Fermented Red Cabbage

I bought fido jars with my tax return. I know, I’m lame. We did splurge on a couple other things as well, but I was super excited to use my new jars now that I am fermenting more these days. I have been trying my hand at fermented cabbage and I have it down now. These Fido Jars make it super easy. Fermented red cabbage is now my favorite thing to eat with eggs in the morning. I just love the color and flavor!

I took a ridiculously obnoxious amount of photos for this post so that you can see the step by step process I took to ferment my red cabbage. It’s an easy process once you get it down but I think the more photos the better when attempting this process for the first time.

Here is what you will need to ferment red cabbage:

• A couple jars (I love Fido jars over mason jars because they slowly release air and you don’t risk a messy cabbage explosion)
• Red cabbage (any amount will do but I used 2 cabbages weighing roughly 5 lbs total)
• Sea salt (you will need roughly a TBS of salt for every 2 lbs of cabbage) We buy Redmonds Real Sea Salt from Thrive Market.
• Optional (a jar funnel)
• Optional (a wooden vegetable stomper-you can always use your hands but this makes the process much easier in my humble opinion)

Directions:

I started out with 2 heads of beautiful red cabbage I picked up at the farmers market. I cut each head of cabbage in half then cut out the core. Don’t throw away the core (you will need it later).

I then chopped up the cabbage. I ended up with about 5 lbs of chopped cabbage which filled 2 bowls.

Here comes the tedious part. I then used my wooden vegetable stomper to stomp each bowl of cabbage for 10 minutes. You don’t have to have a veggie stomper. You can use your hands to “massage” the cabbage (I did that the first time). But I like the veggies stomper better because then I don’t get red cabbage and salt all over my hands. It’s a little easier to use the stomper and I feel like it gets out more of the juices.

So, I stomped the 2 bowls of cabbage for 10 minutes each and all the juices came out of the cabbage. It’s hard to see but there is liquid at the bottom of the cabbage bowl.

Then I used my funnel to put the cabbage into the fido jars. I used my veggie stomper to stomp the cabbage down in the jars to fit it all in well.

Here are my jars. I stomped the cabbage below the water line and left about an inch between the water and the top of the jars.

Remember the core of the cabbages I saved? I used these to top off my jars and press the cabbage down and keep it under the water line.

Here are my jars of cabbage. I then set these in brown paper lunch bags on my counter to ferment.

You will want to leave the cabbage on your counter for at least a week. You can then open a jar and test a piece with a clean fork. You will know it has fermented if the jars fizz when you open them. The cabbage will have a sour (yummy sour, not gross spoiled sour) taste. You can ferment the jars longer if you like a more sour taste. When the cabbage is to your liking you can put them in the refrigerator.

I like my cabbage with over easy eggs each morning. This would be really good on pork chops if you like pork. Have any other ideas as to what to pair your fermented cabbage with? Please share in the comments below. I am new to the sour kraut world.