Yesterday, Derrick and Alicia seeded a whole bunch more kohlrabi for the fall season and in a week or so, we’ll have a fresh crop of purple kohlrabi for ya’ll to bring home.

As I was trying to come up with one last thing to do with the remaining heads from this last succession, (the ones that seemed to be sitting at the bottom of the fridge for longer than I wanted them to) I decided to try fermenting them into a raw food sauerkraut. Although I’ve made my own kraut before with cabbage, I never thought to try it with kohlrabi…until now.

I wanted to know if the lactobacilli, an air-borne bacteria, could culture on the kohlrabi leaves the same way it does on cabbage leaves, seeing as  kohlrabi is a hybrid of cabbage.

By the way, some people will spend a fortune on probiotic “live” food in health stores year after year. Yet, a kraut can be made so easily and inexpensively and it has most, if not all of the same benefits that the store bought stuff has! It boosts immunity, aids digestion, and fights cancer too.

So along with some help in the kitchen from my brother, here’s what we did:

First, I pulled off all of the leaves from the heads and set the good leaves aside; knowing I would later use them in the kraut. Next, I had Derrick, who attends culinary school at Johnson & Wales, peel and cut up the kohlrabi heads into little matchstick-sized pieces, to mimic the shreds of cabbage used in regular sauerkraut.

We followed that by shredding up the kohlrabi leaves that we had set aside earlier. After combining enough salt to taste and a small handful of caraway seeds, it was time to mix it together and pack it into a couple of jars. The salt pulls water out of the kohlrabi and this creates the brine in which the leaves and kohlrabi sticks can ferment and sour without going rotten. The salt also has the effect of keeping everything crunchy, by walling off organisms that would otherwise soften it.

The last thing to do is add a little bit of water so that all of the contents are submerged and not exposed to the air. The jars need to be left out at room temperature and checked a few times per day to ensure that all of the contents remain under the surface of the brine. Then, all you have to do is wait.

By the second day, I began to see little bubbles form near the surface of the brine. It had worked! After sampling it once or twice over the next couple of days to dial in the amount of sourness that I liked, I pulled it from the counter, added a few lids and stuck it into the refrigerator to have in moderate amounts after meals in the evening. It’s a good idea to pace yourself and be fairly consistent while eating the kraut for optimum benefits.