Is it possible to fix the brine in the cabbage. Why cabbage does not ferment, but rots - what to do: the right recipe. The benefits of sauerkraut

Alexander Gushchin

I can't vouch for the taste, but it will be hot :)

Content

Many experienced housewives are familiar with the process of sourdough cabbage, but even they, subject to all the rules, are faced with the fact that instead of sourdough, the preparation of vegetables acquires a musty smell. Why cabbage does not ferment, but rots and how to avoid failures in this process? Can a failed pickle be saved? How to choose the right vegetables and make delicious salting?

Why cabbage does not ferment

The fermentation process is a chemical reaction that results in the formation of lactic acid bacteria, thanks to which the cabbage reaches the desired degree of leaven. For the reproduction of these bacteria, it is necessary to observe a certain temperature in the room - from 17 to 21 ° C, the proportions of salt, the cleanliness of containers and vegetables. Hence the answer to the question: “Why doesn’t cabbage sour?”.

Why cabbage rots

It would seem that you did everything right, but instead of the expected starter, the product deteriorates - it becomes dark in color, a characteristic musty smell and an excessively sour unpleasant taste appear, instead of crispy, it becomes soft and slippery. You can find out why cabbage does not ferment, but you can go out. There are a number of reasons why the workpiece may deteriorate after cooking:

1. The right amount of juice did not stand out. Before putting chopped cabbage chips into a container, you need to mash it until the juice is released.
2. The quality and proportion of salt is not respected. In cooking, use rock salt or ordinary coarse salt, without additives. It is recommended to add 1.5-2 tablespoons of salt per 1 kg of vegetables.
3. “Suffocated” by fermentation gases. On the 3rd day, the contents of the jar must be pierced with a wooden stick to release the accumulated hydrogen sulfide (carbon dioxide). You need to do this at least 3 times a day.
4. Air access. Do not allow oxygen to enter the container with the product. You need to make sure that the brine completely covers it.
5. A fungus has sprung up. On the 2nd or 3rd day, foam appears on the surface of the workpiece. It must be removed until it disappears completely, otherwise it contributes to the formation of fungus, which leads to attenuation.
6. Use of unsuitable varieties. Late (winter) varieties of heads of cabbage are suitable for sourdough. They are harvested at the end of September - at the beginning of October.

How to revive sauerkraut

In some cases, pickles can be returned to the normal fermentation process and the product will again please you with a pleasant color and smell, and eating will become tasty and healthy. When the product has a musty smell, nothing can be done, so carefully monitor the process in the container from the moment you put the jar to ferment in order to save all the contents in time.

If it doesn't ferment

On the 2nd day, the prepared billet should begin to ferment, but upon examination it is clear that the process is not moving. In this case, if the cabbage does not ferment, but has a normal appearance and smell, you will need to follow a few simple steps to save her:

1. It is necessary to add a little sugar diluted with water to the container with the product - 2 teaspoons per 1 kg of vegetables.
2. Adjust the temperature of the environment where the cabbage is sour. She does not like cold environments and severe overheating. About what temperature it is necessary to maintain, it was said above.

If oversalted

The product can be reanimated when oversalting has occurred, and it has become tasteless. Ways to restore salt balance:

1. It is necessary to remove the contents from the container and mix with pre-prepared fresh vegetables (carrots, peppers, apples, etc.). They will absorb some of the salt and give spicy taste cabbage.
2. If the brine has already managed to stand out and cover all the cabbage chips, then you need to scoop it out with a tablespoon (but not all - only from above) and add boiled water at room temperature.

If these methods did not help reduce excess salt, do not despair. Such a preparation can be used in cabbage soup, borscht, dressing for gravy, fillings for pies, make a hodgepodge with the addition of meat and rice, which will draw off excess salt. Can be used as a separate dish, but after generously seasoning it vegetable oil and onions.

How to pickle cabbage

Sauerkraut - product natural fermentation containing a rich complex of vitamins and useful substances: Vitamin C and fiber improve bowel function, ascorbic acid strengthens the immune system. By the amount of minerals, this product is among the leaders. The sourdough process must be approached very carefully, taking into account all the features: the use of a certain variety, the selection of a container, the regulation of the temperature of the external environment where the container with the sourdough will be located.

Variety selection

An important role in the preparation is played by the variety of cabbage for pickling. It must be late varieties. Suitable varieties for obtaining juicy, sweet fruits are as follows: “Moscow late”, “Valentina F1”, “Kharkovskaya winter”, “Geneva F1”. These varieties are late-ripening and must be harvested in late September-early October. Such forks have a yellowish color, when cut, they secrete juice, the leaves of medium thickness are elastic with a sweetish aftertaste.

Proportions

For delicious sauerkraut, it is important to respect the proportions of the ingredients: salt, spices, carrots. Some people like to add hard apples, pomegranate seeds to fermentation. It's up to your taste. The main thing - you need to put salt 2 tbsp. spoons per kilo of product. Failure to comply with the proportions will lead to oversalting or undersalting of the product, and undersalting leads to rottenness. Vegetables should take up no more than 1/4 of the volume of cabbage.

Conditions

The container must be either glass or wood. Plastic and metal containers are contraindicated - plastic can give off its smell, and the metal will oxidize. Be sure to put a load or oppression in another way on top of the cabbage chips cooked and packed in a container. Oppression should not be stone and metal. Between oppression and leaven, you need to lay a pre-prepared linen or cotton fabric. If fermented in a bottle, then oppression is not necessary. Some housewives believe in omens and prepare fermentation according to the recommended days of the lunar calendar.

Video

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Is it possible to correct the situation when sauerkraut is oversalted, what to do with such an appetizer or just throw it away, and also why this can happen. Read about all this below.

The benefits of sauerkraut

Does it ever happen to you that not only at the sight or smell, but at the mere thought of sauerkraut, your mouth is literally salivating? Most likely, this is because the body lacks the substances contained in this product. Cabbage cooked by sauerkraut is very useful.

You should start with vitamin C. In this regard, sauerkraut simply has no equal, especially considering that the peak of its use falls precisely during the period of colds and seasonal infections. Vitamins working together groups B, A, E and K has a positive effect on the entire body, but primarily on the gastrointestinal tract.

It has been proven that regular consumption of fragrant snacks in food promotes the healing of wounds and ulcers of the stomach and duodenum.

Because of iodine, it is sauerkraut that is advised to be made an obligatory component of the diet of pregnant women, and thanks to the huge number of lactic acid bacteria, due to which it actually turns sour, there is an improvement in the intestinal microflora, there is a fight against dysbacteriosis.

Sauerkraut is not only delicious, but also very healthy.

It is also considered one of the most proven ways to prevent the development of cancer cells.

Why overshoot happens

Some of the housewives salt cabbage, strictly following the recipe, someone acts “by eye”. But bad things happen in both cases. Oversalting is most often obtained in the following situations:

• incorrect or unverified prescription;
• the recipe indicates the amount of coarse salt, and fine is used;
• salting time exceeded;
• the cabbage did not get enough air to ferment and did not ferment, but simply became salty.

Much depends on experience, but in any case, no one is insured and every housewife needs to know what to do if she salted cabbage during salting.

How to save cabbage

This situation is quite common, so there are many options.

Let's consider the main ones.

If it was not possible to get rid of excess salt, do not despair.

You can use such cabbage for cooking cabbage soup, borscht, vinaigrette, etc. You can also serve it as an independent snack, just generously season with vegetable oil and add more onions.

If you have salted sauerkraut, try cooking stew with it.

Surprisingly, for this recipe, the cooks specially salt it.

Meat (preferably pork) is cut into large cubes, fried over high heat, spread in a saucepan.

Onions and carrots are fried in a small amount of vegetable oil. Squeeze the cabbage, mix with the rest of the ingredients.

Add a little to the saucepan tomato paste, a little water, seasonings and fresh herbs. Simmer for approximately 30 minutes. Salt from cabbage will be evenly distributed and ready dish will become the highlight. Try it, you will like it.

And to avoid oversalting, take note of the following recommendations for salting cabbage:

• choose late varieties of cabbage;
• the fetus should weigh from 0.8 to 2 kg;
• do not use cabbage with signs of decay;
• before laying under the yoke, chopped vegetables must be ground until juice appears;
• so that the gases formed during fermentation come out, you can pierce the cabbage with a long knitting needle.

There are no hopeless situations, so do not be discouraged if you oversalted sauerkraut. Now you know what to do. Happy cooking! And finally, we offer you a proven video recipe for delicious sauerkraut.

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Sauerkraut is tasty, healthy, rich in vitamins, thousands of people love it. The time for her is winter. The blanks of this healthy vegetable autumn busy most housewives. Properly salted cabbage is a tasty and healthy addition to any second course, festive or everyday. But it happens that looking into a jar with an already finished product, you can find an incomprehensible mucus, similar, sorry, to snot. And the natural question arises, what to do? Is it possible to eat it and what kind of mucus is it in general?

What if sauerkraut is like snot?

There are several versions regarding this. Here are some of them.

1. It's about the cabbage. More precisely, in its chemical component, it is a search of nitrates and other harmful substances. Where did they come from? Everything is simple. When growing, the plant was treated with pesticides beyond measure, and this gave such a result. Outwardly, it is no different from the usual one and even looks better, but when you eat such a product, many side effects come out.
2. The reason for the appearance of snot in the brine may be improper salting. Experienced housewives know that to achieve the best result, cabbage is not enough just to chop and pickle. There are many small nuances, without which the result can be deplorable. First, it's salt. It is impossible not to add cabbage, but salting too will not benefit the taste. Secondly, again salt. Many argue about what kind of salt can and should be added during fermentation. Sea or iodized, coarse or non-iodized.
3. Another reason for snotty brine is the wrong storage location and temperature. Cans with the finished product should not be left warm, the brine on top will begin to bubble and acquire viscous consistency, similar to slime ().
4. Another seemingly insignificant, but in fact very important point. Proper tamping of shredded cabbage. Experienced housewives pay special attention to this process. It is important to tamp it well into the container so that no hollow space forms inside it.

Let's take a closer look at these points.

We will not talk about vegetables chemically poisoned by pesticides. It is unlikely that everyone in the kitchen has a chemical laboratory that helps to identify one chemical from several forks.

You can argue about the wrong salting for a long time and a lot, because how many people there are so many salting recipes. But there are a few general rules regarding salt. When salting, you need to use coarse, non-iodized salt. It does not contain clarifiers, dyes and other chemical elements that can cause unwanted reactions during the fermentation of vegetables.

Further . Experimentally proven by comparing two completely identical cans. The jar that was stored in a cool, dark place after salting did not give any undesirable reaction in the brine, unlike the one that was stored near a warm battery. In the latter, after a few days, mucus in the brine was found, and a pungent smell.

Ramming. This is an important point, although many, without paying due attention to it, get a “slippery” result. Slime appears in containers where the finished product is not compacted and contains air. Here, as with improper storage, there is a lightning-fast multiplication of acidic bacteria, which provoke the appearance of fermentation.

So is it possible to eat such cabbage in food?

There is nothing wrong with the formation of mucus, it will not cause harm to health, our aesthetic perception may suffer here, but this is already a subjective question, as they say, for an amateur.

Sauerkraut is considered healthy and delicious dish. It was also prepared by the Russian princes, as it well made up for the lack of vitamins in winter period. There are many rules for its preparation, but all methods adhere to the same standards. But sometimes, subject to all sourdough technologies, the cabbage turns out to be snotty. The brine is cloudy and at the same time there are incomprehensible slimy threads in it. How to avoid it?

Reasons for the appearance

Fermentation is considered the most acceptable way to preserve the vitamin composition. But why does snotty cabbage show up in the recipe? The main reasons lie in the following:

1. It is important to choose special varieties for sourdough. Late varieties with white heads are suitable. If you choose a vegetable with green leaves, then the taste of the dish will be bitter. Heads of cabbage should differ in density, juiciness and have small stalks. Sweet cabbage leaves give a good taste to fermentation.
2. If the cabbage is snotty, adding sugar may be a possible cause. He is able to provoke a slimy state.
3. The appetizer acquires a pleasant taste if fermentation occurs at a temperature of twenty degrees Celsius to 25 degrees.
4. It is important to rinse the container in preparation for sourdough. In addition, it is better to select dishes from natural materials, it is desirable to avoid plastic. Suitable wood or glass.
5. When the cabbage has become snotty, you need to check the quantity and quality of salt. Spices should not be small and it should not be finely ground. Coarse salt is suitable for pickling.

But the main reason that the cabbage turned out to be snotty is the non-compliance with the cooking technology. Excess air causes the growth of the wrong bacteria, resulting in an appetizer with an unpleasant odor and mucus appearing on the brine during scooping.

What can be done

How to save an already cooked dish? What to do with cabbage that has changed its appearance and quality? Do not immediately throw away the result of labor. You can’t eat such an appetizer in its natural form, but it can be used to prepare some dishes, for example, cabbage soup.

To use snotty cabbage for certain recipes, it should be washed well and well before starting to run in a dish.

Folk omens

There is an opinion that salting is best left to men and not to cook when the moon is full. This has not been scientifically proven, while many believe folk signs to avoid the appearance of snotty cabbage.

The most logical option is to rinse sauerkraut under cold water (and this option has already been suggested here). As I wrote in a deleted answer - sauerkraut goes perfectly with meat with fat or other food without acidity. The taste of meat will set off the sour taste of cabbage and you will get the perfect combination.

Another ingredient that will help remove the acid in sauerkraut is sugar.

Cabbage, too sour, can be made edible, you just need to put granulated sugar (it perfectly neutralizes acids), mix with cabbage so that the juice enters into a chem. reaction. Then it remains only to add dressing from vegetable oil with chopped onion. Add sugar to taste until the cabbage seems quite edible to you. The order is also important: sugar must be added before the oil, if it is added after the oil, mixing will not occur, the fat will not allow the sand to completely dissolve.

You can try to neutralize the acid with other products that are classified as alkaline. For example, cut a cucumber or fresh carrot into sauerkraut, add mushrooms. Below is a list of such products, experiment, maybe a new one original recipe invent, then share your experience:

Another popular way to remedy this situation is to stew the cabbage and use it as a dressing for sour cabbage soup.

You most likely overexposed the cabbage in a warm room, and it fermented, now you won’t be able to fix it. At a temperature of 22-25 degrees, the cabbage is fermented for 2-3 days. But you should not throw it away, it will make excellent sour cabbage soup. To remove excess acid, you can rinse and squeeze the cabbage before cooking. You can stew it with meat and potatoes.

The acid in sauerkraut can be softened a little, it will not be possible to remove it. Soften the taste with vegetable oil, thinly sliced ​​onion, which was previously made sweet.

You can resort to such a trick - put raw rice in gauze into the cabbage, sweet onions also in gauze, let stand for 3-4 hours, then remove the rice and onions, you can cook, you can throw it away. After that, put more sweet onions, but for eating with cabbage, pour vegetable oil, in case of acidified cabbage, take oil without sourness, for example, olive, sunflower, not refined.

Even a slight softening of the taste does not make cabbage less acidic for the stomach - belching or heartburn can still be from such cabbage.

You can eat this cabbage.

The situation will improve if the sauerkraut is soaked in cold boiled water (I think an hour is enough).

Or you can not soak, but cook from too much sauerkraut cabbage soup and borscht, for example.

It turned out so because favorable conditions were created for the development of, among other things, butyric acid bacteria. This happens against the background of the slow formation of lactic acid, most often due to the excess of the required temperature.

Acid is not so bad. Worse, if the cabbage turns rancid (this happens, on the contrary, due to the low fermentation temperature), this often remains only to be thrown away, and all the work goes down the drain.

The cabbage was simply kept warm. And it’s easier to fix it, you need to rinse the cabbage under water and add a little sugar, onions and sunflower oil. Your cabbage will be delicious!

The cabbage fermented in the heat, so it got acid. You can correct the situation only by washing with water in small portions just before cooking. For example, cook cabbage soup or salad, put in a bowl, washed under cold water. And let it be sour in the tank, someone likes it sour.

I don’t particularly like sauerkraut, because it is sour by defaultquot ;. But if, nevertheless, the cabbage turned out to be more vigorous than usual, you can treat it like salted pasta - rinse with some boiled water. Perhaps the cabbage will become fresher after this procedure.

If the sauerkraut turned out to be too sour, which is already impossible to eat, then I advise you to rinse it to remove the sourness.

Cabbage overexposed; in a warm room. The fermentation process took longer than expected, because of this, the cabbage fermented and became too sour, and most likely soft.

In order for the cabbage to be moderately sour, it is necessary to keep it at room temperature 20-22 degrees for about two and a half days. Then clean in a cool place.

It is almost impossible to correct this fact, because a certain chemical reaction has occurred, and it is irreversible. Therefore, try to find application for this product in other dishes, for example, in sour soup, try adding it to borscht and so on. You can just stew the cabbage. Just my opinion.