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Showerthought: People keep saying you need a fancy airlock for sauerkraut
I see folks online buying expensive glass airlocks for their first batch, but my grandma in Milwaukee just used a clean plate and a rock in the crock. The key is keeping the cabbage submerged, not the gear. I've done it her way for five years with zero issues. Anyone else just use a simple weight and a cloth cover?
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stellas566mo ago
Watched my friend panic because her fancy airlock kit arrived cracked. She almost gave up on her first batch. I told her to grab a small ziploc bag, fill it with some of the brine, and lay it right over the cabbage in the jar. She did it, covered the jar with a clean dish towel, and forgot about it for two weeks. Opened it to the best, crunchiest sauerkraut she'd ever tasted. She still uses that bag trick every time now.
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jana1796mo ago
Honestly get so tired of the gear hype. Saw a video where someone used a ziplock bag filled with water as a weight on top of the cabbage. Worked perfectly. Feels like half the stuff sold is just to make a simple thing seem hard so you buy more junk. My great aunt used a clean jar filled with marbles to keep everything under the brine. If it's clean and submerged, it ferments. The rest is just noise.
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reese_garcia5mo ago
Exactly. My sauerkraut game changed when I stopped caring about fancy weights. A bag of brine works just fine and costs nothing. The whole airlock industry feels like a solution to a problem nobody had. Fermentation is older than plastic wrap, so people figured it out long before Amazon existed. Clean glass jar, some salt, and patience is all you really need.
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