Soltz & Sauerkraut, Part 1

After I wrote my blog entry about puttanesca one of my friends said, “You should write more about your heritage. I love it when you tell Pennsylvania Dutch stories.” The funny thing about growing up in a particular heritage is that you think everyone is like you are. Then when you get out in the great big world and find out people say “ew” when you mention sauerkraut and “huh?” when you talk about soltz — well, it’s surprising. You thought you were normal.

But I still cook a lot of the dishes I grew up with, though I haven’t made soltz in years now, and it is fun to talk about. Sauerkraut was a mainstay of our diet when I was a kid. “Keeps you healthy,” my father said. ”Keeps you regular,” my grandmother said. God bless my Mom — she just kept cooking it.

We made our own which was always an event. In the fall when Dad cleaned up the garden for winter he would bring in the cabbages. Sometimes they hung by their roots from a rack in the shop until we had time to make sauerkraut and sometimes he’d buy a few extra heads from local farmers. On sauerkraut-making day as many of us as could be rounded it up would help. I remember one sauerkraut making day my cousing John stopped to visit. He was a businessman in Washington, D.C. by this time and always wore a suit and tie. But when he saw what we were doing, off came the suitcoat and the tie, he rolled up his sleeves and set to work. I think he worked the hardest of any of us that day!

First you remove and clean the big, tough outer leaves. These are used to line the crock in which the sauerkraut ferments. Then you quarter and core the heads so they can be shredded on a big shredder which is a long, narrow board with a sharp blade fitted into it. You place the cabbage on the board and slide it back and forth over the blade into a dishpan. As the pan fills, the shredded cabbage is packed into the leaf-lined crock layered with coarse salt every few inches or so. Usually Mom and I cut up the cabbages, my brothers Jack and Wayne, did the shredding, and Dad and Anne packed the crocks.

The crock itself was very old and may have come from German. It was made of a heavy crockery material and had a stone that fit precisely within its circumference which weighted the kraut as it fermented. When the crock was full, it was moved into a storage space under the steps and the weight put into place. It stayed there for a couple months as the salt and kraut did their magic.

When it was finally fermented to the right amount (I never did know exactly how Mom figured that), she and I would pack it into quart canning jars and process it in a boiling water like you would can anything. Personally, I always liked it best raw and would eat it that way as we worked. Though I don’t make it from scratch anymore, I still love opening a bag of sauerkraut and snitching from the bag before it goes into the pot.

My mother had two primary ways of cooking kraut — Gram Werner’s way and Grandma Valentine’s way. In Gram Werner’s way the kraut was placed in a big “Dutch oven” with a pork loin and simmered until the pork fell off the bone and there was a good amount of juice. She would then make baking powder dumplings that were dropped into the boiling liquid. It was served in soup plates, a type of dish I have an endless fondness for and prefer to use over plates or bowls for everything.

In Grandma Valentine’s way the sauerkraut was spread out in a shallow baking pan and sprinkled with brown sugar. Scrubbed new potatoes were tucked into the kraut along the edges and fat pork chops were laid on top of it, sprinkled with pepper and put into the oven to bake until the pork chops were sizzling and the kraut was crispy and golden around the edges. When I do this I add a slice of apple on top of each chop. It is equally wonderful.

Well I planned on talking about soltz but I’ll have to save that for tomorrow. Who knew there was so much to say about sauerkraut?

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. So that means no candy except on Sundays for the next four weeks. Don’t forget to go get your ashes!

Thanks for reading.