARCUTERIE – BUT SAUERKRAUT?

Yes, if you go to the River Café here in Calgary, you’ll find chef Scott Pohorelic serving his own house-made sauerkraut on the bison smoked meat sandwiches (that bison smoked meat, by the way, from Valta Bison here in Alberta is amazing stuff).

John Jackson, who is set to open the new Charcut Restaurant in Calgary in December, is doing a lot of local food preservation, including cabbage and even fennel kraut, fermented in traditional glazed crocks from Medicine Hat Potteries.

Leona Staples sells her sauerkraut on the farm and at the Calgary Farmers Market – she’s one of the Innisfail Growers – and says a lot of her customers are from France or Germany or Europe. They really appreciate the fresh crunchy texture and flavour of the sauerkraut made with fresh local cabbage and nothing but a little salt.

AND OTHER THAN THE CLASSIC REUBEN SANDWICH, HOW ELSE WOULD YOU SERVE SAUERKRAUT?

Sauerkraut and pork are a perfect match, and it goes especially well with smoked meats and even smoked fish.

It’s great on a grilled frankfurter or smokie – the classic German style sausage and sauerkraut.

Or there’s the French dish known as choucroute – from the Alsace region of France – that combines sauerkraut with sausage and pork hocks.

There’s a similar polish dish, called Hunter’s Stew or Bigos, made with sauerkraut, smoked sausage, smoked ham and other smoked meats.

Blaine Staples told me his Polish mother filled her perogies with ground pork and sauerkraut, and I’ve had delicious perogies with mushroom and sauerkraut filling.

It does go with Smoked Meat on a classic Rueben sandwich, but you can put sauerkraut on any sandwich or wrap. We even put a little on the corn tortillas we were filling with chili and avocado for dinner last week.

You can put it in soups, like borscht or potato soup with bacon, sauté it with bacon and onions, use it as a base for braised pork dishes with white wine and apples, or layer it with cabbage rolls before you bake them.

Unlike the more vinegary commercial sauerkraut, this fresh homemade version isn’t too sour and doesn’t need to be rinsed. You can cook with it, or use it fresh as a side dish with almost anything.

RECIPES?

I brought a recipe for Hunter’s Stew that I created for my newest Pressure Cooker Cookbook, a very classic Polish stew made with smoked sausage and bacon and ham, along with mushrooms and sauerkraut, and a recipe for Polish Sausage and Cabbage Soup from my book High Plains, a rich and creamy potato soup, also flavoured with smoked sausage and sauerkraut, but more like a meaty chowder.

Click here for Cinda’s sauerkraut recipes...