Chinese cabbage.

Northeastern pickled cabbage is a home-cooked specialty food in Northeast China. Made from pickled Chinese cabbage, it has a strong Northeastern flavor. Pickled cabbage, known as Jing in ancient times, has its name in "Zhou Rites". The "Essentials of Qi Min" in the Northern Wei Dynasty introduced in detail the various methods of pickling sauerkraut with raw materials such as cabbage (called Siong in ancient times).

Before winter, people will select large, firm cabbage and dry it outdoors to remove moisture. The pickling method is simple, and there are two common methods: raw pickling and cooked pickling. To pickle raw vegetables, remove the yellow and rotten leaves after removing the roots, put the vegetables layer by layer into the pickled vegetable jar, sprinkle a layer of salt on each layer of vegetables, press large rocks at the mouth of the jar, and finally pour water into the jar for pickling. , slowly ferments and becomes sour; cooked pickling is to blanch the prepared Chinese cabbage in boiling water and then let it cool, then add a layer of vegetables and a layer of salt into the pickled cabbage jar, and finally press the stone to add water, which takes less time to mature than raw pickling. .

Precautions for making sauerkraut

The key to making sauerkraut is the ratio of water, salt and cabbage, the pickling time and the sealing during the production process. It will rot. The fermentation of sauerkraut is a process of reproduction of lactobacilli. Lactobacilli are anaerobic bacteria and mold and miscellaneous bacteria are aerobic bacteria. Adding cold boiled water is to remove the oxygen in the water so that other bacteria cannot reproduce and provide lactic acid. Bacilli create living conditions, and the purpose of sealing with plastic film is to prevent air from redissolving into the water. The past practice was to seal the top of the tank with yellow mud for the same purpose.

There is no need for the new method. Those with lids should be tightly covered, and those without lids should be sealed with plastic film. In short, do not let oxygen enter. In order to consume oxygen in the water, sauerkraut is also used - a kind of sauerkraut. The purpose of the additive is also to remove oxygen from the water.

But it is not recommended to use fresh pickled cabbage. Because pickled cabbage seems to be fresh, there is no clear definition. People think it is a type of preservative. However, the use of fresh sauerkraut not only inhibits the growth of miscellaneous bacteria, but also inhibits the fermentation of lactic acid bacteria to a certain extent, thus having a certain impact on the flavor of sauerkraut itself and the retention and transformation of nutrients.