How to Make Sauerkraut (Beginner Method) (2026)

Why salt and submersion are the whole safety story

Two variables keep sauerkraut safe, and both are in your control. The first is the salt ratio. Too little salt and spoilage bacteria and yeasts can outcompete the good ones, giving you soft, off kraut; too much and you stall the fermentation entirely. NCHFP's tested ratio, 3 tablespoons of salt per 5 pounds of cabbage, hits the roughly 2 percent brine where lactic-acid bacteria win. The second is submersion. Fermentation is anaerobic, so the cabbage must stay under its brine, away from air; the surface, where air meets brine, is the only place mold or yeast can take hold. Keep the kraut submerged and correctly salted and the acid it produces does the rest.

What you need

• Fresh green cabbage - about 5 pounds, which yields roughly 2 quarts of kraut. Late-season, dense heads work well.
• Canning or pickling salt - not table salt. Iodine and anti-caking agents can darken the kraut and cloud the brine.
• A fermentation vessel: a wide-mouth mason jar with a fermentation kit, or a traditional water-sealed crock for bigger batches.
• A way to keep the cabbage submerged: glass fermentation weights, a water-filled bag, or the stone weights a crock comes with.
• A clean kitchen scale (to weigh cabbage for the ratio) and a sharp knife or mandoline.

Step 1: Shred and salt

Discard the outer leaves, quarter and core the cabbage, and shred it about the thickness of a quarter. Weigh it so you can match the salt ratio, then work in 3 tablespoons of salt per 5 pounds. Toss thoroughly and let it sit for 15 to 30 minutes; the salt pulls water out of the cabbage and starts building the brine. Then massage or press firmly, and you will feel it go limp and wet as its liquid releases.

Step 2: Pack it down under the brine

Pack the salted cabbage firmly into your jar or crock, pressing out air pockets as you go, until the brine rises above the cabbage. Leave a few inches of headspace for bubbling. Set your weight on top so everything stays submerged by an inch or two. If the cabbage did not release quite enough liquid to cover it, top it off with extra brine made from 1.5 tablespoons of salt dissolved in a quart of water, boiled and fully cooled. Nothing solid should be poking up into the air.

Step 3: Ferment cool, and be patient

Keep the vessel at cool room temperature, ideally 65 to 75F, out of direct sun. Fermentation is fastest and most reliable in that range: figure 3 to 4 weeks at the warmer end, longer if your kitchen is cooler. Below about 60F it may barely start; much above 75F it can soften or spoil. You will see bubbles within a few days, that is the fermentation working. Check every few days that the cabbage is still submerged, and simply skim off any scum or surface film if it appears; the kraut beneath the brine is unaffected.

Step 4: Know when it is done, and store it

The kraut is ready when the bubbling has stopped and it tastes pleasantly sour and no longer raw; taste it weekly from week three on and stop whenever you like the flavor. Then refrigerate it, where it keeps for months and slowly mellows. If you want it shelf-stable, finished sauerkraut is acidic enough to be water-bath canned (hot pack, roughly 10 minutes for pints and 15 for quarts at sea level, adjusted for altitude), though many people find refrigerating it keeps the texture and the live cultures better.

Troubleshooting: what is normal and what is not

White, cloudy brine and a yeasty smell early on are normal. A thin white film on the surface (kahm yeast) is harmless; skim it and make sure the kraut is submerged. What you do not want is fuzzy, colored mold (blue, black, pink), a rotten rather than sour smell, or sliminess, which point to cabbage that rode above the brine or too little salt; when a batch is genuinely off, the smart move is to throw it out and start over rather than talk yourself into it. In practice, keeping it submerged and correctly salted prevents almost every problem.

The gear that makes it foolproof

You can make great kraut in a mason jar. A mason jar fermentation kit adds glass weights and an airlock lid that vents CO2 while keeping air out, which removes the two things beginners fumble. For bigger or repeated batches, a water-sealed fermentation crock is the traditional vessel, and its stone weights do the submerging for you. The one accessory worth buying no matter what is a set of fermentation weights, because staying submerged is what actually keeps a batch safe.