We were both off our game this week as far as cooking went, so there was a lot of “what’s in the freezer? what’s in the cupboard?” One of the things in the cupboard was a crockful of homemade sauerkraut, made with cabbage from Laughing Crow Farm, that needed to be decanted (?) and put in the fridge. Only about 3/4 of it made it to the fridge, though, as several tongsful of it went into the pan with some seared Skagit River Ranch sweet Italian sausage, braising until the sausage was done. (I don’t know if Italian sausage and sauerkraut go together historically, but we decided to just go with it and call it a Swiss meal.)
I made some quick sausage-shaped buns from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day — get this book if you eat bread! — omitting the steam step so the buns were not too crusty. The whole mess, sausages and kraut, piled onto the buns to make a quick and easy and delicious wintertime dinner.
Homegrown: none.
Bainbridge market: cabbage, onion, garlic (in the kraut)
Seattle market(s): sausage
Organic: non-local wheat
Unknown: spices in the sauerkraut (mustard seed, peppercorns, etc.), salt, the usual.
You don’t have to worry about cross-border issues: My great-grandma was from northern Italy, near the Austrian alps, and she made sausages and “saoucraoti” all the time :D
[...] Lauren goes to the larder and comes back with one of my all-time favorite winter rib-stickers: Sausages and sauerkraut. She braised together homemade ‘kraut and Skagit River Ranch Italian links, and served it all [...]
Yum! So did you ferment the kraut an then can it? I have some raw fermented in the fridge I’m wondering if I need protection on first to open it for the blow. :p
Anita, that’s awesome. My family is from northern Italy too, but somewhere way back there, and I don’t know anything about those folks (unfortunately).
Sustainable Eats, no, we also just jar and refrigerate it. We eat it well before it becomes an issue just to keep it fresh in the fridge. We do small batches though, and do them continuously… usually make a one-gallon-crock worth or sometimes fill our 2-gallon crock more than half full, and then it ends up being 1-2 quarts. We have been putting another batch on to fermentwithin a week or so after one finishes. Don’t know if we’ll continue to have a source for cabbage though!
[...] have energy to think up what to cook, much less to actually cook it. So we end up making sausage and sauerkraut again, replicating that meal exactly — cabbage from Laughing Crow on Bainbridge, sausage from [...]
[...] post it!” only to remember that I used it last year. This has happened to me, so far, with sausage and sauerkraut and smoked salmon/leek/squash/kale/pasta pile. And again yesterday, [...]