Braised Sauerkraut and Bratwurst

In my last post I mentioned how nice it would be to have a summer kitchen for when canning or cooking are too hot or smelly to be done indoors. Almost immediately after that it occurred to me that we can and do cook outdoors and I'm not talking about the grill. Last evening I wanted to make some braised sauerkraut but didn’t want to risk another case of “outhouse kitchen”--Enter the Dutch oven!

 

I started by setting up a cooking area on our patio. I laid out some of the leftover pavers we've got lying around to make an elevated, fireproof platform for the coals. Cooking directly on the patio would have scorched it. When we are camping and cook in the Dutch oven we just place the coals directly on a patch of bare ground.

 

We had just enough charcoal left over to do one round of cooking. For dishes that take more than an hour or so, we usually end up lighting a new batch to replace the burned down coals but I didn't anticipate needing to do that with this dish. I piled them up and put a match to them. We've always used briquettes because Dutch oven cooking recipes are often calibrated to the number to use. There is a bag of real hardwood charcoal laying around here somewhere and I'm thinking some time I may give it a try and see how the process compares. Incidentally, it was about this time a light breeze kicked up and I was starting to question the wisdom of doing this with a thick layer of dry leaves all over the back yard.

 

While the coals were starting I assembled the first ingredients in the Dutch oven. The full recipe is at the end of this post.

 

When the coals all had some ash on them I arranged two thirds in a rough circle just a bit smaller than the Dutch Oven. They're spaced so they aren't touching so air can circulate. This particular Dutch oven has three short legs that elevate it just above the coals. The one we us indoors in the oven doesn't have legs.

 

The Dutch oven is placed on the cooking area and the remaining third of the coals arranged evenly around the edge of the lid. As you can see, this oven has another feature the one for indoor use lacks. There is a lip around the edge of the lid to hold the coals on. Heating from both the top and bottom are probably more important when baking, but I thought since it was getting cold out a little extra heat wouldn’t hurt.

 

Meanwhile back in the kitchen, we unwrapped the much-anticipated special ingredient. At yesterday’s Market we picked up a package of smoked bratwurst from Pecatonica Valley Farm. 

 

To get a little extra flavor out of the brats we seared them a bit –in cast iron, of course, but they were on the dry side and I think if I were to do this again I’d skip this step. It really didn’t seem to add anything to the dish.

 

By this time the sauerkraut and friends had been bubbling for a while. No foul odors, by the way, were detected!

 

I sliced up the brats into thirds and nestled them into the kraut to share flavors for a while.

 

The final result, served with a delicious mound of garlicky mashed potatoes was a hearty, seasonal and satisfying meal.

 

Dutch Oven Braised Sauerkraut and Bratwurst

Ingredients

• 1/2 White Onion, Sliced
• 1 Pint Home-Fermented and Canned Sauerkraut (substitute other if you absolutely must)
• 1/2 Cup Local Beer
• 1 1/2" Cups Chicken Stock
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon Caraway Seed
• 1/2 teaspoon Dried Thyme
• Black Pepper to Taste
• 2 Delicious, Local, pasture-raised-pork bratwurst

Method

Start and arrange coals as described above. You will need sixteen coals for under the oven and seven for the lid, a total of twenty-three.

Place sauerkraut in a colander or strainer and rinse off salty brine. Add to Dutch oven along with the beer, stock, herbs and pepper.

Place oven on coals. Note: Do not preheat oven and then add cold ingredients. Shocking the hot metal thusly just isn’t good for it. Allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Slice bratwurst into thirds and add to simmering sauerkraut. Allow to simmer for an additional 2o minutes.

Serve with a delicious starchy side dish and more local beer.

 

Serves 2

Canning the Kraut

Apparently my first attempt at making sauerkraut was successful. Along the way there were a couple of surprises. The first was that it didn't stink. What a relief. I think the method of covering it with plastic wrap had something to do with that. When I'd check on its progress I always did a sniff test and while it developed a "vegetably" fragrance it wasn't offensive. You could only smell it if you stuck your nose right in the crock.

The second surprise was that it was done fermenting long before I expected it to be. I was figuring on a four week process. Somewhere in week three I read something to the effect of "it's done when it stops bubbling." I hadn't noticed mine bubbling for several days at least so I decided to go ahead and put it away.

Freezing didn't seem like a good idea and the refrigerator was way too full at the time so I opted for canning it using the boiling water bath method. The entire batch fit nicely in four pint jars. During the canning I could definitely smell it but didn't think much of it. Soon after I was done the Co-conspirator came home and announced that the kitchen smelled like an outhouse.


Earlier this year I did a fun little "dream home" exercise where I listed on paper all the things I'd like to have as part of my ideal home. One feature is a summer kitchen--an outdoor, covered but unenclosed cooking area. There we could can away to our hearts' content without steaming up the house in the heat of July, fry fish and can sauerkraut without stinking up the place, and share the "external benefits" of our cooking adventures more with our neighbors.

Sauerkraut? Yes, Sauerkraut

For nearly a year I've had a little voice in the back of my head urging me to try making my own sauerkraut. It started whispering about the time I attended the first Fermentation Fest last fall in Reedsburg. I didn't attend a sauerkraut workshop, but in an exhibit I saw there and the reading I've done since I've discovered that making sauerkraut at home is a pretty simple and straightforward process.

What may have been holding me back was the memory of a crock of cabbage fermenting in my grandmother's kitchen. First, it was huge. At least it seemed huge to me and I've seen some big ol' crocks at the Fest and elsewhere. Also, the recipes at the National Center for Home Food Preservation and in my USDA book call for twenty-five pounds of cabbage! I hate wasting food and was concerned that if it "went bad" or we didn't like it that there would be a lot of cabbage to throw out and it wouldn't even be compostable because of the salt. Second, I recall my grandmother's batch of sauerkraut having an odor my young nose didn't care for. This week the weather is going to be open-window warm, but we can't always count on that. A closed up house and a stinky food experiment brewing on the kitchen counter are not a good combination.

The first hurdle I overcame fairly recently. Looking around at people on the Internet making sauerkraut revealed many were making smaller batches. Duh! I've known how to scale recipes pretty much forever but for some reason I had a mental block about this one. I blame the looming image of those ginormous crocks. The second apprehension I reasoned away. I know my food tastes have changed since I was young so I probably have developed some kind of odor tolerance, too. As long as it's not as bad as the collard blanching episode, I figured we'd survive.

The ingredients in basic sauerkraut are simple and inexpensive: cabbage and salt. The cabbage, just shy of six pounds, I picked up at the Westside Community Market for a whopping $1.50. I'm sure it's available for even less at other places. The salt I already had on hand of course and I would only need three tablespoons probably costing pennies. The crock was another matter. I've got a rectangular food-grade plastic container I use to make kombucha. The shape is no problem since a scoby will grow to fit, but for the sauerkraut I wanted something round so I could use the traditional method of weighting it down with a plate. As luck would have it we actually had a real stoneware crock sitting around that had not been drilled to function as a planter. I scrubbed it up thoroughly and put it to work.

The first step was to cut the cabbage into as thin of strips as I could. I set to work with a knife and decided after less than two minutes there was no way I was going to do the whole head that way. Instead I resorted to the food processor and made much faster and perfectly acceptable progress. I began to get worried when the cabbage filled our two largest stainless steel bowls. There was no way it was all going to fit into that little crock! I decided to just proceed with the recipe and then either try to scrounge another container once the crock was full or grudgingly pitch whatever didn't fit.

I began salting the cabbage and mixing it around in the bowls with my hands. One of those little kitchen miracles started to occur. The strands of cabbage wilted and collapsed and the mounds got smaller and smaller. Soon I was able to get it all in one bowl and it still continued to collapse as I moved it around. When I started packing the cabbage in the crock, tamping it down with my knuckles as firmly as I could without breaking it it took up even less space.While a whole head of cabbage may feel dense and heavy, it's clearly got a lot of air in it. By the time it was all in, the crock which is less than eight inches across and maybe ten inches deep wasn't even half full!

By this point in the process a bit of juice but not a whole lot was starting to come out. There was just enough to cover the cabbage so I didn't add any additional brine and put in one of Grandma's plates in weighted down with a clean jar full of water. Soon after I got thinking about the gold band on the rim of the plate and substituted another kind of plate. I think the paint/glaze probably contains some kind of metal and I didn't want to risk either the brine damaging it or the metal reacting with the brine and creating off flavors or even making the sauerkraut toxic.

The final step was topping it with some plastic secured by a rubber band as suggested here. Now all I do is wait four or five weeks and keep the surface of the brine . As of this moment it's been fermenting four days and yesterday began to show a small amount of foam bubbling up around the plate. I skimmed a bit of it off but am trying to keep the top on as much as possible to maintain at least a low oxygen if not actually anaerobic environment. Stay tuned for updates as this little project progresses.