Pretzels & Sauerkraut

There are two foods that are virtually naked without a half liter of home brewed lager beer by their side. Perhaps it's the other way around. Home made pretzels and home made sauerkraut, just doesn't taste right, without a half liter of home brewed lager chasing them down.

A few nights ago I made my first soft pretzels. I used a recipe from allrecipes.com, and they came out pretty good, soft and chewy. It may be more challenging, but I'm planning to make a hard and shiny sourdough pretzel. The lagers will take a while, so there's time to work on it.

The next day I prepared my first sauerkraut. It's made with one red and one green head of cabbage sliced very thin, 4 tbs Kosher salt, ½ tsp caraways seeds, ¼ tsp whole peppercorns, and a few squeezes of grapefruit. Since there was too much, I added another ingredient to the additional 1 quart...halved juniper berries. I love a good kraut, so I hope this turns out to be very crunchy, tangy and tasty. It will ferment in the coolest corner of our home, so it should take about 4 weeks.