Autumn is coming, which means it’s a busy time for making all kinds of winter supplies that can help you fill your family’s menu with tasty and healthy dishes in these difficult times. And in winter and early spring, when the shortage of fresh or spicy vitamin snacks is especially acute, pickled cabbage with apples will come in handy.
In addition to the ease of making this dish, you should also take into account its exceptional budget, although it can become a real decoration for the table. After all, in the fall, during the season, cabbage is one of the cheapest and at the same time vitamin-rich vegetables. And apples, if there is a fruitful year, are found everywhere and are often given away just like that, so long as they don’t go to waste and are put to good use. Not to mention those cases when cabbage and apples grow on your site. Therefore, pickled cabbage prepared with apples for the winter will not cause virtually any material costs, and can bring simply extraordinary benefits.
Cabbage with apples - the most delicious recipe
Of course, when sauerkraut is made, apples are perhaps the most common addition after carrots. But fermented products are not stored for a very long time and require special storage conditions that are not always found in an ordinary apartment.
And at any time you can open it, put it on the table and enjoy the piquant and slightly spicy taste of this easy-to-make snack.
So, start by preparing the vegetables first. White cabbage, if you want to use it for wrapping for the winter, you need to choose dense cabbage with light leaves. Of course, it is best to use mid-season or late varieties, but this is only possible if you grow cabbage in your own garden. In other cases, you will have to rely on the integrity of the sellers. However, in the midst of autumn, after the first frost, varieties of cabbage suitable for pickling are usually sold.
For 2 kg of cabbage you will need to find about two more medium-sized carrots and 5-6 sweet and sour apples.
It is better to cut the cabbage into long, narrow strips, although if you prefer rectangles, then this method of shredding is not excluded, it is only important that they are small in size.
The carrots are grated on a coarse grater, and the apples are freed from seeds. Do not remove the skin, as it contains most of the nutrients. It is best to cut apples into thin slices.
All chopped vegetables are placed in a large container and mixed thoroughly. To these are added 60 g of salt, 200 g of sugar, one teaspoon of dill seeds and 10 pieces of black and allspice peas.
Mix everything well again, cover with a lid and set aside for several hours.During this time, you can sterilize the jars with lids in which the preparation will be stored for the winter, and prepare the marinade.
To do this, one and a half liters of water are heated to a boil and combined with one glass of vinegar. Boil for just a few minutes and remove from heat.
The entire vegetable mixture with seasonings is placed in jars and filled with marinade.
When laying and pouring the marinade, the vegetables are lightly compacted so that they are covered with liquid on top.
This amount of vegetables and filling should make 4 liter jars of the product. In order for cabbage pickled for the winter to be stored under normal room conditions, filled jars are sterilized for 25 minutes in boiling water and rolled up with sterile lids. After this, wrap it upside down in a blanket and leave it until it cools completely.
Secrets of delicious pickled cabbage
What do housewives need to remember to make pickled cabbage really tasty?
- Firstly, so that you can crunch the finished cabbage with pleasure, you need to choose dense, tight heads of cabbage.
- Secondly, adding cherry, oak or horseradish leaves to the marinade will also contribute to increased crunchiness of day-old pickled cabbage. Perhaps someone has already encountered this cooking feature when pickling cucumbers.
- Thirdly, when using bay leaf, it is removed from the marinade after boiling so that it does not add additional bitterness to the dish.
- Fourthly, to add a piquant aroma and taste to ready-made cabbage dishes, finely chopped ginger root is added to the vegetables.
- Fifthly, in an effort to diversify the flavor palette, do not limit yourself to standard seasonings for the marinade such as allspice, black pepper and bay leaf. Feel free to experiment with adding spices such as cumin, coriander, basil, savory, tarragon, rosemary.
- Sixth, when pickling cabbage for the winter, in addition to carrots and apples, you can use a wide variety of vegetables and fruits: cranberries, lingonberries, plums, beets, onions and bell peppers.
In addition to the fact that a salad of pickled cabbage with apples is itself a spicy and tasty dish, it is not forbidden to add pickled vegetables from it to other salads of fresh and boiled vegetables. This way, you can create additional flavor variations and thereby diversify your menu.
