Sauerkraut

I used to hate this stuff, but since my taste buds have matured, I am now really loving sauerkraut.

My mom used to make it much too often for me, but my dad loved it, so we had to have it occasionally. Mom's recipe was quite simple. No, she didn't make her own kraut. Wait! I think she tried to make her own one summer, but we all couldn't stand the smell and at that time our family/TV room was in the basement, and that's where she was brewing the kraut.

Anyway, I can smell it now. I'm making it for dinner tonight because my husband loves it as well.

Before I give you my recipe, let me tell you when I really started to enjoy eating sauerkraut. It was the first time I went to Izzy's (a sandwich shop in Cincinnati). In Philadelphia if you ordered a corned beef on rye you got a side of cole slaw to put on the sandwich. Yummmm.

But in Cincinnati, each table had a large tub of sauerkraut and a large tub of sliced Jewish pickles. So when you ordered a corned beef on rye you got sauerkraut to go with it, or you could just eat the sauerkraut as a side. It was so much better on the sandwich than the cole slaw.

Tonight I'm making sauerkraut. Whether it's the way my mom made it exactly, I'm not certain, but it will taste really, really good.

First, I brazed three medium sized pork chops (I usually use left-over pork roast) and let them cook for 15 minutes so there was a lot of pan drippings. I added 3/4 cup of water to the pot and let it simmer for 15 minutes, then I thickened the drippings (plus the water) with some cornstarch. I added 1 tablespoon of Kitchen Bouquet. Then I spread the sauerkraut over the top of the chops and gravy. I used Bavarian style canned kraut. It's a little sweet, but Alan prefers it to the regular canned stuff. After it simmers for about two hours, it will be ready and the meat will fall off the bones of the chops and I can pull the meat apart.

Anyway, that's it. Hope you can convince your family that the awful smelling stuff really does taste good.

ttfn