Peel off outer cabbage leaves, and set aside for now as you may use them to cover your kraut later.

Cut cabbages in half and cut out heart of cabbage.

Clean carrots and cut off greens, or if they are fresh, you could add them to the kraut. Set aside.

Decide whether you want chunky, coarse shredded or extra fine kraut at this point. It is a personal preference, but each type requires different methods. We opted for coarse shredded.

If you are going for coarse, chop up all your cabbage with a strong and weighted knife to the bite size you want. You will have to manually “massage” and squeeze your cabbage to break it down in order to release the juices. You may not want to go this route but it is a satisfying process and hand workout nonetheless!

If you opted for a hand chopped kraut, at this stage you are going to going to massage the cabbage (with clean hands) until the cabbage has released a lot of its juices. The more of the juices you release, the less of a need there will be to add water and the stronger the flavour. If done properly, the slaw will be very juicy and when squeezed it will run the juices through your fingers.

If you are wanting a finer kraut, you can use a grater (watch those fingers!) or use a food processor to speed up the process. We used a knife to cut cabbage into manageable chunks then opted for a coarse shred in our food processor. It saves a lot of time if you have a larger food processor! The added bonus is that you will have little to no massaging to do, as your cabbage should already be very wet.

Once you’ve chopped/grated/processed your cabbage transfer to a large bowl.

Shred your carrots with a grater, or food processor and if you are using the greens, chop finely and add to the bowl.

At this point weigh another large bowl and zero your scale to 0 grams. Now add the slaw and weigh, writing it down.

Add salt and squeeze cut/shredded cabbage with hands, thoroughly mixing in salt until the juices are flowing and salt is well incorporated. Taste and decide at this point if the salt amount is just right, or too little. The kraut will have the same amount of salt when it is finished fermenting so now is the time to decide if you want a bit more to your taste.

Now you can add you herbs. Chop all your fresh herbs finely, add then add the seeds. Mix in well with your hands.

Set up your jars, making sure they are very clean.

Add your fresh salted kraut to the first jar (you usually need more than one if you are using more than one cabbage), making sure to press it down in the jar firmly until kraut is near the top by a few inches, with juices flowing over the kraut. You can use pieces of the cabbage leaf you set aside before you put the weight on.

Juices may overflow at this point, so wipe clean.

After this step, if you have a “burper” put it over the weight, and firmly screw on lid. If you don’t have a burper, cover with a clean piece cheese cloth and screw on carefully. You cannot screw on a jar lid as it could cause your ferment to explode!

Check in on ferments regularly every day or so and clean up any spills on the tray.

Two weeks is a safe bet for fermentation, but you can go up to a month. Once bubbling/action is done, you can switch to a clean lid for storage.