A summer with a lot of rain made our cabbages huge.
One way to store your harvest for winter is to turn cabbages into sour kraut.
Turns out it is pretty easy!
I shredded 2 cabbages in my food processor. I also added 6 cloves of garlic, 4 carrots, and some peeled, fresh ginger.
Although the cabbage/kraut will ferment on its own from naturally occurring bacteria, I used a package of culture starter from a company called body ecology to guarantee the purity (and flavor) of my probiotic bacteria. https://bodyecology.com
I took 2 cups of the shredded cabbage and liquified this in a blender, adding the culture starter. I then poured the liquified mix over my shredded cabbage and carrots and then stirred until it was all bathed in a wet coating.
Next I transferred it all into jars. Just like wine making, you want to maintain the purity by preventing the veggies from picking up any foreign bacteria or yeasts.
In some jars I used special fermentation weights placed on top of the veggies to insure none were poking above the liquid. For others jars I used rolled up cabbage leaves packed in so tightly that they pressed down the vegies when I put the jar lids on.