Finished Sauerkraut and Recipes

I need to bring you up to date on my homemade sauerkraut that I told you about back in December.

http://windyacresnaturalfarm.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-make-sauerkraut.html

I let the sauerkraut sit and ferment for about 3 weeks, tasting it every week.   I decided it was finished early in January and put it in jars to be stored in the refrigerator.  It made about 3 quarts.  Here is a picture of the finished sauerkraut.  This is a 2-quart jar of it.

  

I've made a couple of different recipes with it.  First, I made Reuben sandwiches which turned out very good.  All you need to make Reuben sandwiches is rye bread, pastrami, sauerkraut and thousand island dressing.  I buttered the bread and toasted it on each side in a skillet first.  Then I layered the pastrami and sauerkraut on top of one piece of bread and drizzled some thousand island dressing on top.  I topped that with the second piece of bread and then put the sandwich back in the skillet and warmed it on both sides.  Yum!

The other recipe was one that used bacon, sauerkraut, an apple and potatoes.  First, I fried a couple of pieces of bacon in my iron pot.  Then I added 2 tablespoons of flour to the drippings and cooked it for a minute or two until the flour started to brown, stirring often. 

Next, I added 3 to 4 cups of my homemade sauerkraut, 2 potatoes that had been peeled and cubed and a Granny Smith apple that had been cored and cubed.  Finally, I added about a cup of water and some chopped turkey bratwurst that I had cooked earlier in the week.  The recipe did not call for bratwurst and you could leave it out.  But, I thought it would be a good way to use up this leftover bratwurst, so I threw it in.

I let all this cook until the potatoes were tender.  The recipe called for caraway seed, but I didn't have any and left those out.  It did not seem to need any additional salt, so I just added some black pepper, although the recipe did not call for it.

This was a meal in itself.  So, I  served it alone, although it would have been good with some cornbread.

I guess you can tell from my description of this dish that I tend to take liberties with recipes. Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not.  In this case, it turned out pretty good.