Thank gawd for lacto-fermented probiotic foods! Having recently found myself in the hospital with what can only be described as ‘nuclear grade Domestos’ being intravenously shoved into my veins.
I thought I’d share with you this delicious seaweed sauerkraut recipe I developed to offset the damage done to my poor body.
The side effects from having such ridiculous high potency antibiotics pumped into my system was for me to look (and feel) like a leper.
The one good thing to come out of this adventure, aside from feeling loads better, is that I get to share a scrumptious seaweed sauerkraut recipe with you… oh, and a little known fermentors secret… you’ll find it in Step 4 below.
Ingredients
- 1 large cabbage (any variant will do).
- 1 tsp of sea salt.
- 10g of dried laver seaweed (chopped very fine)
- 6 cloves of garlic (chopped into very small bits)
- 3cms of fresh turmeric root (chopped into very small bits)
Instructions
- Remove the thick stalks from the cabbage and slice them very thin along with the leaves. If you like you chunk, keep them chunky!
- Place the cabbage in a large bowl, and add the laver seaweed, then add in the salt.
- Mix the ingredients well with your hands, then squeeze and crush the mixture between your hands until everything starts becoming wet from the juices that will start to be extracted. Allow to sit with a tea towel covering the bowl for about 6 hours.
- Little Known Fermentation Secret: Next stuff the mixture into a 1 litre glass cafetière (French press). This little known secret will mean you never have to keep checking that the vegetable matter is under the liquid thanks to the plunger! The vegetable mixture needs to be under the liquid otherwise it will spoil.
- Let sit at room temperature for at minimum 3 days, and preferably 14 days. You can press down the plunger every day, just for fun, and in order to squeeze more liquid out. Use your nose and taste test every now and then until the mixture acquires the right flavours for your palette.
- Note: Using more salt with make for a more crunchy sauerkraut, less salt means a softer one. I like soft krauts. But experiment with the amount of salt, maybe increasing the amount to 2 tsps or even 3 if you’re a real salt-demon.
Makes roughly a litre of seaweed sauerkraut.