• December 7th, 2011
• 1 Comment

If you visit, live or just simply pass near Chicago enough you’ll have come to know sauerkraut.

Most likely its a staggeringly soggy clot of small cuts of muted cabbage drowned out by saltiness and/or “vinegaryness”. Here lies the problem. True, see: good, sauerkraut is something of a wonder. Real sauerkraut doesn’t contain any vinegar, it’s sourness comes from the wild fermentation of it’s sweet slices. At SPG we place halved, sliced, and chopped cabbage into our secret & tasty brine, and let it go. The sugars in the cabbage are released into the brine via osmosis and wild yeasts nibble on the sweet cabbage brine, more movement of liquids between the brine and cabbage later we end up with our heavenly sauerkraut.

It isn’t “going bad,” the lactic acid produced from it’s ‘turning’ (the wild yeast) creates that tasty ‘sharp’ flavor, which also happens to be thing that preserves it. There is a whole host great things in sauerkraut too, like a heap of vitamin C, and a host of lactobacilli – which aids in digestion. It also contains various cancer-fighting compounds including isothiocyanate and sulphoraphane. So it’s not only good but good for you!

Our local wild yeasts us a great favor and we reciprocate by keeping them fed with lots of food. The trick is to keep them alive for a constant and more full flavor, just like a sourdough starter. We have to feed them so our kraut will be tasty enough to have the SPG stamp on them.

Don’t usually like sauerkraut, love it the stuff from the can, or never tried it? Our kraut will add the perfect zesty sourness to any piece of encased meat, dress up a sandwich, stack nicely on top of pork – just be an all around awesome topping. Give it a go, available today in our grocery.

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