Food Science: How Probiotic Fermentation Creates Sauerkraut

[00:00:01][Music] after growing some cabbages in my garden last year i wanted to try my hand at preserving them through this ancient method of preservation called fermentation i've never fermented anything before and honestly i was a little bit nervous about it because it's basically a form of controlled decay and i know that it's a delicate balance of bacteria and things can go wrong and to be honest things did go wrong when i did this the first time but the nice thing is is it's just cabbage and you can try it again i use this really nice fermentation crock to get started it is believed that fermented cabbage was first eaten by laborers as they were building the great wall of china brought to europe a thousand years later in the 16th century germans began dry curing cabbage with salt to extract water from the vegetable turning the sugars into lactic acid which served as a way of preservation this fermented cabbage is known as sour cabbage or sauerkraut fermentation is an anaerobic process which occurs in the absence of oxygen in this environment the desirable bacteria thrive as they break down sugars starches and carbohydrates while releasing alcohols carbon dioxide and organic acids that preserve food in lactic acid fermentation yeast and bacteria convert sugars into lactic acid which preserves the foods our modern understanding of fermentation comes from the work of chemist louis pasteur who is able to demonstrate through his experiments that fermented beverages result from the action of living yeast transforming glucose which are sugars into ethanol which is an alcohol in an anaerobic environment my sauerkraut fermented i invited chef maggie lawson over to show me some creative ways to serve fermented foods hi i am chef maggie lawson i own a company here in cincinnati ohio i do meal prep for busy health conscious families and individuals folks that are going through like ginormous life transitions like bringing a baby into the world dealing with some chronic health issues maybe a major surgery that comes out of nowhere and they or they're just really busy and they need extra support so we prep an entire week's worth of meals and drop them right their doorstep and all they do is heat them up so today i'm going to help erin explain to you how to make kraut and then show you a recipe that i'm going to use some of the kraut that i've already made in this delicious organic cabbage here very basic but it will make the most delicious sour fermented crunchy goodness um i'm gonna measure it so i'm not the most precise cook i will be 100 honest with you that's not how i cook i cook more from the gut but with kraut it's important to measure because you want to get the salt to a vegetable ratio right so um there's a core inside of this cabbage that you're not going to use because it's way too hard so i'm just going to cut it in half like this look how pretty she is and then i'm going to take this part out right here so i'm just going to create a triangle like this and i would recommend using a sharp chest knife see i was able to do it with two cuts so yeah the core is out now you can see that the core is out and then i have a scale kitchen scale that i bought it's like 20 i think they're really affordable they're great for baking too um so i'm just gonna lay that down make sure that it's zeroed so that means it's like ready to go i could also if i needed to i could also put this on here and zero it again which means that it's not weighing the bowl it's just weighing the vegetables inside and then i'm going to make about two pounds worth of crop so all of this is usable you could save this this is actually great to pack down your crud especially if you're using a jar and not a fermentation crop with two different from invitation crocks here this one has a water seal on top and it opens up like that and then this one is just packed in these gorgeous weights those are those also weights inside this is an ohio pottery croc which is made in zanesville so it's kind of special because it's from not too far away and they've been making these for a really long time so with the cores out we have two pounds of cabbage wait out here um so if every two pounds of cabbage you only want one tablespoon of salt you can also add kohlrabi turnips beets pizza gorgeous they make like a really nice bright red kraut radishes all sorts of stuff too and peppers lots of like herbs as well i'm just gonna make it straight up cabbage and salt start simple another thing to take into consideration and i will show you like this you can see it is you want to get a really fine cut on this because it's easier to get the water out um and the water becomes the brine which is basically what you cover the cropland yeah and then you have like these nice fine pieces and sometimes if you get bigger pieces like that you can just cut them down a little bit more so that everything's kind of consistent in terms of its size and texture shape and then just first we're gonna throw this in the bowl obviously you're gonna do this with all your cabbage so we would cut all the cabbage like that and then we're gonna put less than a tablespoon but i'll put a little bit here and um some people pound cabbage with like a wooden mallet but i like my hands which are clean again with like sterilize everything with hot water um washed our hands thoroughly just to make sure that sure everything is really clean or you ruin the risk of inviting bad bacteria into your crop and you want the good bacteria in there so i'm gonna massage it with their hands and you'll notice like as you massage it more and more liquid comes out um again i'm just starting with a tiny amount to demo how to do this but you could do like four or five times as much as this and eventually you'll get some liquid that comes out already and then you let it sit for about an hour um and you'll see that there's more even more liquid and the goal is to use really fresh kraut and to cover your cabbage with the brine if you don't have enough water that kind of comes out of the cabbage naturally this cabbage is nice and juicy already and i've only been like massaging it for a minute then you can mix a brine mixture and cover it completely and that's what's going to help it ferment is being covered in the salt water mix uh one of my favorite ways to eat it is actually a green bowl which i'm going to show you now very popular right now kind of in the tradition of like pokeballs from hawaii and other kinds of food traditions that just put little bits of things and then you mix them up it's delicious it's kind of like the modern day salad you can incorporate lots of different ingredients in there so this one i'm making i'm gonna add a ferment that i did which is cabbage and oregano and carrots which is known as protito it's a condiment from el salvador and it's traditionally served with papuas which are like salvadorian corn cakes that are stuffed with different things um they make it a lot of times with vinegar but this one is lacto-fermented which means i use the exact same process as the kraut i massage my cabbage and the carrots and added some oregano and just let it ferment for a couple weeks so you always start your greenville with a grain obviously this is the grain that i chose it's actually a mixture of brown rice and quinoa super hearty really great and nutty i'm just gonna break down how to make it this looks like a ginormous bowl but i think every good salad is eaten in a really big bowl so you can toss it yourself otherwise a little bowl hang and toss salad dressing a little bowl can't do that it doesn't work so well so i'm gonna add about a half a cup of grain to this and basically i'm showing you how to compose a green bowl i'm not gonna give you like a straight up recipe because i believe that you can take inspiration from everywhere and including your fridge which is exactly what i did i looked in my fridge and i was like what do i got already what kind of flavor profiles i want to play with i think about two different things i think about the taste combinations and the texture combination so in terms of taste i like to think about sweetness saltiness bitterness sourness and umami and um kraut has a great sour profile right and sometimes a little bit of a mommy even i would say this one's more sour i also think about texture so you know lumpy soft crunchy so i kind of have like a wide range of things um and then you can look at the recipe that we'll link with this video but there are different categories that you're looking at so the grain is always the base so we got our grain in there and then a serving of protein so i wanted to make a bowl that was kind of like inspired by a nicoise salad which is a french salad that often has potatoes in it i've replaced potatoes with the quinoa brown rice mixture it almost always has hard-boiled eggs in it so i hard-boiled an egg um they're pasteurized from all the tops that's why the yolks are so deep golden and beautiful so i'm just going to cut those into force like this um i'm also thinking about how to arrange the bowl so it's like really gorgeous when i present it in appetizing with all these like nourishing beautiful foods in there this is a red romaine come forward there and we already we already washed it so i'm just gonna slice it um so we're gonna have a little bit of this lettuce in there so you can see i'm kind of like creating different little sections in the green bowl and then um another part like i said of the nicoise salad is usually some green beans we're gonna put green beans there you always get a little bit of tuna so i have um some like wild caught canned tuna these are all things that i had in my kitchen just kind of hanging out in the fridge and i was like you know what what i want these to look like um sometimes i like to toss the green beans and another flavor profile so i got a little bit of extra flavor so i brought a lemon and i'm just gonna zest the lemon a little bit [Music] toss this with some lemon i'm going to add some butter i think we're going to keep the butter out of this right now and a little bit of salt just a little bit of salt so this way the like some of the ingredients might already have their own flavors going on before so we've got that and then you're cracked this is my creto uh usually in any soil salad give olives but we're gonna sub in the crop for this one just gonna put this right here i usually try to have one cooked vegetable and one raw vegetable so my raw vegetable right now is gonna be the crop and um obviously the lettuce is raw as well and then the cooked vegetable or the green beans and then you always want some sort of like really nice garnish so the garnish i usually like try to put over the entire space and so i just have some curly parsley that i mixed really well and i'm gonna throw that over the top of the entire bowl and that's gonna also give an extra flavor profile a little ounce of kind of bitter so bitter is different than the sour right we have the sour with the kraut and then the bitter with the parsley and then i have some red pepper chili flakes here i love um spice some people don't love it but i also love red so that offers another color contrast on top of there and then the final thing is i made like a traditional french vinaigrette this has some apple cider vinegar uh cold pressed olive oil and then i use whole grain mustard and super simple and salt a little bit of salt in there too and i um just emulsified this basically whisked it before so but it's uniform and well combined and i'm just gonna put about two tablespoons over the top of this entire thing and yeah and then you just toss that all up and eat it but you start out with this beautiful presentation you can even add a little bit more green over the top if you want and that's my refrigerator niece was inspired green bowl and i added a little bit of um the homemade kraut to it uh kraut is obviously delicious i love sour flavors it's also really healthy so kraut um you're digesting that you're ingesting the bacteria that helps support a healthy digestive system so eat some kraut makes them at home thanks for joining us this beautiful meal was as delicious as it looks and as maggie said fermented foods are rich in probiotic bacteria so consuming them adds these beneficial bacteria and enzymes to your gut increasing the health of your microbiome and digestive system for more delicious food science check out scentsymuseum.org