How long does sauerkraut keep

Ensur­ing the right con­di­tions for sauer­kraut is no easy task. We have pre­pared a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions, fol­low­ing which you can ensure the longest pos­si­ble shelf life of win­ter prepa­ra­tions and always have ingre­di­ents for soups, first and sec­ond cours­es, pies, pan­cakes and meat­balls on hand.

How long is sauerkraut edible

The shelf life of the prod­uct is affect­ed by its stor­age con­di­tions:

1. If it is kept in the refrig­er­a­tor in a her­met­i­cal­ly sealed jar, then the shelf life is up to 2 months.
2. In an open jar in the refrig­er­a­tor, the prod­uct must be con­sumed with­in 10 days.
3. In the freez­er in a plas­tic bag, cab­bage is stored for up to 7–8 months. You can pre-arrange the prod­uct in small plas­tic bags in por­tions so that each time you defrost only the amount of prod­uct that is real­ly need­ed to pre­pare a par­tic­u­lar dish.
4. In a cel­lar in oak bar­rels at opti­mal tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty, the shelf life of the work­piece reach­es 8 months.

It is impos­si­ble to keep cab­bage warm — oth­er­wise it will quick­ly turn sour, and it will be impos­si­ble to use it. How­ev­er, heat is nec­es­sary for the prod­uct in the first stages, dur­ing fer­men­ta­tion — if the tem­per­a­ture is less than +10 ° C, then this process will stop.

The opti­mal humid­i­ty for stor­ing the work­piece is from 85 to 95%.

Sauerkraut Storage Tips

Use our cab­bage stor­age tips to ensure the longest shelf life:

1. For extend­ed win­ter stor­age, we rec­om­mend stock up on heads of late and late-ripen­ing vari­eties of veg­eta­bles that caught the first frost. Such cab­bage con­tains a suf­fi­cient amount of sug­ar and starch, which makes it crispy and tasty.
2. If the head is small and / or putre­fac­tive spots have appeared on its sur­face, it can­not be used for fer­men­ta­tion.
3. It is bet­ter to keep the veg­etable in a cool room.where the sun does not reach. You can not leave blanks under its direct rays — they lead to a dark­en­ing of the cab­bage.
4. If the con­tain­er is kept in a room with a tem­per­a­ture of +1 to +5 °Cthen a brine is need­ed over the chopped bil­let, oth­er­wise the top lay­er will need to be thrown away, as it will dete­ri­o­rate.
5. Dish­es for stor­ing cab­bage must be com­plete­ly ster­ile. Addi­tion­al­ly, you can wash the con­tain­er, put dill or hon­ey­suck­le inside, then pour boil­ing water over it. The greens will kill pathogens, which will pre­vent mold from spread­ing inside.

Atten­tion! If you chop the pour into large squares up to 5 cm in size, and not into stan­dard thin straws, then you will ensure the max­i­mum safe­ty of vit­a­mins and use­ful trace ele­ments.

If cab­bage is stored in enam­eled dish­es, then cracks and chips on it run the risk of reduc­ing the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct, as well as reduc­ing its shelf life. Alu­minum saucepans can­not be used for pick­ling, as they are prone to oxi­da­tion: the prod­ucts in them are unsafe for health.

Plas­tic uten­sils, when in con­tact with acid, often release impu­ri­ties that can be harm­ful to health.

If pos­si­ble, pack the cab­bage in medi­um-sized con­tain­ers. Sauer­kraut almost does not tol­er­ate tem­per­a­ture changes. If you con­stant­ly trans­fer a large con­tain­er from a cold to a warm room in order to get a lit­tle prod­uct for prepar­ing the next dish, then there is a risk of com­plete­ly spoil­ing the prod­uct, since the whole work­piece will fer­ment.

If you under­stand that any rules were not fol­lowed when prepar­ing win­ter prepa­ra­tions, then it is bet­ter to throw away such cab­bage — oth­er­wise there is a chance of poi­son­ing.

How to increase the shelf life of products

If you add cran­ber­ries or lin­gonber­ries to the work­piece, then the acid of these berries will increase the shelf life of the prod­uct. The same applies to acetic acid. It is enough to add quite a bit of acid to the con­tain­er: it will extend the shelf life and at the same time will not spoil the taste of sauer­kraut.

Use reg­u­lar veg­etable oil. Pour oil over the work­piece so that it forms a thin film on the top of the prod­uct. The film will pre­vent oxy­gen from get­ting inside, and also stop the fer­men­ta­tion process.

You can add more salt to sauer­kraut, but this prod­uct is no longer suit­able for sal­ads.

Also, from time to time, you can add gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar to the cab­bage. Microor­gan­isms will grad­u­al­ly turn it into vine­gar. Sug­ar can be replaced with hon­ey.

For 5 kg of forks, the fol­low­ing ingre­di­ents are need­ed:

1. car­rots (3 pcs.);
2. salt (90 g);
3. sug­ar (80 g);
4. bay leaves (5 pcs.).

The pro­ce­dure will be as fol­lows:

1. Remove green leaves and stalks from the heads, wash and peel the car­rots.
2. Chop the cab­bage in the form of straws, grate the car­rots on a large grater.
3. Trans­fer the veg­eta­bles to a large bowl, add the spices and mix all the ingre­di­ents thor­ough­ly.
4. Place a large plate and a plas­tic bucket/jar of water on top.
5. Leave the work­piece for 4 days in a warm room, the max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture is 25 ° C.
6. On the fifth day, wash the liter jars with hot water and deter­gent or bak­ing soda. Steam the glass con­tain­ers and place the cab­bage inside. The min­i­mum dis­tance from the neck of the bot­tle to veg­eta­bles is 3 cm.
7. Take a large saucepan and line the bot­tom with a tow­el. Put jars in a saucepan, pour warm water — up to the shoul­ders, and not to the top.
8. Place the saucepan over medi­um heat and low­er the heat to a sim­mer. The time for cook­ing cab­bage is 40 min­utes.
9. Take out the jars and roll them up with met­al lids.

Such cab­bage can be stored through­out the win­ter months in a dark cab­i­net.

Signs that the cabbage has gone bad

You can under­stand that sauer­kraut will have to be thrown away by the fol­low­ing signs:

1. rot­ten, nasty smell of a spoiled prod­uct;
2. the appear­ance of mold, foam, bub­bles in the upper part of the con­tain­er — this indi­cates that the fer­men­ta­tion process is dis­turbed;
3. tur­bid­i­ty.

Nor­mal brine should be clear no mat­ter how long it is stored. A cloudy solu­tion indi­cates that the cab­bage has dete­ri­o­rat­ed and should not be eat­en.

You can take a chance and try a small piece of cab­bage — you will imme­di­ate­ly deter­mine that the veg­etable is spoiled by taste.

At the same time, if of all the signs you noticed only the appear­ance of a small amount of mold, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion. Remove the plaque, dis­card the spoiled prod­uct, and then add the mus­tard pow­der to the mus­tard brine and mix all the ingre­di­ents well. The pow­der will act as an anti­sep­tic, which will pre­vent the occur­rence of mold in the future.

The rec­om­men­da­tions indi­cat­ed in the arti­cle will not work if you used any non-stan­dard recipes for mak­ing sauer­kraut — for exam­ple, added some apples. We rec­om­mend that you fol­low the basic rules — then the shelf life of prod­ucts will be max­i­mum.