Braised sauerkraut: how to cook, a variety of dish options

Braised sauerkraut is considered one of the traditional side dishes in our country. It has an original taste with sourness, goes well with any kind of meat and is easy to prepare. Cabbage is used both as a side dish and as a separate vegetable dish. The latter is especially pleasing to adherents of healthy nutrition and vegetarians.

Braised sauerkraut can be found on the dinner table of families in many countries - Russians, Germans, Ukrainians, Czechs and Poles prefer this unpretentious dish. Of course, the inhabitants of each country, and sometimes cities, add some kind of “zest” to the main recipe. For example, in Germany it is customary to combine this side dish with a baked pork knuckle, and in Poland - with different types of meat. Residents of the Czech Republic are used to cooking vegetables with the addition of prunes and various spices, and in Ukraine it is great combined with sour cream. It is worth adding that in Polish cuisine the dish was called bigos, a habitual Russian fish soup.

Braised sauerkraut, regardless of the method of preparation, always turns out to be tasty and healthy. The abundance of vitamins contained in it especially helps out in the winter season. Finally, it cooks quickly and is one of the most affordable products, so anyone with any income level can afford stewed cabbage.

It is worth adding that the dish is also low-calorie.If we take its simplest variety, consisting of cabbage itself, onions, carrots, tomato paste, vegetable oil and spices, then the nutritional value of 100 grams will be only 30.4 kilocalories. Considering that a typical serving contains just over 200 grams, the calorie content of lunch or dinner will be 65.9 kilocalories, which is a very small indicator. Cabbage contains enough fiber - an extremely useful substance that removes toxins, toxins and other unnecessary substances from the body.

Stewed cabbage is combined with almost anything: with various types of meat, potatoes or mushrooms. It can be cooked with sausages or sausage, and then you get a traditional Soviet delicacy, familiar to many from early childhood. In addition, you can separately stew sauerkraut, separately fresh, and then mix two varieties of this vegetable - it will turn out to be unusual and extremely appetizing.

When the dish is prepared in fasting, it is usually stewed on water and with a minimum amount of spices. If you need a brighter, more festive taste, then you can experiment with seasonings and add various sauces - anything, depending on your taste preferences and imagination.

Cabbage can even be stewed in lard. The meat is cut into small sizes and rendered in a frying pan, and it is necessary to achieve “transparency”, after which frying is added and then everything is cooked according to the usual algorithm.

Cabbage cooked according to the simplest recipe turns out to be quite unusual - its taste is a little sharp and even sour, which is a consequence of pickling. But if you combine it with the traditional roast, consisting of carrots, onions and tomato paste, then the situation is balanced.

There is an impressive array of variations on how to cook sauerkraut stew. They differ not only by country and smaller settlements, but even by households - almost every housewife has her own methods.

For the traditional and simplest preparation of stewed sauerkraut in a saucepan, you will need sauerkraut, a couple of onions, a couple of carrots, tomato paste, salt and sugar, spices, sunflower oil and boiling water, which can be replaced with meat or vegetable broth if desired. The cabbage is squeezed out, if necessary, cut and sent to the pan, in which the oil is already heated. Everything is poured with broth, the lid is closed, and medium heat is turned on.

Onions and carrots are finely chopped (carrots can be grated) and fried in a pan over medium heat until golden brown.Tomato paste and spices are also sent there, and everything together stands on fire for about 5 minutes. 10 minutes before the end of the cabbage stew, ready-made frying is placed in the pan. Together they have to stew for 10 minutes, and at this moment you need to add a bay leaf.

If desired, you can also fry a little flour in oil, and then add it to the cabbage. Everything is mixed, the first test takes place and, if necessary, is salted, peppered or sugared. The cabbage will have to stand without a lid for another couple of minutes, and after that you can turn off the fire. Ready vegetables are laid out on plates, decorated with fresh herbs and served on the table.

If there is a supply of sausages in the refrigerator, then they can diversify a vegetable dish - it will be very tasty. The cooking method is similar, but for convenience, you can stew fried onions, carrots and tomato paste and the cabbage itself in one container. To do this, oil is poured into the pan and the onion begins to fry. As soon as it becomes golden, cabbage is placed there. Everything is mixed and left alone for about 15 minutes. Then spices, tomato paste are added, and the lid closes again. Meanwhile, sausages are cut into circles and fried in another pan until golden brown. 5 minutes before the end of the cabbage stew, they go to it and mix. If desired, the delicacy is served with mashed potatoes.

Some people prefer to combine stewed sauerkraut with mushrooms and sour cream. The latter can be anything, but ideally - forest. First, chopped mushrooms are sent to the pan, which are fried for 3 minutes, and then languish under the lid for about 5 minutes. At the next stage, onion is sent to the same pan, which is mixed with mushrooms.Almost immediately, cabbage goes there. Everything is sprinkled with spices and poured with soy sauce. The mixture is fried without a lid for a couple of minutes, and then supplemented with sour cream. Everything is mixed again and covered with a pan. The dish will be stewed for about half an hour. Approaching the end of cooking, you can add fresh herbs.

The Czech cabbage recipe looks very curious. For this original dish you will need cabbage, apples, prunes, butter, onions, sugar and various spices: anise, cloves, red and black pepper and others. Prunes must first be washed and soaked in water for 30 minutes. At this time, you can peel and cut the onion and fry it in butter. After that, cabbage with sugar is added to the onion, everything is poured with water and sent to stew over low heat.

At the next stage, which occurs after 30 minutes, prunes are added to the dish, and after another 20 - apples that are already cut into strips, as well as spices to taste.

Braised sauerkraut with potatoes is often prepared as a side dish for something meaty. During fasting, it can also be consumed as a separate dish. For cooking, you need to cook sauerkraut, a few potatoes, traditional carrots with onions, oil, on which everything will be fried, sugar, salt and spices. Potatoes are pre-boiled in their skins. Then the peel is removed, and the vegetable is cut into small cubes or straws of medium thickness. Onions and carrots are peeled, the onion is finely chopped, and the carrots are rubbed on a grater.

The oil is heated on fire to a boil, onions and carrots are sent there. Fry for five minutes until the onion is golden brown. The sauerkraut is washed and mixed with vegetables in a skillet.Fry everything together for 10 or 15 minutes. Already chopped potatoes are added to the mixture. Everything is sprinkled with spices and sugar, mixed and stewed for 10 minutes.

You can also add bay leaf to the dish along with potatoes, and at the last stage, when it's time for spices, pour ketchup or tomato paste. Everything is usually decorated with fresh herbs.

Braised sauerkraut in German is usually cooked with meat: minced meat, goulash, traditional pork knuckles or other varieties. It is very easy to adapt and repeat a foreign recipe at home. To prepare such a delicacy, you will need cabbage, meat (any meat will do, it doesn’t matter if it’s pork, beef or lamb), onions, tomato paste, sugar, spices, vegetable oil and other traditional ingredients.

The meat is coarsely chopped and fried together with onion half rings for 10 minutes. After cabbage is added, everything is poured with hot water, mixed and stewed for an hour. In this case, instead of water, broth, for example, meat, will go well. Then tomato paste and everything else is added, mixed and stewed for half an hour.

If you want to cook a truly German dish, then you need to do the following: buy sauerkraut without carrots, bacon, olive or vegetable oil, 2 onions, an apple, cumin and juniper berries. Cabbage is freed from brine and, if necessary, washed.The bacon is cut into strips, the onion into half rings, and both ingredients are sent to the pan, in which the oil is already boiling. Food is fried until a delicate "caramel" color appears. Cabbage is combined with spices and mixed. It stands on fire for 10 minutes, and then you can fill everything with water. Extinguishing continues for 15 minutes. Finally, at the end, the time comes for pieces of apple and berries, with which bacon and cabbage will languish for 10 minutes. This side dish is complemented with traditional sausages.

There is another unusual German cabbage recipe. First of all, sauerkraut with cranberries, mutton or pork fat, blue onions, freshly squeezed apple juice, blue plums or cherry plums, juniper berries, a small apple and spices are purchased. In terms of time, it will take about an hour to prepare such a large-scale dish at first glance. Fat is rendered, in which cabbage and onions are laid out. Plums are peeled, then stones are removed from them, and the fruit is rubbed on a sieve. The apple is to be grated. Ready fruits are also added to the container on the stove. Together they have to fry for 10 minutes, after which apple juice will be poured. The stewing continues until the cabbage becomes medium soft - you will have to determine to taste.

Meat lovers will also like vegetables cooked with chicken. This delicacy is easy to prepare, and all its components are very affordable. The composition of the dish is standard, the only innovations are chicken fillet and garlic. Films and skin are removed from the bird, then the piece is rinsed under water and dried with a napkin. Then the fillet is cut into small pieces and fried in oil.

Prepare vegetables and pork. The composition, in addition to the usual ingredients, includes garlic, pork and bay leaf. After processing the cabbage from salt, the meat is cut into small cubes or strips. Oil is heated in a saucepan, pork and spices are placed there, and all this is stewed for 20 minutes under a lid.

Then the onion is added to the mixture - this time it is cut into cubes, and another 15 minutes of cooking takes place. Finally, cabbage is loaded into the container and poured with tomato paste. Spices, bay leaf, sugar are added and simmered for 30 minutes. After that, it remains to add fresh parsley and dill, garlic and after 10 minutes call everyone to the table.

Separately, it is worth talking about the traditional Polish dish called bigos, which consists of stewed sauerkraut and meat. According to the rules, you need to cook it for three whole days and stew the ingredients for 1.5 hours daily - this is the only way to achieve an unforgettable taste and smell. Pork is traditionally chosen for bigos, although you can experiment with other types of meat, as well as smoked meats. Then you will need melted fat for frying, onion heads, a few tablespoons of rice, sauerkraut, sour cream, garlic, fresh dill and parsley and, of course, a variety of spices.

Pork to give softness will have to be processed in a meat grinder. Preliminary work is also carried out with rice - it is cleaned of debris and spoiled grains, washed under water and filtered. The onion is peeled, then cut into small pieces and fried with rice until the latter turns golden.After that, everything is poured with water or meat broth, covered with a lid and sent to stew until cooked.

The next step is to mix the already cooled rice with ground meat, egg and spices, such as black pepper and coriander. At this time, another onion, also finely chopped, is fried in fat, mixed with sauerkraut, sprinkled with spices and sent to the fire. Meatballs are formed from meat with rice and placed in cabbage - they must be stewed in vesta. The balls must be turned over periodically, but this must be done carefully, as they can fall apart.

When the dish is ready, it is complemented with sour cream and garlic, passed through a press and mixed with salt. It is recommended to serve it hot and sprinkled with fresh herbs.

Today, when most people need to save time, recipes designed for a slow cooker become relevant. There is one for stewed sauerkraut. For culinary creativity, it is necessary to prepare cabbage, chicken fillet, smoked sausage, tomato paste and / or tomatoes, onions, water and vegetable oil.

The fillet is processed properly: washed, dried and cut into pieces. Vegetables are also prepared: the onion is peeled and cut into half rings, and the tomatoes are sliced. In the slow cooker, the “Baking” mode is selected, vegetable oil is poured into it and the onion is fried. After that, chicken, tomatoes are added, and processing continues. After put sauerkraut, tomato paste, smoked sausage and everything mixes well. Finally, you need to fill the mixture with water and change the mode to "Pilaf". The time is set to 1.5 hours, and after the specified interval, the dish can be served at the table.

You can cook this dish in other modes, for example, “Stew” (it takes only 40 minutes) or “Buckwheat”.

A slow cooker is a very convenient unit in which you can quickly cook familiar dishes and get unexpected results. This can be said about stewed cabbage with sausage. To prepare this Soviet dish with a modern twist, you will need sauerkraut, sausages (creamy, with cheese, or others to the taste of the cook), onion heads, frying oil, fresh herbs (basil, dill, parsley), spices, sugar and salt. In time, the food will be cooked for about an hour.

First of all, excessive sourness of cabbage is eliminated - it is washed under cold water. Next, in a pan with a thick bottom, preferably made of cast iron, sausages are fried to a light golden hue. After they go with the cabbage to the slow cooker. The onion is peeled, cut into small cubes and also follows inside the device. The machine is turned on in the “Baking” mode for 20 minutes. After the set time, you should open the lid, pour salt and spices inside, mix everything and continue cooking already in the “Extinguishing” mode. The last phase should also last 20 minutes. Finally, after turning off the multicooker, the dish is sprinkled with dill, parsley and basil and served on the table.

If there is no slow cooker, but there is a desire to cook stewed sauerkraut in some other way, then you can use the oven.In it, the delicacy turns out to be less high-calorie, you have to spend less effort, but get the same high-quality result. In the oven, cabbage will have to be cooked in a clay or ceramic container, which has high sides.

Pre-peeled and chopped onions and carrots are sent to the bottom of the container. Then the cabbage washed from the brine is combined with them. Everything is mixed and supplemented with tomato paste or ketchup, a small piece of butter (in principle, vegetable oil is also suitable) and spices. A piquant addition, for example, will be cumin. Finally, everything is filled with water, and the vegetables should not remain on the surface, tightly closed with a lid and placed in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. After an hour, the finished delicacy can be taken out and treated to your loved ones.

For a long time the existence of this dish, the hostesses have accumulated a sufficient number of useful tips to help prepare vegetables in the best possible way. Here is some of them:

• Before stewing, sauerkraut must be tasted to determine the level of acidity. If the taste is sharp and it is necessary to remove the acid, then the vegetable will have to be washed under running cold water. In the case when this method does not help, you will have to boil the vegetable in plain water for 10 to 15 minutes. If the acid is acceptable, then simply throw the cabbage into a colander to drain the entire brine.
• If the product was fermented in large pieces or whole, then for stewing it is recommended to cut it into smaller ones, which are convenient to take with a fork.
• Before cooking, sauerkraut must be squeezed out of the juice.
• Very often, this vegetable is fermented with berries or vegetables, such as carrots, so it is not necessary to “duplicate” vegetables for stewing. If the cabbage is “clean”, then it is always customary to add a couple of carrots and onions fried over low heat for 5 minutes.

• Peroxide sauerkraut is revived by a couple of minutes spent in boiling water.
• During cooking, to avoid burning, it is required to periodically add liquid. It can be either plain water or tomato juice. In addition, a side effect of this will be an increase in the juiciness of the vegetable.
• To "balance" the sourness, you can add a little sugar - one spoonful.
• Experiments with spices are welcome, both classic (cloves, cumin, red pepper) and unusual (turmeric, coriander).
• Stew in cream or sour cream will add tenderness to the dish.
• If you “sprinkle” the cabbage with flour, then the taste will become more “deep”, and the dish will become thicker.
• For the dish, you will need either a pan with thick walls, or a cauldron for pilaf. So the contents will not burn, but it will turn out tasty and fragrant.

• For traditional frying, tomato paste is usually chosen. However, tomato sauce, and even ketchup, approximately 100 grams, will become an equivalent substitute. It would also be correct to use fresh or canned tomatoes, scalding them, removing the peel and cutting into small cubes.
• If cabbage is cooked with fatty meat, then adding cumin is a good idea.
• In no case should you cook a dish in a pan made of aluminum. This metal in the acidic environment that the cabbage will create will begin to produce compounds that are hazardous to health.
• The larger the vegetables are cut, the less vitamins and nutrients they lose during the stewing process.
• Cabbage is always filled with water so that it hides it.

One of the recipes for making stewed sauerkraut, see below.