Dr. Strangekraut

Its full name is "Dr. Strangekraut or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cucumber", and its the latest creation out of the Fridge Top Ferment kitchen!

Is that a cowboy riding a cucumber or are you just happy to see me?

Named after Stanley Kubricks 1964 black comedy "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb", this kraut combines two of the most popular fermented vegetables into one giant jar of deliciousness!

I stumbled onto this recipe when picking up a bag of kraut at the store after the Red Crocktober was finished.  On a side note, having to purchasing store bought sauerkraut when you're a person who make it on your own is embarrassing. It makes me want to put on sunglasses and a fake mustache while going through the checkout line so nobody recognizes me. It's like being a plumber and having to call Roto-Rooter because your sink is clogged. Or maybe its not, I don't know.

Anyway, Farmhouse Culture makes a variety called "Garlic Dill Pickle Kraut", and I thought it was fantastic! I decided then that my next batch would essentially copy what they did. So the idea for the ingredients in Dr. Strangekraut wasn't entirely original. The decision to name it after a black and white cold war comedy and put a cowboy riding a pickle like a bomb on the label though, that was all me!

This is the part where I started googling "how much dill is too much dill?"

Like every kraut I make, I was unsure of the ratio of vegetables to use. In the end I settled on using 4 heads of cabbage, 2 enormous cucumbers, a giant bunch of dill, and a bulb of garlic plus a few extra cloves. 

"Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."

The cucumbers were the European seedless type (grown in mexico and bought in the USA), which I thought would work better than dealing with a seeded variety in a kraut. I struggled with how to cut them for the kraut and couldn't decided between circles or half moons, so I ended up doing both.

I thought it would look cool to show what it looked like under the cabbage shredder. Then I saw the picture and remembered I'm not a photographer and it just looks like shredded cabbage from a different angle. 

Then I ran the cabbage through the giant cabbage shredder and started mixing and packing the kraut into my normal 2 gallon crock.....and that's when I realized I had a problem.

This is when I still had confidence I could pack everything into the center container.

The problem was that I had an incredible amount of shredded cabbage to pack away, and it became more and more apparent that there wasn't going to be room for it in the 2 gallon crock. So after filling it nearly to the top of that container, I had transfer it all to the 3 gallon crock and pack everything back down again. Worse things have happened (for example, losing an entire batch of Christmas Kraut), and after a few minutes delay we were back to normal and the kraut was ready to ferment.

If your a kraut maker, this is a beautiful site. If you're the wife of a kraut maker, this is the part where you start yelling at your husband to cover the lid because you can smell it 2 floors up.

While checking on it about a week later, I took a picture to show just how active sauerkraut fermentation really is. Just like beer, it visibly bubbles and foams on the top from the gas released during the process. Unlike beer however, it doesn't make alcohol, and it doesn't smell sweet (it smells like really, really potent sauerkraut.)

The old "fork in a jar of kraut with crock behind" shot. A classic!

After a full month of fermentation I packed it away in jars and prepared it for its debut at the Dr. Strangekraut release party, where people will eat kraut, play horseshoes and board games, and watch Dr Strangelove, all because they love kraut or have nothing better to do that day.

At Letchworth, where my wife is piling Dr. Strangekraut on my sandwich while our older daughter tells our younger one how much she likes dill. No joke, she loves dill.

The kraut came out fantastic. After all my concern about how to cut the cucumbers, it turns out it didn't matter. They almost disappeared into the cabbage, and if you didn't see the before picture you'd never know there was that much in there. 

But the flavor is perfect, like kraut and dill pickles all in one! I packed a jar a week early from the crock to bring camping on memorial day and it was a hit with everyone that tried it. Small children were literally eating it by the handfuls and requesting it as a snack with their strawberries. And in the kraut business, that's as good a compliment as you can get!