"Old fashioned" Foods You Admit you Like

A word of warning. Saurkraut will stink up the place while it ferments. My mom used to make. Made the whole danged basement (where the TV room was) stink.

#140--

That's why I've never made it. It didn't look like the kind of thing where you could successfully scale down the recipe to make a pound or two. And two pounds is more sauerkraut than I use in a year.

Our basement would sometimes stink, but it was from my grandmother's having made kholodyets, which she prepared from pigs' feet, onion, garlic, and maybe bay leaves. I just remembered now that I had kholodyets as an appetizer at the Russian Tea Room many years ago, although their version was prepared from veal.

Our basement was only a basement, though; coal storage area, furnace, water tank and a pot-belly stove for heating its contents, a workbench for my grandfather, and a kitchen stove that was usually only put in service on wash days, for boiling starch.

Since I'm native of a sauerkraut country...
I don't think the fermenting process makes it smell so much. The smell is more distinct when it's being cooked (for bigos). All your neighbours will know what you're cooking. But, it's worth it.
Similar process is with gherkins. Like sauerkraut, they have strong fermented smell if you put your nose inside the jar, but otherwise it isn't hazardous to your health (or senses).

It mostly depends on whether you like the smell of cabbage or not. I love cabbage, so if I know it is cabbage, I think "that smells really good!" If I don't know what the smell is, I might think "what an awful smell!"

Random responses.

Around here, turkey tails and necks show up in bulk packages between Thanksgiving (late Nov.) and New Years. I usually grab some & stash in the freezer.

Google Translate: פּופּיק navel, gizzard Leo Rosten gives a curse: onions should grow in his pupik.

I once made sauerkraut as part of a food microbiology course. Fortunately, the batches could live in the lab, not in my kitchen.

Speaking of old fashioned recipes and fermentation odors--There is an old fashioned bread called Salt Rising Bread. The Joy of Cooking says "This unusually good formula, which has provoked the most dramatic correspondence, relies for its riser on the fermentation of a salt- tolerant bacterium in cornmeal or potato pulp."

Joy give a recipe sent in by "a fan" who described it as having "only a mild odor--like that of good Italian cheese." Mrs. Rombauer comments "As we lived for some years in an apartment with a salt-rising bread addict, and shared the endless varieties of smells she produced, we would settle any day for a mild cheese aroma."

After reading and posting on this thread about chicken gizzards could not resist the temptation to lunch today with Mrs Trib and family friends at a newly opened posh wine bar/ sushi/yakitori resturant out here at an upscale beachside mall/shopping complex.
The numerous small skewers/dishes of marinated,grilled chicken innards,especially the "gizzards",ox tongue,asparagus wrapped in wagyu beef,lamb,grilled smelt with roe and very fresh seafood sashimi went down very well washed down with their quite decent house red wine.
The total bill for six was just below usd200 for a very good lunch.
Life is hell in the tropics.no?:))

Thanks guys! My husband and I made the best bratwurst we've ever had (including what we had in Germany). I've seen saurkraut recipes but was hoping for something special to go with the brats. I kinda wanted to make it for the neighborhood BBQ we're having tomorrow night but we didn't decide to make the brats until about a week ago and I knew I wouldn't have time to make the saurkraut right and I didn't want the house stinking of it. I like cabbage but I don't know that I'll like the smell in my house. But, of course, I'll still be making it after the bbq.

Saurkraut freezes, doesn't it?

I've seen saurkraut recipes but was hoping for something special to go with the brats.

How special a recipe do you want? When I want sauerkraut to go with pork chops or Polish sausage, here's what I do to "doctor it up":

I buy a bag of sauerkraut; they stock it in the refrigerated section. I drain it, but because I like it really sour I don't rinse it. Then, in a large skillet, I sauté one large onion, chopped, and when it's golden I add the sauerkraut, about a tablespoon of sugar, and about a tablespoon of caraway seed. Heat sufficiently long that some of the liquid in the sauerkraut evaporates. Any of those additions can be altered as to quantity or omitted, according to your taste.

Other possibilities: when you sauté the onion, also sauté a peeled and cut up apple. Use brown sugar. Add butter. Use meat stock for the liquid, or include pork chop bones as it simmers, which is what my mother did. Or cider, which is what I do. Add a juniper berry or two.