Fermented Cabbage: What It Is and Why People Eat It

Fermented cabbage is one of the oldest preserved foods there is, and the method has not changed much in two thousand years.

Shred cabbage, salt it, press it under its own brine, leave it somewhere cool. The salt holds off the organisms you do not want long enough for the lactic acid bacteria already living on the leaves to take over. They consume the sugars in the cabbage and produce lactic acid — which is the sourness, and which is also what preserves the jar. Nothing is added. Nothing needs to be.

Before refrigeration this was how a household in Central and Eastern Europe got through winter: a crock in the cellar, a fresh vegetable on the table in February. The habit travelled with immigrants to America and then mostly got replaced by a pasteurized version in a can.

What fermentation does for a person is a bigger claim than we are willing to make on a shop page, and the honest answer is that it depends on the person. What we can describe is the food: raw cabbage, salt, time, live cultures, no vinegar and no sugar. Eat a forkful with a meal, the way it was always eaten.