I was thinking of making my own sauerkraut lately, so I have been watching some YouTube videos on the topic.
What stuck me as weird was that all videos gave an estimation on the amount of salt (in grams) to use based on the weight of the cabbage. Perhaps this method provides a good estimation that sets the salinity above the risk threshold (since a large portion of the cabbage weight is the water), but I would expect that the precise measurement should be dependent on the amount of water and salt type, and that the best thing to do would be to use a salinometer.
So, my questions are:
- Am I missing something? Could it be that, by only measuring the water salinity, the cabbage could take-in some of the salt or let-out extra water and make the water salinity lower than what was the initial goal?
- If that is not the case, and using a salinometer on the cabbage juice (and any water I might decide to add) would be a nice idea, what is the proper salinity level to go for? A related answer here would indicate to me something around 5% to inhibit growth and then let the future acidity move things forward, but I might be missing something because 5% sounds a bit too much (if I am calculating things correctly, other people seem to use something around 1.7%).
