The plain sauerkraut with heat in it. Everything here comes from the same leaflet by the Bodenseekreis agriculture office: its method allows garlic and spices in the jar, its golden sauerkraut adds a clove of garlic and ground pepper, and its fermented pumpkin adds a fresh hot chilli at the same 2% salt. Nothing else changes.
This is the only chilli ferment on the site, deliberately. No food safety authority we could find publishes a tested process for fermented chilli sauce, so we do not publish one. Chilli in a kraut is different: a little of it travels inside a process that has been tested. The reasoning is on fermenting vegetables safely.
- Wash the cabbage and set aside two outer leaves. Cut the rest medium-fine to fine.
- Halve the chillies lengthwise and scrape out the seeds, or keep them if you like it very hot. Cut them into thin strips. Peel and finely chop the garlic.
- Weigh all the vegetables together, chilli and garlic included, and use 2% of that weight in salt. About 920 g of vegetables takes 18 g.
- Mix the salt, chilli, garlic and pepper through the cabbage and leave 20 minutes. Massage it if you want it soft.
- Pack it into a clean clip-top jar of about a litre a layer at a time, pressing each layer down hard. Fill to about 3 cm below the rim.
- Check that no chilli, garlic or pepper is floating. The office is specific: spices left on the surface invite mould. Push them down.
- Cover with the reserved leaves and weigh them down so everything sits at least 2 cm under the liquid. Top up with 2% brine (2 g salt per 100 ml water) if needed.
- Close the jar, stand it on a plate and leave it at 18 to 22 °C without opening it for at least two weeks. Then into the fridge.
Eat it within six months. Anything growing on the surface means read this first; when unsure, the batch goes. It needs a fridge once made.
Taste a sliver of each chilli before you start, because heat varies a lot.
Makes about a litre jar.