Sauerkraut with cranberries in a jar. Sauerkraut with cranberries: delicious recipe with photos. Pickling in brine

One of the most delicious and incredibly healthy vegetable snacks is sauerkraut (with cranberries, apples, lemon, carrots, cumin, honey). The ripening process allows you to preserve all the vitamins and minerals contained in the vegetable.

Additional components, for example, honey or cranberry, help enhance the vitamin effect, increase the shelf life of the product, improve taste and add subtle notes of delicate aroma. Sauerkraut with cranberries is often called a “vitamin bomb.” It contains a considerable amount of vitamin C, PP, B, macroelements and nutrients.

Classic recipe for sauerkraut with cranberries

This is perhaps the most popular and budget-friendly winter vegetable snack. It is made quickly, simply and from available ingredients.

Product List:

• Head of cabbage (medium size) - 1 pc.
• 220 g frozen (fresh) cranberries.
• Two kilograms of carrots (grated).
• Salt - 2 teaspoons spoons.
• Bay leaf - 3 pcs.
• Granulated sugar - 2 tbsp. l.

How to make sauerkraut

It is recommended to chop the vegetables quite finely using a special knife. You can use a coarse grater to chop carrots. Add salt and sugar to the cabbage. Mix the vegetables thoroughly with your hands, squeezing lightly. It is very important that the cabbage releases its juice.

Before adding to the dish, it is recommended to rinse the cranberries well, dry them and divide them into three or four parts. Place a small portion of the cabbage and carrots in a large bowl (preferably enamel or ceramic). Sprinkle one part of the berry on top and place a bay leaf. Thus, it is necessary to create several layers.

After all the cabbage has been placed in the container, cover it on top with a flat plate. We put oppression. This can be an ordinary three-liter jar or a slightly smaller pan filled with water. Cover the “structure” with a napkin or towel. Leave the sauerkraut and cranberries for five to six days.

It is very important that the cabbage is not left unattended during ripening. Once a day, be sure to pierce the cabbage with a long wooden skewer in order to release excess gases formed during the ripening process. As soon as a small foam begins to appear on the surface, this is an indicator that it is time for the gases to escape.

The finished sauerkraut with cranberries is put into small jars and stored in the cellar or refrigerator. Before serving, it is recommended to add onion half rings and a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to the vitamin-rich cabbage salad.

Sauerkraut with honey

Sauerkraut with cranberries for the winter, to which honey has been added, turns out to be extremely healthy and incredibly tasty. It not only enriches the snack with useful microelements and fruit acids, but also gives sauerkraut a surprisingly delicate fresh aroma. Note that when tasting, honey is practically not noticeable in the dish.

Ingredients

• Cabbage - 3 kg.
• Carrots - 200 g.
• Cranberry - 120 g.
• Salt - 25 g.
• Honey - 35 g.
• Peppercorns - 5 pcs.
• Bay leaf - 4 pcs.

Cooking method

For ripening, it is better to choose cabbage, which is a late-ripening variety. Such heads of cabbage will be distinguished by their hardness, density and richness of taste.

As in the previous recipe, the cabbage must be chopped very finely, and the carrots must be chopped using a coarse grater. Mix the vegetables and add salt and honey. Stir, remembering to lightly squeeze the cabbage. Add cranberries and mix more carefully so as not to damage the fragile berries.

There are no layers in this recipe. At the bottom of the dish in which you plan to ferment the cabbage, place bay leaves, sprinkle peppercorns and add a mixture of cabbage, cranberries and carrots. We install any oppression and cover with a towel.

As soon as we notice bubbles and foam on the surface, immediately remove the pressure, remove the foam and use a knitting needle (wooden skewer, sushi stick) to pierce the cabbage. The honey in this recipe allows you to shorten the fermentation process, so the cabbage appetizer will be ready to eat in just a couple of days.

Options

Popular websites and cookbooks offer a huge number of recipes for making sauerkraut. It should be noted that the cooking process looks almost the same in any of them. The only difference is the additional products that are suggested to be combined with cabbage.

The most popular option, which is called “classic”, our grandmothers’ recipe, is sauerkraut with carrots. A favorite option for many is sauerkraut with cranberries and apples. If you want something unusual, we recommend paying attention to the German version - cabbage with carrots and caraway seeds. For fruits and berries, in addition to cranberries and apples, you can use plums, cherries and lingonberries.

• Check the head of cabbage before purchasing. It should not be loose, but firm and at the same time juicy.
• The ideal option for sauerkraut is wooden, enamel dishes.
• Metal objects cannot be used as oppression.
• For additional flavor, you can add cumin, dill seeds, ground allspice, and cloves to sauerkraut. For a piquant and spicy taste, some housewives add hot chili pepper.

Many housewives often modify traditional sauerkraut recipes to suit their taste, adding different spices, fruits and berries. One of these delicious innovations is the cabbage-cranberry tandem. To make the appetizer perfect, you need to know the secrets of preparation. We will talk about this further.

Which cabbage is better to take?

From the many varieties of white cabbage, an experienced housewife can easily choose the one that is more suitable for sourdough or pickling. Mostly late-ripening fruits are used for these purposes.

They are in no hurry to remove them from the garden, waiting until the heads of cabbage become juicy and sugary. In addition, it is not recommended to store specimens selected for fermentation for more than 3 months.

Did you know? The ancient Greeks revered fresh heads of white cabbage as a symbol of sobriety and a clear mind. And all because this product was credited with the miraculous power to eliminate alcohol intoxication.

The fact is that late cabbage leads among other varieties in terms of the amount of natural sugars it contains. Namely, these substances contribute to the formation of lactic acid, due to which fermentation occurs.

The heads of cabbage should be whole and dense. It is important to remove the green leaves from them, down to the white cabbage head. If this is not done, the starter may have an unpleasant specific taste and smell, which is possessed by green foliage. There is no need to throw away such “waste”. Many housewives ferment them separately.

Video: how to choose cabbage for pickling

Depending on how you are used to chopping vegetables and in what containers you prefer to store them, you need to prepare the necessary equipment.

In this case, the following will be useful:

• wooden cutting board;
• shredder or kitchen knife;
• plastic food buckets with lids;
• large plastic basin (for food purposes);
• measure;
• wooden pointed stick;
• sterile rubber gloves for work.

Important! Vinegar and sugar make the fermentation process easier. But it’s better not to use them - the cabbage should reach its condition naturally.

List of ingredients

The classic version of sauerkraut involves the addition of grated carrots, which makes up about 10 percent of the total cabbage volume. But each housewife chooses for herself what she wants to diversify her preparations with. Some limit themselves to apples and plums, others to cranberries or lingonberries, and still others to ginger and garlic.

Our recipe consists of the following components:

• shredded cabbage - 5 kg;
• grated - 200 g;
• salt - 130 g;
• fresh berries - 100 g.

If desired, you can add seeds for flavor variety, or. Some lovers of spicy dishes also use ground red pepper.

Step-by-step cooking process

The fermentation process will not take much time. After you have prepared all the necessary products and tools, you can start cooking:

Important! Do not add onions to sauerkraut under any circumstances, as this ingredient causes rapid spoilage of the product..

Video: preparing sauerkraut with cranberries

What to serve with

Many people love the versatility and simplicity of sauerkraut. It is suitable as an appetizer for first and second courses, as well as an ingredient for preparing new culinary masterpieces. This component is necessary for solyanka, cabbage soup, borscht, pancakes, baked goods, vinaigrette, kulebyaki, dumplings and various stews.

In winter, housewives often use this preparation as a salad base. Moreover, they add vegetables, meat, and fish to them. Traditionally, sourdough is combined with mashed potatoes. But if you go beyond the canons, then it’s quite good to snack on stews, steamed vegetables and cereals with sauerkraut.

Some cooks bake sauerkraut, fry or boil it. But nutritionists strongly recommend consuming the product raw, since this way it retains its nutrients as much as possible.

Where and how much can you store

During fermentation, the product should be at a temperature of 18...20 degrees Celsius. And after five days, when foam stops forming on the surface and the brine becomes transparent, it can be transferred to the cold with an optimal regime of 0...+5 degrees Celsius.

This starter can be prepared in large portions, since if the necessary conditions are met, it will be stored for a long time without being spoiled or molded. The best storage for such preparations is the cellar, because there are appropriate temperature and humidity conditions.

In addition, cabbage is not exposed to sunlight. In apartment conditions, the ideal place for storage would be a refrigerator or balcony (in the latter case, it is important to take into account weather conditions).
For better storage of snacks, experienced housewives advise filling containers with cabbage mass so that the brine covers it - this will extend the shelf life. Indeed, in its bare form, ascorbic acid evaporates very quickly from the crushed mass.

Did you know? In ancient Roman markets, white cabbage appeared only on holidays and only in boiled form. To diversify the taste, the vegetable was often combined with different spices..

Sometimes young housewives do not know what is the best way to prepare a dish. Of course, three-liter jars are ideal for storage. And for the preparation it is better to take wide containers.

They can be enameled, plastic, metal, glass. The main thing is to correctly observe all storage conditions for products. Don’t forget to periodically visit the cabbage and check it for mold (this only happens in case of gross violations of the cooking technology and improper storage).

The cold season is coming, at this time the homemade preparations that the housewives worked so hard on all summer come into use, and the time for sauerkraut comes. In the summer, no one ferments cabbage; there is no point in this, because the range of fresh vegetables is quite large.

But in autumn and winter, sauerkraut goes great! Website website offers add cranberries to the classic sauerkraut recipe, as a result we will get a very successful combination of selected ingredients.

We serve the finished product with various meat or fish dishes, use it to prepare salads, stew it with meat, cook cabbage soup or borscht, and also add it to pies and dumplings.

Sauerkraut with cranberries: cooking process

You can safely increase the quantity of products by two or even three times, since the finished product is stored for quite a long time.

• Cabbage - 1 kilogram;
• Carrots - 100 grams;
• Cranberries - a small handful;
• Salt - 20 grams (half a tablespoon);
• A pinch of sugar;
• Black peppercorns - 3-4 peas.

1. Take good cabbage, remove the top leaves, cut it into thin strips, put it in a deep bowl.

2. Peel the carrots, wash and dry them, rub them with large shavings, and add the carrots to the shredded cabbage.

3. Add the required amount of salt, granulated sugar, and add peppercorns. At this stage, you can add brightness to the taste with cumin, cumin or other spices.

4. Now knead everything well, distribute the grains of salt and sugar evenly between the vegetables, work with your hands, apply a little effort. Add cranberries and mix everything again.

5. Using a masher or a strong man’s hand, compact the cabbage.

6. Place a clean saucer in a container with future sauerkraut, place pressure on the saucer in the form of a jar of water, keep in mind that the saucer should not completely cover the cabbage, the edges should remain open. One more thing, it is better to place the container in which our product is fermented in a larger container, since the liquid will be released and spilled on the table, therefore, in order to avoid such an embarrassment, take another container.

7. So, in this state, we leave the cabbage for 1 day and let it begin the fermentation process. Observe the foam that appears, remove it carefully with a spoon or slotted spoon. Pierce the cabbage with a wooden skewer to release the gas.

8. Leave the cabbage and cranberries for another 2 days, do not forget to pierce them periodically, then put the finished product in sterile jars and store on the shelf of the refrigerator or cellar.

9. Before serving, season the cabbage with chopped onions and vegetable oil. Bon appetit!

Have you already tried making sauerkraut with cranberries? Share in the comments!