I wanna give a shout out to Ben, who had a thread a few years ago about making reuben sandwiches from scratch. That motivated me to start corning my own beef. The stuff in the store is too fatty for me, so I start with eye round, which isn’t a great cut of meat for most purposes, but makes wonderful, really really lean corned beef. I make it every couple of months. Of course cooking one today, which means corned beef hash tomorrow, with poached eggs made from some eggs I got from a friend the other day.
I’ve also made sauerkraut with mixed success. I have to find a good stone to hold the cabbage down in the juice – I’m convinced the times it hasn’t come out have been when there’s been a stray leaf or two sticking into the air.
I’ve fermented plenty of things on and off over the years, and I always come back to sauerkraut, with red cabbage. Beautiful stuff, and more forgiving/longer shelf life than other ferments.
Once you get it going, carry over a little brine to future batches, to kickstart the process. Best of luck.
I think my big problem had been that I didn’t have weights on the kraut, so it was hit-and-miss whether anything floated up to the top and did an aerobic fermentation. I recently got some glass weights designed for wide-mouth Ball Jars, and have successfully made kraut and pickles. Both a little salty, so will try another batch soon.
Glad you’re having kraut success now! I always found it helpful to put a couple big leaves down on top (convex side domed up, if that makes sense) to hold down all the little bits, and then put the weight/stones on top.
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