Beautiful beets from a friend’s garden went into our most recent batch of cultured veggies!

Fall is my favorite season.  Although I might say the same thing each time spring comes around.  But I really, really mean it about fall.  Love.

Part of what I enjoy is the bounty of fruits and vegetables being harvested at their peak, and frantically transforming them into delicious foods to savor through the winter.  We’re in cultured veggie frenzy over here, creating all kinds of sauerkrauty goodness from cabbages, beets, carrots, and assorted other delicious seasonal vegetables.

Here are a couple different ingredient combos you can choose from.  Please refer to my original Cultured Veggie post for instructions on how to prepare it all.  (And these amounts are purely guestimates – shift around for your taste and what you have the most of.)

Fresh Horseradish & Root Vegetables
Cabbage (3-4)
Golden Beets (6)
Celery Root (2)
Jerusalem Artichokes (who knows–couple handfuls)
Fresh Horseradish Root (ditto above, based on how spicy you like it)

“Sweet Tart” Cultured Veggies
Cabbage (3-4)
Green Apples (6)
Carrots (6)
Fresh Ginger (a couple healthy “fingers” of the root)

Good Ole’ Traditional Sauerkraut
Green Cabbage (7ish heads, depending on how big they are…)
1/2 – 1 tablespoons Caraway Seeds
1/2 tablespoon Juniper Berries

And my favorite mixed veggie recipe from the original post can be modified with whatever veggies are coming out of your local farms at the moment.  Here are some of the vegetables we’ve rotated in other batches… mix and match to your heart’s content:

Cabbage (red or green)
Carrots
Beets (red or golden)
Turnips
Collard Greens
Kale
Turnips
Rutabagas
Jerusalem Artichoke
Zucchini
Apples
Garlic
Ginger

The old instructions on salt (mix some tablespoons in water and add to crock) work just fine.  Nowadays, however, I tend to just sprinkle a tablespoon over every Cuisinart-full of veggies after dropping them into a big bowl. Mix and squish to get the juices going.  Once all the veggies are shredded and salted and squeezed, pack them into your crock, put the weights on top.  If they didn’t produce enough juices on their own to cover your weights, add a smidge of lightly salted water to cover.  Then call it good and let ’em sit for a week or two, until they’re to taste.  Jar up and enjoy for months!

Take advantage of fall’s bounty for your cultured veggie ingredients