Sweet, salty pickled cabbage

The newest staple of my diet is pickled cabbage, I am in love with it!

It all started because during the month of November I have been wildly unemployed, leaving me with loads of free time to experiment in the kitchen.  Loads of my invented recipes have been complete fails, that I have unhappily forced myself to eat, as I am to stubborn to waste food but some of the things I have tried this week have been awesome and addicting, I’m looking at you pickled cabbage.  I always thought making anything that involved fermenting was difficult, and required too many weird ingredients.  Last year I made pickled beets that involved lots of vinegar, and apple cider vinegar, the result was REALLY salty and kinda weird, needless to say it was never made again.  However, all you need for this amazing pickled cabbage is cabbage, and salt, pretty damn simple. 

Here is what you do:

1. Cut or grate (I had more success with the grated batch) your cabbage, an older cabbage is better for pickling.
2. Add salt to your cabbage, I used a 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) for every 1/4 of the cabbage, but the best way to figure out how much salt you need is to taste test.  The cabbage should taste salty but not disgustingly salty.
3. Work the salt into the cabbage, a bit like the way you would work with dough but you want to be really forceful! Take out any built up anger you may have on the cabbage! You want to see the juice of the cabbage flowing. 
4. Once your cabbage is nice and broken down, get a metal or ceramic bowl/pot and really pack the cabbage down into the bowl using your knuckles.  Put a plate in the bowl and push it into the cabbage, place something heavy on the plate, I used a can of beans, and then cover with a towel or plastic wrap. 
5. Put the cabbage somewhere dry and warm for three days to ferment. The result is a salty and sweet, awesome cabbage; great for a topping or just for eating out the bowl (like I do as soon as it’s finished). 

Another fun thing about this is you can add other vegetables to mix up the flavours.  A common addition is carrot, but I know my next batch will have grated beet!