How to Preserve Cabbage from the Garden in 4 Different Ways
How to preserve cabbage from the garden has four ways that you should know, so you can do it yourself. Preserving cabbage with the best nutritive value and quality needs to be done in the right way. If you want to preserve cabbage from your own garden, figure the ways out from the following ideas.
How to Preserve Cabbage from the Garden in 4 Different Ways
- Fermentation Fermented foods are the best foods for your digestion, especially because it will increase your digestive enzymes and gut bacteria. One of the vegetables that you can ferment is cabbage by making entire heads of cabbage. Alternatively, you can make sauerkraut when you decide to ferment your cabbage from the garden.
- Entire Heads of Cabbage The first way to preserve cabbage from the garden is by fermenting them and making them into a cabbage roll. The fermentation of the whole heads of cabbage is basically a tradition that’s still going on from generation to generation. However, making this kind of fermentation needs a larger space in your house, along with a large wooden barrel.
- Sauerkraut Sauerkraut is a fermented raw cabbage that is finely cut and it contains full of essential nutrients. If you already have a fresh cabbage from your garden, discard outer leaves and rinse the heads with cold water. You may slice or shred the cabbage uniformly before you can add the salt and mix them using clean hands. How to preserve cabbage from the garden with salt can be done by making sauerkraut. Once finished mixing cabbage and salt, let it sit for 5-10 minutes, and put them into the fermenting container(s). Store and continue fermenting them in jars or buckets in a room with temperature 20 degree Celsius.
Freezing Cabbage The easiest way to preserve cabbage from the garden is by freezing them and you can still cook them later. Cabbage can be frozen and you can use them whenever you want because fresh cabbage must be consumed immediately. If you harvest many cabbages, you can’t cook and eat all of them, that’s why you need to freeze them. However, before tossing them into the freezer right after picking them from the garden, cut them first. You can cut the cabbages into wedges, blanch, drain, and seal them not as a whole in freezer bags. You may use another way to store them depending on how you want to cook with the cabbage later.
Dehydrating Cabbage The alternative way in preserving cabbage is by drying the cabbage so you can store them longer before cooking them. Dehydrating or drying cabbage can be done by preparing dehydrator trays and putting the finely cut cabbages on there. The cabbages will dry after being in temperature of 125-135 degree Fahrenheit in 10 hours. How to preserve cabbage from the garden once cut is by dehydrating them, but you can’t pack them away yet. From the dehydrator trays, you can leave the cabbages until they reach room temperature. Prepare vacuum sealed glass or glass jars once they’re at room temperature to store them well.
Canning Cabbage Canning cabbage is the last option that’s recommended to you in the preservation method. After cutting your cabbage in your preferred size, put them into the canning jars and pack it tightly. Add a teaspoon of salt and fill the jar with water until about ½ inch of headspace left. Prepare the pressure canner so you can place the jars there to be heated for around 10 minutes. You may set the weight to 10 lbs of pressure and process quarts for a half of an hour. Let the jars be at room temperature after the processing is done after removing the canner from heat.
How to preserve cabbage from the garden is quite easy to do by yourself at home. Choose one of the methods above that suits your preference the most. However, canning cabbage is the less recommended one even though it’s included in the options.