What Is Kraut-chi?
A fermentation experimentalist describes his hybrid sauerkraut-kimchi dish, and offers a few fermentation tips.
The following excerpt is adapted from The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz.
Kraut-chi is a word I made up, a hybrid of sauerkraut and kimchi, the German and Korean words for fermented vegetables that we have adopted into the English language. The English language does not have its own word for fermented vegetables. It would not be inaccurate to describe fermented vegetables as “pickled,” but pickling covers much ground beyond fermentation. Pickles are anything preserved by acidity. Most contemporary pickles are not fermented at all; instead they rely upon highly acidic vinegar (a product of fermentation), usually heated in order to sterilize vegetables, preserving them by destroying rather than cultivating microorganisms.
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“For pickles, fermentation was the primary means of preservation until the 1940s, when direct acidification and pasteurization of cucumber pickles was introduced,” writes Fred Breidt of the USDA.
My vegetable ferments are usually concoctions that do not fit any homogeneous traditional ideal of either German sauerkraut or Korean kimchi. But of course, everything I’ve learned about sauerkraut and kimchi reveal that neither of them constitutes a homogeneous tradition. They are highly varied, from regional specialties to family secrets. Nonetheless, certain techniques underlie both (and many other related) traditions, and my practice is a rather free-form application of these basic techniques rather than an attempt to reproduce any particular notion of authenticity.
The Art of Fermentation
In a nutshell, the steps I typically follow when I ferment vegetables are:
- Chop or grate vegetables.
- Lightly salt the chopped veggies (add more as necessary to taste), and pound or squeeze until moist; alternatively, soak the veggies in a brine solution for a few hours.
- Pack the vegetables into a jar or other vessel, tightly, so that they are forced below the liquid. Add water, if necessary.
- Wait, taste frequently, and enjoy!
Of course there is more information and nuance, which the rest of this chapter explores, but really, “Chop, Salt, Pack, Wait” is what most of it amounts to.
This excerpt is adapted from The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz (Chelsea Green, 2012), and is reprinted here with permission of the publisher. For more information, visit www.chelseagreen.com
Meet the Writer
About Sandor Ellix Katz
Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist and author of The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012) in Nashville, Tennessee.