Kraut makers delight! A $9 cabbage shredder

Isn’t that just a potato peeler?

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Is there something different in the blade? It looks exactly like my fruit peeler. In fact, the first related item recommended by Amazon is “Japanese Fruit zucchini Potato Wide Mouth Peeler 7301-R”

I had the same question, so took a look at Westmark’s catalog. They sell a variety of different specialty peelers (for example, an asparagus peeler) which all look like potato peelers to me. There must be a technical difference, but I suspect you can peel a potato with the cabbage shredder and shred cabbage with the asparagus peeler just fine.

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mandoline, MANDOLINE

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Could it be as simple as the combination of width of the blade and thickness of the slices? 10 cm seems pointlessly wide for all but the biggest potatoes and you probably want your cabbage shreds a little thicker than the typical potato peel.

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Nine bucks? Ouch! Does it also work on cheaper cabbages?

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i only shred cabbage with a mandocello.

https://crowpatrick.bandcamp.com/

seriously, that guy to my left, he used that mandocello to shred.

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Personally, I just cut my Kraut with a good knife, but I guess this “mandoline” thing that others mentioned should work very well too. In more kraut-y countries like here in Austria, the salespeople usually cut it for you anyway if you want. I’ll have to remember to take a picture tomorrow.

What’s weird about this peeler/cutter is that cabbages are quite big, and it’s probably a huge pain to cut it with these tiny peelers. Get a knife, dudes :wink:

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Often the difference is the space between the blades, which determines how much skin you take off. But good peelers (like 20 € or so) let you adjust that space anyway.

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This.

Sharpen your steel chef’s knife, a knife that’ll take an edge and is long enough to cut across the width of a head of cabbage. Sharpen that blade with a real whetstone! Yes. A sharpened blade is the easiest to control, to echo what another poster here said. And for goodness sake use a big big cutting board. Quarter and core the cabbage. Chop the core into wee bits. Shred everything. Sweep your shreds into a non-reactive bowl (glass, ceramic) and use a good salt. Pro tip: save the largest intact leaves to plant on top, as a kind of secondary lid, and push the salted shredded stuff down using those whole leaves, until the brine line rises.

See what does Sandor Katz use to cut veggies into krauts and kimchis? A knife.

I love this guy’s marathon-long devotion to fermentation. One day, I will be able to own all his books. So grateful for his work.

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I’d never thought about using the outer leaves like that! And I’ve been making pretty okay kraut and kimchi for years :D. Thanks!!

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I learned this from my mom, who was born and raised in Augsburg, Deutschland. She said her mom used to do this too.

If you don’t salt those whole (and rather tough) outer leaves, they stay pretty stout and complete during fermentation. If they tend to float up off the shreds, try tucking the leaves in by their edges between the jar walls and the column of fermenting shreds.

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Love it. I consider myself a master fermenter, but you can always learn stuff. Thank you, I will use this. It makes so much sense.

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Might you be interested in the thread about Fermenting? The more, the merrier!

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Missed that thread. Impossible to keep up.

Thanks for the heads up! I will be reading that thread very very closely. I love learning from masters of their crafts.

I am lucky it’s wintertime here in central Texas and I only have to keep up with pruning, weeding, and slinging around soil amendments (in addition to usual job and family obligations). I write now, waiting for the morning to warm up enough that the saw and pruners don’t fall out of my numbed hands in the cold.

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Am I the only one who has a food processor? Because that thing will take down a whole head of cabbage in about 30 seconds.

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I have a Zylis vegetable peeler that has an adjustable angled blade. That feature is puzzling, but apparently, different vegetables call for different angles, which alas never seem to lock in place that firmly. It’s a decent potato and apple peeler, though I should probably make the effort of locating some new ceramic blades

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