Spiced Red Cabbage Canning Recipe

Pearl luna cap canning jars with canned spicy red cabbage recipe

A ver­sa­tile spiced red cab­bage can­ning recipe equal­ly at home served cold, packed into a falafel wrap, or warm with a roast din­ner. And it’s so easy to make!

This is a time-hon­ored recipe adapt­ed from the ubiq­ui­tous Ball Com­plete Book of Home Pre­serv­ing. Quan­ti­ties and mea­sure­ments have been reworked to bet­ter suit the UK based pre­serv­er, but the most sig­nif­i­cant change is the use of cider vine­gar. This spiced red cab­bage can­ning recipe is real­ly deli­cious; the flavour com­bi­na­tion of cab­bage and apple being a real culi­nary classic.

No cook­ing of the cab­bage is need­ed, it is sim­ply dry brined in salt first to remove water and improve the tex­ture pri­or to canning.

Ide­al for mak­ing over the win­ter months when oth­er fresh veg­etable may be hard to source, this spiced red cab­bage can­ning recipe will fill 8 x 500ml jars or 4 x 1 litre jars. Any prop­er can­ning jars will do, but for this recipe I’m using Pearl’s won­der­ful Luna Cap pre­serv­ing jars. These inno­v­a­tive jars fea­ture ful­ly reusable stain­less steel lids and bands.

Spiced Red Cabbage Ingredients

To make four litres of spiced red cabbage.

  • 2 Red Cab­bages, at least 3kg total in weight.

  • 50g of fine sea salt. Avoid using table salt.

  • 2 litres of apple cider vine­gar. If using home brewed ensure it is at least 0.5% acidity.

  • 125g of brown sugar.

  • 2 tbsp whole cloves.

  • 2 tbsp whole all­spice berries.

  • 2 tbsp black peppercorns.

  • 2 tbsp cel­ery seed.

  • 1 large cin­na­mon stick.

  • 2 mace blades.

Spiced Red Cabbage Method

This recipe takes two days to com­plete, the spiced vine­gar and cab­bage being pre­pared up to 12 hours before can­ning the jars.

Preparing the Spiced Vinegar

  1. Pour the vine­gar into a sauce pan and gen­tly heat while adding the sug­ar. Stir until the sug­ar is dissolved.

  2. Add all the spices and very slow­ly bring to a sim­mer with the lid on. At this point turn off the heat and allow the spices to infuse into the vine­gar overnight.

  3. The fol­low­ing day fil­ter the vine­gar, the cel­ery seeds are very small so use a dou­ble lay­er of muslin or cheese cloth.

Preparing the Red Cabbage

  1. Strip the out­er leaves from your cab­bages, quar­ter them with a sharp knife and remove the cores.

  2. Fine­ly shred the cab­bage quar­ters with either a knife or a mandoline.

  3. Add the shred­ded cab­bage to a large plas­tic or ceram­ic bowl lay­er­ing in the salt as you go. Place a plate over the salt­ed cab­bage to weigh it down, cov­er with a tea tow­el and leave overnight or for 12 hours.

  4. Place small batch­es of the cab­bage in in a colan­der and rinse well under the tap. Shake as much water from the cab­bage as pos­si­ble and leave to drain for a few min­utes. Place the batch­es of rinsed cab­bage on a tray with sev­er­al lay­ers of kitchen roll. Pad away with kitchen roll as much of the water from the cab­bage as practicable.

Canning Your Spiced Red Cabbage

Fol­low stan­dard meth­ods for water bath can­ning and ensure that your jars and lids are sani­tised. If your stock pot or water bath can­ner is too small to hold all the jars process them in batches.

  1. Heat the spiced vine­gar and main­tain at a simmer.

  2. Pack the cab­bage into warm jars tight­ly using a cab­bage pounder, wood­en spoon or the end of a rolling pin. Leave at least 1.5cm of room at the top of each jar.

  3. Ladle the hot spiced vine­gar into warm sani­tised jars with the aid of your fun­nel. Remove any air bub­bles and then top-up to leave at least 1cm of headspace.

  4. Wipe the jar rims and screw down the lids. For the Pearl Luna jars pic­tured here the lids are tight­ened down ful­ly. For stan­dard Kil­ner and Mason jars turn the lids until just fin­ger-tip tight.

  5. Place all the jars in the water bath ensur­ing they are com­plete­ly sub­merged. Process at a rolling boil for 20 min­utes and then remove the jars.

Store in a cool, shady place out of direct sun­light. Keep opened jars in your fridge.

Pearl Luna Cap canning jars with reusable lids

Available From Our Shop

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *