Nettles & Spring Greens Sauerkraut
This recipe is one of my favorite spring traditions. And while of course many wild foods are in season from spring through fall, there's something about the exuberance of the spring and the undeniable vitality of the plants right now that makes the spring my favorite season to imbibe in wild foods. And when we make dishes with raw wild greens we've foraged or even picked from our gardens or bought at local farmers markets, we're infusing our microbiome with our bioregional, wild microbial "terroir” present on the leaf surface of these plants. The gut microbiome is a diverse microbial array that lives in our digestive system and has a hand in regulating mood, mental health, digestion, nutrient absorption, immunity…and the research just keeps growing.
Eating raw or fermented wild foods adds that diversity and local microbial array to our own microbiome, helping to harmonize us with the local landscape and heal gut issues and even gut dysbiosis. Basically, we're talking about *wild* probiotics and- believe it or not- many fancy and expensive probiotics are originally cultured from the wild. This is powerful food as medicine.
When spring finally comes here in the northeast it can sometimes feel like a race against time. After waiting months for the return of the green, the plants seemingly pop-up all at once, with wonderful exuberance, and at a pace that few of us can keep up with. Harvesting spring greens- if you let it- could easily be a full-time job! And there’s not only the challenge of collecting all your favorites during their prime harvest windows, there’s also the challenge of preserving the spring harvest because it’s simply not always possible to eat all the greens at once!
Enter fermentation, a form of food preservation that was developed and utilized by our ancestors for just this situation. What I love about fermentation is that it’s living medicine, and while I love making wild salad, pesto, frittata, soup, vinegar, and more with the wild spring abundance, there’s something special about knowing that the food you’ve prepared is probiotic and teeming with beneficial microbes that we enter into a reciprocal relationship with when we take them into our bodies. Symbiosis is a beautiful thing! You can read more about the benefits of probiotic foods in my recipe for New England-Style Kimchi, and read-on for my recipe for preserving some of my favorite spring greens in a seasonal-inspired sauerkraut.
Lastly, this recipe is meant to be played around with- this is kitchen medicine!
If you don’t have access to one of the greens in the recipe it’s ok to leave it out or substitute it for something you have an abundance of. And you can use the salt: weight ratios at the end of the recipe if you’d like to freestyle a bit and add a bit more Nettles and greens.
Nettles & Spring Greens ‘Kraut
Ingredients:
9 cups cabbage, thinly shredded (about 1 medium-sized cabbage)
3 cups fresh Nettles tops, leaves and tender stems, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup Alliums- Chives (Allium schoenoprasum), Field/Crow Garlic (Allium vineale), Green Garlic or Scallions, chopped
1/2- 1 cup Spring Greens- Garlic Mustard leaves and stems , Dandelion leaves, Chickweed, Violet leaves, Yellow Dock leaves, Plantain (Plantago spp) leaves, coarsely chopped
4 tsp sea salt (I love Redmond’s brand but any will do)
Directions:
1. Chop your cabbage and pile it into a big bowl with the Nettles and Alliums, sprinkle in the salt and begin massaging it all with your hands. The cabbage will begin to breakdown, releasing its juices, which becomes the brine. You can wear gloves for this part if you’re worried about the sting of Nettles (which will be rendered harmless by the fermentation process).
2. Next choose your vessel- a fermentation crock or wide mouth mason jar will work. Pack the ‘kraut into your vessel and press in with your hands or use a sauerkraut stamper (also called a pounder or tamper) until the brine covers the ‘kraut, adding some you make yourself, if-needed (see recipe notes at the end)
3. Use a heavy lid, a fermentation weight, or small plate with a sterilized rock on it for the crock or mason jar to keep the brine levels over the veggies. Or another good trick for this- if you don’t have a small lid- is to fill a ziplock bag with water or rocks and use that as a weight to keep ‘kraut below the brine level.
4. Now you sit back and let it ferment! Fermentation time will vary based on the weather but check on it by tasting it daily to track its progression. It’s ready when it tastes sour, crunchy, and still salty, but not nearly as salty as it tasted when it first started fermenting.
5. Put it into a jar with a lid and keep in the fridge or your root cellar, if you’re lucky enough to have one! Enjoy as a condiment, with sandwiches, with breakfast, with a heavy meal, as a base for salad dressing, on a picnic, or even as a simple snack. A good medicinal dose is 2 tbsp/day.
Important numbers if you’re free styling this recipe (in which case you'll want a kitchen scale):
For every 5 lbs of veggies, use 3 tbsp salt
For every 1 lb of veggies, use .6 tbsp salt (~2 tsp)
For every ½ lb of veggies, use 1 tsp salt
If you need to make brine, use 1.5 tbsp salt: 4 cups water
Enjoy!
