kraut

I’ve signed up to do the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge! You can learn more about it here. February’s challenge was preserving with salt, which is one of my favourite things. I hope to make a few recipes before the month is through! Today, however, I decided to try out an experiment, by fermenting a kraut made from sunchokes, the tuber also known as Jerusalem artichokes. 

My inspiration came from the simple fact that these showed up in my veggie box from Saanich Organics this week! And they didn’t make it into last night’s dinner. 

While a quick search turned up a couple blogs and websites with recipes for brined sunchoke pickles, I saw nothing about turning it into a simple salt-and-shredded-tuber kraut. So, I have no idea how this will turn out. Fun!

I decided to go with a 3% salinity, for the ease of math and because my house is so cold at this time of year that I don’t worry about mold growing. If it were summer, I’d likely bump that up to 5% or so, just to reduce the chances of gross stuff growing. 

It didn’t look too appealing once I’d packed it into the jar, frankly… The brine that developed was an unpleasant colour. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Sunchoke Kraut

300 g sunchokes, shredded (2 cups)

10 g coarse pickling salt (1 1/2 teaspoons)

Mix sunchokes with salt and pack firmly into a fermentation vessel; I used a mason jar with an airlock lid. Let sit at room temperature for at least a week… Maybe more? Stay tuned!