Season's First Choucroute

Choucroute as a recipe is less important than the people you invite to eat it with. So thank you Linda, Tom, Larry, Valca, Pete and Steve for joining us last night. Since we were all basking in the glow of Tuesday's election results, this also constituted our Kumbaya moment.

Choucroute is a classic Alsatian dish of sauerkraut and pork products but there is no single agreed-upon way to make it. In other words, don't feel you have to make it exactly as written in your picture book of French cookery. My own method starts with home-made sauerkraut, shown in the photo at left beginning with about 10 pounds of shredded cabbage and six tablespoons of pickling salt packed firmly in a heavy plastic bucket so that the brine that leaches from the cabbage rises over the top. Give it a month or more to finish.

I then hop on the subway to Capitol Hill to select my pork products from the local butchers: a smoked hock or shank, bacon ends, smoked chops, fresh pork belly if they have it and Kielbasa sausage and bratwurst. Then I get back on the subway and head downtown to the Cafe Mozart where the deli case holds weisswurst and lots of other goodies. Being made of veal, I'm not sure how traditional weisswurst is in choucroute. But we love it and so do all our guests.

The day before the event, I saute a large onion with some bacon grease at the bottom of our biggest and heaviest cookpot. Cook it until it is soft and lightly caramelized. Then I grate two Granny Smith apples (with skins) directly into the pot before adding about six cups of fresh sauerkraut. I stir in a teaspoon of caraway seeds and about a dozen crushed juniper berries. Then I push my smoked ham hock deep into the middle of the kraut, pour in a half cup of Riesling wine and bring the whole mess to a boil. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting, cover the pot and let it simmer for an hour or more until the kraut is soft, aromatic and unctuous.

But for this particular choucroute, there was something special: sauerruben, or fermented grated turnips, that have been mellowing in our refrigerator for the last year and a half. They have an other-worldly nutty flavor to go with the mild tang of fermentation. I added about two cups of that to my pot as well. The results were beyond anything we've ever experienced from mere sauerkraut.

While the pot is simmering, brown all of your other meats in a heavy skillet with a little cooking oil or bacon grease. These can be wrapped and refrigerated until the following day, when the sausages, the bacon ends, the smoked chops and the pork belly are all packed into the pot to wait until the guests arrive, when we turn the heat up to a gentle simmer and let those kraut and wine juices steam everything for about 45 minutes.

We loaded the finished kraut and meat onto a big platter and served it buffet-style with roasted parsnips and carrots from the garden, mashed potatoes and homemade apple sauce. All of the guests had brought various German wines and the libations did flow. Conversation was lively, interrupted by exclamations over the turnip-infused kraut.

For dessert, we plated a stunning sweet potato pie made by my wife the baker from sweet potatoes grown just outside the kitchen window. More about that anon. I am still recovering.

Dark Days: Choucroute

"Choucroute" is simply French for sauerkraut. But it has also come to mean a dish marrying sauerkraut with some of our favorite pork products, such as garlic sausage, bacon, pig's knuckle or hock.

I've been looking forward to having friends over to sample some of my homemade kraut and Kielbasa sausages. But this is a compromised "Dark Days" meal, inasmuch as I am boycotting the local pork shoulder at $6.95 a pound in favor of the Niman Ranch pork sold at the local Whole Foods for half the price.

Niman Ranch pork is a cooperative arrangement of pig farmers east of the Rockies who have foresworn the confinement method of raising bland pigs crammed together indoors, the kind of pork engaged in by Smithfield, Hormel and the other industrial producers. Niman Ranch pigs typically are raised on small family farms where they get to root around outside and act more like real pigs.

I have yet to find a local source for the kind of processed pork products I like to include in my choucroute, such as smoked hock, salt pork, bacon ends. I see this as a real issue with local foods. If local pork is not processed into these traditional products, we are in danger of losing an important food legacy, no? Or perhaps I simply have not looked hard enough. I have tried bacon made by a local pig farmer, sold at one of the nearby farmers markets, and it was really bad. We continue to buy our bacon from Benton's out of Madinsonville, Tennessee.

The sauerkraut fermenting in my ceramic crock is about six months old. To turn it into a choucroute, I first cut an onion into thin slices lengthwise and sautee it at the bottom of a heavy Dutch oven in extra-virgin olive oil (bacon grease or lard might be more authentic, but I'm trying to be a wee bit healthier). Peel a tart apple such as Granny Smith and grate it into the pot. Stir in about 1 teaspoon coarse salt, then about two pounds sauerkraut, preferably homemade. Stir evertying together, add 1 teaspoon carraway seeds and a dozen juniper berries, crushed. Then pour in about 1/2 cup white wine. Nestle a smoked ham hock (again, from Whole Foods) or two in the kraut. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer for an hour.

White the kraut is cooking, you can brown your sausages. I like to use fresh (not smoked) Kielbasa and Weisswurst. In the past, I've added bacon ends, but the only source I know of comes from industrial pork. No more of that. This time I bought some salt pork at Whole Foods. It's not local, but for this mongrelized choucroute, it will have to do. Cut the salt pork into thick slices and brown those as well.

About a half-hour before serving, place the browned sausages and salt pork on top of the sauerkraut and continue cooking another half-hour. Arrange everything decoratively on a warm serving platter and garnish with chopped parsley. I served this with parsleyed boiled potatoes and a selection of mustards.
As preamble to the choucroute, I had set out a mushroom frittata, cut into small rounds, as well as some goat cheeses accompanied by our homemade green tomato-apple chutney and pickled green tomatoes from the garden. Spread goat cheese on a cracker, top with chutney, wash it down with one of the lovely Riesling wines furnished by my oenophile brother-in-law, Tom.

We finished our meal with a salad made of greens from our farmer friend Brett, tossed with clementines and a chili-orange vinaigrette. Follow with chocolate creme brulee and coffee.

Pork Guilt

For weeks I've been planning on a choucroute garnie with some homemeade sauerkraut that's been waiting in the fridge since almost a year ago. Yesterday I made the trek to Eastern Market on Capitol Hill for the pork part of the garnie and was suddenly overcome with a sinking feeling as I stood at my favorite vendor's meat counter.

The first thing you need to know about the famous Eastern Market is that it suffered a terrible fire last year that destroyed the roof. For months, the vendors were out of business until a temporary facility that looks a little like a circus tent was erected across the street. In fact, there's a lot to be said for the new digs. There's more light, and all the facilities are new and gleaming.

But now we come to the second thing you need to know, and that is it's been almost a year since I purchased pork at Eastern Market. In that time, the ground has shifted where our outlook on the meat industry is concerned. And as I stood there contemplating a meat display as long as a battleship, I realized I had never before inquired where my favorite vendor got his pork.

So this time I asked and heard the words I dreaded most: Smithfield, Iowa, North Carolina. In other words, my favorite vendor was and always has been a devoted, unabashed link in the confinement pork industry. From the pork chops and whole loins, to the hog maws, tails and chitterlings--the entire display is testimony to everything about the meat industry that the sustainable food movement (us included) is railing against.

As the owner gathered up my order--a pound of bacon ends, two smoked pork chops, a smoked shank, a whole shoulder--I mentioned a bit awkwardly that some people now are looking for more local products. But the words fell to the floor like lead weights. It was if he never heard me. "These chitterlings here come from Denmark," he said proudly.

I quickly changed the subject to when he thought the work on the old market building might be finished.

So is this feast the equivalent of a drunk's last bender before going on the wagon? As I looked at the incredible array of meats--all from the evil Big Ag empire--I couldn't help wondering where one would find anything similar using the local, sustainable products that are now de rigeur. In fact, it is rare enough to find a local butcher. But you'd have to go back to another century to find local pig turned out this way, in such glorious diversity. Or maybe another part of the country. Or maybe another country.

There is, in other words, a huge adjustment still to be made.

So it was with feelings of guilty and sadness and nostalgia all mixed together that I constructed this choucroute garnie. First trimming the pork shoulder--removing the skin, the fat, the bone--and turning it into big, fat links of fresh Kielbasa sausage. Then browning five of the Kielbasa and three weisswursts I had purchased and two smoked pork chops.

Then, at the bottom of a large, heavy pot, lightly brown with the lipid of your choice one whole onion, peeled and thinly sliced lengthwise. Peel a Granny Smith apple and grate it directly into the pot. Add about six cups fresh sauerkraut and a cup of white wine. Stir in 1 teaspoon carraway seeds and a dozen crushed juniper berries. Nestle the smoked pork shank into the kraut along with the bacon ends, cut into thick slices. Add the pork chops and on top of everything the sausages.

Bring the pot to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour. When the time comes, arrange the choucroute on a warm platter and serve with boiled potatoes, tossed with butter and parsley, and perhaps some glazed carrots. Our friends Helen and Jeff came over to help us eat our choucroute and Helen brought a wonderful loaf of bread she had made. We drank cold ale, but an Alsatian Riesling is traditional.

Enjoy, and try not to think too much about where your pig came from.

Meet My New Crock

Until now I've been making my sauerkraut in a plastic bucket. But my wife recently saw this large ceramic crock on deep-discount sale at the kitchenwares store and snagged it, making my sauerkraut operation a good deal classier.

The crock is about 3-gallon size, plenty of room for the 10 pounds of cabbage I had in mind for a new batch of sauerkraut. The process is remarkably easy and results in a freshly fermented kraut that you can eat very simply as is, or as the basis for an elaborate choucroute. There is little resemblance between freshly fermented kraut and the processed stuff that comes out of a can. Some people swear by the brine as a health tonic, since it is swarming with beneficial bacteria, just like yogurt.

The formula is as follows: cut a full head of cabbage into quarters and trim away the outer leaves and the tough core (toss these in the compost pile). Shred the cabbage as you would for a cole slaw. I just slice it up with a serrated bread knife. For every five pounds of shredded cabbage, toss with 3 tablespoons pickling salt or fine sea salt--you must use a salt free of iodine or chemical additives.

Place the salted cabbage in a heavy-duty plastic bucket or ceramic crock. With your balled-up fist, press the cabbage down as tightly as possible. Already the salt will be drawing liquid out of the cabbage. Over the next 24 hours, you'll want the cabbage completely submerged so that it is not exposed to oxygen and any airborne pathogens.

Next day, cover the cabbage with a tightly-fitting ceramic plate or non-resinous piece of wood and press down so that the weight is submerged in the brine. Weigh this down with a heavy object, or a large plastic container filled with water. Cover the whole thing with a tea towel to keep out dust.

What happens next is, a progression of bacteria already present on the cabbage will begin to nosh on the kraut, creating a lactic acid that repels spoiling kinds of microbes. This lacto-fermentation process I find best takes place at a temperature around 68 degrees (Fahrenheit). See if you don't have a dark, quite place in the house where the bacteria can do their work in peace. It will take four to six weeks, typically. Taste the kraut occasionally for doneness, and just scrape away any mold that might form around the edges.

You can now eat the kraut as you like. Storing it in the refrigerator will slow the fermentation process, but the bacteria are still alive until cooked. I still have sauerkraut in the fridge that I made nearly a year ago. Looking into my crystal ball, I see the fuzzy outlines of a choucroute in our near future....

The Gentle Art of Re-Heating

I know many of you are anxious to hear the results of the parents dinner last night.

It was a huge success, with many raves for a menu representing the work I've been doing with the kids in my "food appreciation" classes.

Besides the kids themselves, the stars were the fresh Kielbasa sausages that the kids helped me fill over the last couple of days, plus a sauerkraut that I had fermented using our bucket method and braised with onions, apples, juniper berries and carraway.

The kids have been learning to peel vegetables. Lots of peeling going on. Se we also served boiled parsleyed potatoes and glazed carrots with dill. And for desert, highlighting our exploration of certain whole grains, oatmeal cookies with dried fruits and chocolate chips.

I had been told to expect 40 for dinner, so I made enough for 60, knowing how these things go. The trick is not so much making the food. No, that's the easy part. The challenge was getting the food hot again without overcooking it once we arrived at the school.

My wife and I have spent some years in the catering business and catering is all about reheating food. Many wedding guests may not realize that their fabulous dinner was actually cooked two days ahead of time, then merely brought up to serving temperature at the appropriate moment.

Yet that's why caterers get paid the big bucks. Most of the food, especially the side dishes, are prepared well in advance then re-heated with sterno in tall aluminum proofing boxes. The proofing boxes roll of the catering trucks and cans of sterno are arranged on baking sheets and lit under the food.

Some items, such as expensive beef tenderloin, chicken breasts and fish filets, are too delicate to cook and reheat. More often than not, they've been "marked" on a hot grill to give the food a chic restaurant look. Then the cooking process is completed over the sterno.

Imagine the value of a chef who can finish off, say, 30 whole beef tenderloins to perfect medium-rare doneness at exactly the right moment to serve a hall full of wedding guests? The thought is almost frightening, yet this time of year it's done all the time.

Now we cater our own dinner parties at home. Meaning, no crazy chefs running around trying to cook a la minute, scaring the guests. We have the meal cooked ahead so we it can just warm in the oven while we enjoy a cocktail and gab with our friends.

The food for last night's event had been cooked and refrigerated in the kind of big aluminum chaffing containers shown in the picture above. But we didn't have any proofing boxes at the school where we were serving dinner. Our heat source was the school's stove and range top.

How then to get all this food hot enough to serve at the moment our parents were ready to eat?

That's where my wife, the catering chef, comes in.

The method we used was to separate some of the denser and colder items, such as the sausages and the potatoes, into separate containers. I had not taken any chances with the pork sausages. They were already cooked through, but they were really cold after being in the fridge overnight.

My wife placed two containers of sausages in the oven, set at 350 degrees. She put one container of potatoes, dressed with some butter, in a small warming compartment on the side of the oven. That left containers of sauerkraut, carrots and more potatoes to heat. We accomplished that on the range top, setting the aluminums over four burners plus a full-sized griddle.

You just keep a close eye on the food on top of the range, stirring often to make sure nothing burns.

When the time came to serve, we had an assembly line ready at our food prep tables. The kids lined up to take plates of food and deliver them to their parents. Within a few short minutes, everyone was eating.

And if you listen closely, you can hear the sighs and the moans over our delicious food.

"My son won't eat the Kielbasa I make at home," said the school nurse. "But he came home this week and said he'd eaten the best Kielbasa ever."

You'd be surprised what kids will eat when they make it themselves.

Springtime mit Kraut

I know what your thinking: This is no time to be making sauerkraut. Enough cabbage! Enough of winter vegetables! Bring on the fava beans, the asparagus, the artichokes!

Ya, ya, ya. I know all that. Thing is, I'm on a mission. In about a month, I have to feed all the parents of the kids I teach in my "food appreciation" classes. Including the kids and the after-school staff, that's about 100 people. And the food needs to be somehow representative of the things we've already made in the class. At least I think it should.

In fact, I just got to the bottom of the huge bucket of sauerkraut the kids and I made in class last December. Now, that was a sauerkraut! It had reached perfect ripeness, just sitting in a back room of my house. Not only did we serve it in class (with sausage), but I had enough to cover at least two choucroute-style dinner parties. And I still have two eight-cup containers full in the fridge.

All it cost me was the price of the cabbage and a little bit of salt. Nature does the rest.

Personally, I could eat this kind of sauerkraut--naturally fermented, with live bacteria in it--all year long. I do understand the urge to leap into spring. But there's just something terribly exciting about pulling back the kitchen towel that covers my bucket of kraut and tasting the sauerkraut as it morphs into delicious ripeness. I've never made any bad sauerkraut, but I do contend that I am getting better at it. This last batch was the best ever.

The point is, I thought that while I'm making a new batch, I'd show you how simple it is. You will need a kitchen scale, a couple of big bowls (preferably stainless), five pounds of cabbage (that's two or three heads, usually), some pickling salt or fine sea salt, and a clean, heavy-guage plastic bucket (everyone will tell you a "food grade" bucket, which you might be able to get at a restaurant or your local deli, but I simply buy a new bucket at the paint store.)

Here's what you do:

Put your stainless bowl on the kitchen scale and adjust the reading to "zero." Start thinly slicing the cabbage. I usually do this by hand with a serrated knife. Divide the head in quarters and remove the core and any damaged outer leaves. Then lay the quarter on its side and slice into widths of about 1/4-inch. Add the sliced cabbage to the bowl until you have, say, 2 1/2 pounds. Put the cabbage in a second bowl (I use a restaurant-style plastic bus tub) and begin tossing with salt. The formula is, 3 tablespoons salt for every 5 pounds cabbage.

As you finish salting batches of cabbage, transfer it into your bucket (I use a 5-gallon bucket, but a smaller bucket would be perfectly adequate depending on how much kraut you are making. You can also purchase ceramic crocks that are made specifically for sauerkraut.) Press the cabbage down firmly--as hard as you can--using your balled fist as illustrated in the photo above.

Continue this process until you have all of your cabbage salted and pressed in the bucket. What I made yesterday was 20 pounds of cabbage to feed about 100 persons, or roughly 3 ounces per person, which is plenty. That represents a little over 22 pounds of cabbage that I purchased at the store, minus the cores and damaged leaves.

Place the bucket in the coolest spot in the house, maybe in the basement, and cover it with a clean dish towel. Take a look at it the following day. There should be plenty of liquid in the bucket now, representing all the water the salt has pulled out of the cabbage. This is the brine in which the beneficial bacteria grow that ferment the cabbage, turning it into sauerkraut. Brine is good.

Note: you do not need to add any bacteria to your kraut. The bacteria are already present on the cabbage when you buy it at the store and in the atmosphere all around us. That's why this is called "wild" fermentation. And it is, don't you think? Wild?

Now you just need to find a heavy ceramic plate, or cut a piece of non-resinous wood, such as ash or oak, that will just fit inside the bucket. Press this down until the brine comes over the top of the plate or the wood and weigh it down with a heavy non-reactive object, such as a plastic jug filled with water. It is very important to keep the cabbage submerged in the brine and free of oxygen to avoid spoilage.

If for some reason there's not quite enough brine, just add some water. I've never had to add water.

Replace the dish towel over the bucket and monitor your kraut every few days. You may see a layer of mold growing in there. Not to worry: just scrape it away. You should have finished sauerkraut in a couple of weeks or a month or perhaps more, depending on the ambient temperature. The bacteria like a temperature around 68 degrees. A lower temperature just slows them down. A higher temperature speeds them up. I prefer a slightly lower temperature to give the cabbage a good, slow aging--one reason why its easier to make the sauerkraut in winter.

When the sauerkraut tastes right to you--or tastes the way you like it---you can serve it up or store it in the refrigerator. It will keep for months.

Homemade Sauerkraut & Choucroute Garnie

I know I am not the only Washingtonian who heaves a sigh of relief when winter finally arrives south of the Mason-Dixon line. Summers here are notoriously muggy, besides which I grew up in Chicago, so I have a certain amount of ice water in my veins. Shirt sleeves in December just seem unnatural to me. There should be frost on the pumpkin at least by Thanksgiving. These kinds of traditions are fading because we no longer recognize the conventional seasons. Thanks to cheap fossil fuels (for how long?), we can now get virtually any kind of fruit or vegetable any time of year. It's just that I don't want to be eating tomato salad in January. I think eating "fresh" asparagus when there's snow on the ground is an abomination. No, when icicles are hanging from the gutters I want to be eating root vegetables (perhaps my rutabaga souffle, but that's another story). I want to be roasting beets, or cooking onion soup. Or, better still, simmering a pot of my own fermented sauerkraut. This time of year, we are trekking to the butcher's for all the fatty and smoked pieces of pork that become the protein component of an unctuous, scandalously calorie-rich batch of choucroute garnie--featuring, of course, the sauerkraut that has been aging ever so quietly in the back of my house since about two months ago.

Perhaps you have an older relation who remembers grandpa feeding a smelly old barrel of kraut in the basement. I use a five-gallon bucket from the paint store. I slice maybe 30 pounds of garden-variety cabbage, mix it with pickling salt, pack it into the bucket, cover it with a ceramic dinner plate and--voila--in matter of weeks, and courtesy of some friendly bacteria that happen to be living on the cabbage when you buy it at the store, your kraut has fermented into the briny, vegetable equivalent of caviar. Green gold. Brassica for the gods...

I know you're thinking that creating delectable sauerkraut must be more complicated than I am making out, and I swear it is not. No fancy chemicals, no elaborate formulae, no expensive equipment. You're probably also thinking, Fermentation? Isn't that how you make beer? Or wine? Well, yes. And cheese. And yogurt. Fermentation is really just a food preservation technique that doesn't involve cooking, or canning, or refrigeration (although you may want to refrigerate your sauerkraut once it reaches the desired state of ripeness, to slow down the fermentation process. But more about that anon.) What fermentation really is rot in progress. Bacteria or other micro-organisms are munching away on the food in question (grapes, hops, cabbage, milk) and decomposing it until it reaches the point where we humans want to eat it. Just about every culture has a taste for something rotten. Cheese and sauerkraut in Europe. Yogurt in Central Asia. Miso in Japan. Kimchi in Korea. Sourdough bread in San Francisco? Need I say more?

Sadly, most of the sauerkraut we consume these days is not alive, or even that tasty. It's been made in a factory, then pasteurized for safety reasons. Not only is the vibrant flavor of freshly-made sauerkraut missing, but the live bacterial cultures have been killed off. Some people attribute health benefits to those bacteria, similar to the healthful benefits of yogurt containing live cultures. At a store called Morse's in Waldoboro, ME, the parking lot is jammed on weekends with people seeking jugs of fresh broth from the sauerkraut that owners David Swetnam and Jacquelyn Sawyer make on site. My wife and I paid a visit three years ago while on vacation in Maine. Waldoboro is in the middle of a German settlement and Morse's has been making sauerkraut since 1918. It's not a huge operation, but one of the few in the country that sells and ships fresh sauerkraut with live cultures. (Check their website at http://www.morsessauerkraut.com/. They operate a small restaurant on the premises and a large deli department with a hefty selection of sausages, cheeses, packaged goods.) Watching David Swetnam run locally grown cabbage through his shredding machine, then salting big vats to begin the fermentation process, convinced me this was something I should be doing at home.

It does help to have a guide. And mine continues to be a book called Wild Fermentation by one Sandor Ellix Katz. Katz gives instructions for fermenting all kinds of foods, from yogurt to Andean corn-chewed beer. As Katz explains, the fermentation of sauerkraut starts with bacteria that are already present on the cabbage--hence wild--but really involves a succession of micro-organisms, a kind of tag-team effort that keeps good bacteria working on the cabbage in its brine, and keeps harmful pathogens out. In the beginning, Coliform bacteria take the lead. They produce an acid that is more hospitable to Leuconostic bacteria. As the brine solution becomes even more acidic, a third team member--Lactobacillus--assumes control. The good new is, you don't have to be concerned with any of this. As long as you season the cabbage with a more or less correct amount of salt at the beginning, and keep the cabbage submerged in its brine (remember I mentioned a ceramic dinner plate?), everything will be fine. At the elementary school where I teach "food appreciation," I recently made sauerkraut with kids as young as four. To illustrate the process, I made signs that hung around their necks indicating the three different kinds of bacteria. We made a circle representing the interior of the bucket. Then we had a second group of kids representing harmful pathogens trying to get inside the bucket, but being deterred, of course, by our tag-team of good bacteria. I think if four- and five-year-olds can make sauerkraut, it's a good bet you can, too.

For a small batch of sauerkraut, you'll need either a ceramic crock made specifically for this purpose (available on-line) or a heavy-duty plastic bucket. All authorities advise using a "food-grade" plastic bucket, meaning something that wont degrade or leach chemicals into your brine. I bought mine at the paint store. Chop five pounds of cabbage into shreds. Mix with three tablespoons fine sea salt, or pickling salt--mainly, a salt that has no chemical additives. If using a ceramic crock, load it according the manufacturer's instructions. If using a plastic bucket, pack the cabbage into the bucket very firmly. I lean on it with a clenched fist, a handful of cabbage at a time. When all of the cabbage has been tightly packed, cover the bucket with a clean dish towel. Check the bucket the following day. The salt should have drawn enough liquid out of the cabbage to create a brine at least to the top of the cabbage. Here's where you take a heavy ceramic plate that just fits inside the bucket (or a piece of non-resinous wood, such as ash, cut into a circle), press the plate down firmly until the brine flows over the top of the plate. Now you need to weigh the plate down. I use an eight-cup plastic container filled with water. You can also use a jug filled with water. If for some reason there is not enough brine in the bucket, add some water. Cover the bucket with the dish towel and store in a cool, dark place.

The bacteria seem to like a temperature around 68 degrees. Warmer, and they will make sauerkraut faster. Cooler, and they slow down. Check the bucket periodically. If you see mold or slime forming, not to worry. Just remove the plate, clean it off, wipe down the edges of the bucket, and resume fermentation. Don't be afraid to taste the brine or the kraut. It's done when it reaches your estimation of perfect sauerkraut.

Now, what to do with all that sauerkraut? Well, you can eat it as is. You will be getting the benefit of all those bacteria we discussed earlier. Or you can cook the sauerkraut as a side dish, or as the basis for a magnificent choucroute garnie. My method of cooking kraut is as follows:

2 tablespoons bacon grease or canola oil

1 large onion, peeled and sliced thinly lengthwise

1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and roughly grated

2 large cloves garlic, smashed then chopped fine

6 cups fresh sauerkraut

8 juniper berries, crushes

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

In a heavy pot or Dutch oven heat the bacon grease or oil over high heat until it just begins to smoke. Add onion and lower heat to medium low. Stir in apple and cook until onion is soft, about 8 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook about 1 minute longer. Add sauerkraut. Stir in juniper berries and caraway seeds. Cover pot and cook gently over low heat for about 1 hour, or until the sauerkraut has turned a golden color and is very tender.

For a real feast, and to show off your sauerkraut making skills, I suggest a choucroute garnie. This is French for "sauerkraut with a whole lot of pig." Basically you want to find a butcher with an array for pork products. I look for such delectables as streak-o'-lean, smoked ham hock, smoked pork chops, "bacon ends" (big chunks of trimmings from slab bacon), a good garlic sausage such as Kielbasa, and possibly some bratwurst, depending on how hungry you and your guests are.

To start, saute about three thick slices of streak-o'-lean in the bottom of a big, heavy pot or Dutch oven until the meat begins to brown and give up some of its fat. Remove the meat and add some bacon grease or canola oil as needed to saute the onion, apple and garlic as in the previous recipe. Add the sauerkraut, the juniper berries, the caraway seeds, then return the slices of streak-o'-lean along with a ham hock and up to a pound of bacon ends. Nestle the meat into the sauerkraut. Cover the pot and braise over low heat for about an hour, or until the bacon pieces are very tender. Meanwhile, brown the sausages over high heat. Add those and a couple of smoked pork chops to the pot, stirring them gently into the sauerkraut, and cook another half-hour.

Turn the hot sauerkraut , meat and sausages out onto a big serving platter for your guests to admire. Serve with boiled potatoes tossed with butter and chopped parsley and some root vegetables (such as carrots, rutabaga, parsnips) sliced and roasted with some extra-virgin olive oil. Crack a couple of bottles of an Alsatian Riesling or Pinot blanc. Put a hearty mustard on the table, along with a basket of sliced country-style bread.