Sauerkraut

I finished up my first batch of home made sauerkraut. It's been sitting on my counter in a glass cookie jar, slowly fermenting for the last 4 weeks. I used red cabbage, so it's a lovely fuchsia color due to the presence of lactic acid in the vinegar produced by the bacteria during fermentation. I had a bite of it last night, and it's not what I would typically call good tasting, but I couldn't stop eating it. It's great!

I took it to school this morning because we're doing acid base titration and the juice works as an indicator. It's fuchsia when acidic, purple when neutral, and then blue, green and yellow. The cool part is that it's not a gradual color change like adding food coloring. As you add a base to it it will simply suddenly transition. One kid had a piece of cabbage coiled up in a cup with a few drops of sodium hydroxide, and it ended up banded in those colors like a colorful snake, with sharp borders between the colors where it had come into contact with enough base to cause the color change.

I let the kids try some of the sauerkraut. Most of them came back for seconds. Most of them have never had it before. Sad. Next up, I'm going to be pickling some carrots and cauliflower and whatever else sounds good. I'm just going to wing it on seasoning the brew.