 Hi, I'm Sarah of St. Pete Firments and today I'm going to show you how to turn this cabbage into magical sauerkraut using only wild yeast and bacteria that I'm breathing right now in the air. All we need today is cabbage and salt. Some other kitchen tools and equipment you're going to need are something to cut on, cutting board, a jar or something to ferment in, a bowl and a knife and a gram scale. Let's begin. I like to chop my sauerkraut somewhat fine. You can make it more coarse or finer depending on how you like it as long as all the pieces are somewhat uniform. Be sure to save an outer leaf of the cabbage because we're going to use it later. Next we're going to weigh out 600 grams of the cabbage we just shredded. Next I'm going to add 15 grams of sea salt. Adding the proper amount of sea salt is super important when making fermented foods. It allows for a comfortable environment for beneficial microbes to grow. I live in Florida which is a warm climate so I am going to use a two and a half percent salinity by weight which means two and a half percent of all of my sauerkraut is going to be sea salt. I'm just going to take that 15 grams of sea salt and sprinkle that into my cabbage shreds. We're just going to massage this all up together. You know you're ready for the next step when you squeeze your cabbage shreds and brine drips easily. Now we're going to pack all of this into our vessel. As you're packing all of this you want to make sure that you're pressing it as tightly as you can getting rid of any air bubbles. And once you have everything packed tightly you're going to use that outer cabbage leaf from earlier and place that on top. It's going to keep everything nice and oxygen free during the fermentation process. The goal is to keep everything pressed below the brine. Once everything is packed and settled in you're just going to screw a cap onto your jar and make sure you have a couple inches of head space because things are going to expand during the fermentation process. We're going to place this jar in a bowl that way if any brine spills during the fermentation process you have something to catch it. During the first four to five days of fermentation is when your sauerkraut is going to be most active and you want to keep it pressed below the brine at least once a day. After about a week you can give it a taste and see if it's sour to your liking. I like to ferment my sauerkraut for about three weeks. At that point when it's done fermenting it won't be as bubbly and active. The texture will change. It'll be a little more translucent and have good flavor. You can stick this in your fridge where it will last well over a year. So what is wild fermentation? Basically we're transforming food through the process of microbes metabolizing nutrients. There's all kinds of foods that can be fermented. Really any kind of food can be fermented through this process of microbial magic. Some of the benefits of making fermented foods is that it's easy. It's low input. You don't need a lot of tools and equipment. You don't need any special machines. You really don't even need electricity which is one reason I love it so much. It's a really sustainable way to make food. It's also of course extremely healthy. Everyone's trying to better their microbiome and what better way than to consume cultured foods that have beneficial microbes. These beneficial microbes help to predigest our food so we can absorb more nutrients and it's just easier on our digestive system. One of my absolute favorite ways to eat sauerkraut is in a grain bowl. Grain bowls are so nice because you can use whatever rice or beans, eggs, tempeh, fresh veggies. Anything you want you can make it yours and sauerkraut just sets it off. It's so delicious and so good. My fermentation journey began about eight years ago. I was fermenting at home. I started with kombucha and I just really fell in love with the process and the taste and that really resonated with me. I felt like this was something I could bring back to St. Petersburg and share with my community. Now we've been operating for almost five years and we're super thankful to our city and our community. We supply vegetable ferments like sauerkraut, lacto fermented pickles of all kinds, kimchi, abicavas, and kombucha. Now you've made your sauerkraut. Congratulations! The hardest part is waiting. I believe fermentation is for everyone and it's simple. You just got to try it. I hope it goes well for you. Just enjoy it and have fun with it.