(I’m totally beat tonight, but I promised myself I’d post at least once a day, so here’s a short one.)

I wrote a while back about making sauerkraut. Well, it’s been over a month since I made it, so I decided to try it and see how it was coming along.

I got out a package of Cajun bratwurst from Kabricks’ that I had thawed out. They are excellent, by the way: nice heat but not too much and plenty of flavor. I simmered them in a little lard until they were browned and crisping up a little on the outside. Then I dumped a serving of kraut over top of them, put a lid on it, and let it simmer for a while. I stirred it once or twice, to make sure it didn’t run out of liquid, and to let the kraut pick up the spices from the brats. Once the brats were 160° inside, I was ready to eat.

The kraut tasted excellent, but it was still pretty crunchy. It really needs another month or two before it will have the softer consistency I like. Since I only made two quarts, it may not last that long! It goes extremely well with spicy brats, picking up a little of their heat but also balancing it.

All the recipes I post here will be low-carb, so I looked up the nutritional info. I probably had a cup of kraut, which has 6 grams of carb, 4 of which are fiber, so it was a very low-carb meal: two grams from the kraut and maybe one from the seasoning in the brats. Since this is homemade kraut, it wasn’t pasteurized or irradiated or any of that nonsense, so it’s full of probiotics and other goodness. And the brats were from my dad’s hogs, which are raised outdoors pretty healthily. Great stuff.