13 Creative Ways to Enjoy Your Jar of Sauerkraut

When you’re a kid, the distinctive, tangy taste of sauerkraut is a bit of an acquired taste, particularly for taste buds that gravitate toward all things sweet rather than sour-on-purpose. However, as your taste buds mature, eating numerous helpings of sauerkraut starts to make more sense. The sour in sauerkraut is one of the five basic flavors that the human tongue recognizes. Although sour gets its due in dishes like sweet and sour pork, it gets less play than, say, umami, which you get an infusion of in everything from steak to mushrooms.

Something’s gotta balance all this out a bit. For those who love a good plate of pork chops, the tangy sourness of sauerkraut stands up to the umami of the pork, complements it, and reminds you why having a taste juxtaposition of sour and umami is always better than not having it. That’s just one example of how this fermented cabbage comes to a dish’s rescue even before you’ve realized that the dish needed any rescuing. 

Nowadays, it seems like we’ve become so accustomed to this staple of German cuisine that we take it for granted, waiting for something better to come along when we’re trying to dress up a recipe. If you’re in this predicament, take heart. The 13 ideas in this list remind you what kinds of flavors taste most excellent with sauerkraut. They’re yummy enough to make you want to try them out right now, enabling you to finally finish that jar of ‘kraut that’s been sitting in your fridge for ages.

For centuries, Germans have eaten some combo of pork and sauerkraut together on New Year’s Day -– so much so that the combo is considered a sign of the New Year’s blessings to come. The pairing became popular because in the autumn of the year prior to New Year’s Day the makings for the two ingredients, the hog and the raw cabbage were usually harvested at the same time. In the days before commercial refrigeration existed, cabbages were fermented to keep them edible. As for the hog, it was slaughtered and the meat was smoked or pickled to preserve it. Eventually, the two preservation techniques came to the New World with the Pennsylvania Dutch. In a nutshell, this explains why so many pork dishes also call for sauerkraut — they’ve been eaten together for centuries. 

Nowadays, pork loin or pork chops are often cooked in a bed of sauerkraut, the juice of which both flavors and tenderizes the meat. Sometimes, slices of kielbasa are thrown into the skillet for good measure and extra flavor. However, this isn’t to say that other porky treats, like ham or bacon, need to be left in the smokehouse. On the contrary, these dishes are just as tasty when served with sauerkraut as chops or tenderloin are. In fact, it’s hard to mess up the pork-and-sauerkraut combo, which is why it has become the staple that it is today.

A good dip turns crackers, little slices of bread, celery sticks, and even oven-roasted plantains into a snack for a Super Bowl party or even a quick lunch. If you’re a snack lover at all, then you know all about the usual suspects as far as dips are concerned. Bean. Spinach and artichoke. Creamy onion. And, we can’t forget those irresistible cheese dips. Tasty, but also kinda passé after a while, and so when the same ol’, same ol’ gets to be just plain ol’, you might want to try something new yet comfortingly familiar at the same time: the Reuben dip. Not to worry — it’s made with all the ingredients that make the sandwich-version oh so yummy.

Chopped corned beef and sauerkraut lend the recipe its Reuben-like flavor. The dip gets its creaminess from a combination of cream cheese, sour cream, and grated Swiss cheese. Russian or Thousand Island dressing ups the dip’s tang-and-spice factor. All of this gets cooked nice and slow in your Crock Pot before being served with a side of pretzels, crackers, sliced rye, and other dippables.

Cabbage soup -– also known as shchi soup -– gained popularity in 9th-century Russia has been served in the centuries since then. While many cabbage soup recipes use just cabbage, some of the tastier versions of this dish call for sauerkraut. The flexibility of this recipe is truly what makes it magic. Leftovers are essential for a good bowl of cabbage soup. Written instructions are optional. It’s a make-it-up-as-you-go kinda soup that allows home cooks to use up whatever odds and ends are in the crisper -– tomatoes from the garden, foraged mushrooms, the last bit of those pork chops from the other night, a bunch of carrots, care of the neighbor’s container garden, and of course, plenty of cabbage and sauerkraut.

This isn’t to say that you can’t make cabbage soup from things that aren’t leftovers — you can. Lovers of this concoction fill it with all manner of good things, from thick slices of bacon and kielbasa sausage to onions. Ingredients like potatoes and zucchini or yellow squash make it heartier. They are good options for home gourmands who’d like a vegetarian version of the soup, but still want it to be as hearty as it would be were it not sans meat.

Salad. It’s a thing that you know you should eat more of, and yet, it’s difficult to get excited about it sometimes. There’s only so much lettuce you can down before you start to feel like a bunny. While one logical remedy for this might be to stop eating salad, there’s another way to make it more exciting without giving up the benefits of salad altogether. More specifically, when you’re trying to muster up some salad love, it behooves you to add more toppings, and sauerkraut is worth considering as one of those toppings.

The problem, of course, is that even the stuff you normally top your salad with –- sliced tomatoes, cucumber halves, olive bits, bacon bits, croutons –- start to get a little blasé because you’re used to having them on a salad. That’s exactly why you should make room for sauerkraut. Sauerkraut’s taste, especially combined with other salad fixin’s, wakes all the flavors back up again and provides you with a flavor juxtaposition to the other ingredients. If you really want to kick the fermented cabbage thing up a notch, add your favorite kimchi recipe to the mix, too. No way will your salad be boring after that.

For those of us accustomed to eating meatballs piled on a big helping of spaghetti and marinara, it may be a surprise to learn that meatball recipes crop up in plenty of other cuisines besides Italian. Take German cuisine — it also has its own version of meatballs and pasta that includes a healthy portion of sauerkraut. The pasta in question is famous in German cooking. It’s spaetzle, which are little tiny dumplings that look like little crumbles of dough on the plate.

On top of all of those crumbled mini dumplings rests Dijon mustard gravy, and mixed in with everything is sauerkraut, sauerkraut, and more sauerkraut. In short, it’s sauerkraut — with the help of a little bacon — that gives the meatballs in this recipe their distinctive German flair. That the meatballs get bathed in mustard sauce certainly doesn’t hurt the cause any. To be fair, you don’t have to serve the meatballs and the mustard gravy on spaetzle. Egg noodles work in a pinch as do fried potatoes. Rice works well, too. If you really just want to get your sauerkraut meatball fix on, though, feel free to eat the sauerkraut-covered meatballs straight out of the pan. No one would blame you if you did.

In the early part of the 20th century, the sandwich we know as the Reuben left the griddle for the first time. Stuffed between two slices of rye were slabs of sliced corned beef seasoned just so, a couple of slices of Swiss cheese, a smattering of Russian dressing, and a few small mounds of sauerkraut to give the sammy just the right amount of tanginess. The sandwich has since become a classic, and it’s the kind of thing you look forward to when you’re making a big pot of corned beef and cabbage because you know that those fabulous leftovers will be put to good use.

If you’re trying to make a Reuben that looks and tastes yummy, skip the plain rye and upgrade your rye to the marbled kind. If you can find some with some kind of seed, like sunflower seeds, you’ll probably find the sandwich to be more satisfying. Options abound where the sauerkraut is concerned, too. For example, if you eat your Reuben with a side of dill pickles, you might enjoy stuffing your sandwich with raw dill pickle sauerkraut. A sweet garlic kraut recipe offers a nice juxtaposition to the umami flavor of the meat. If you love a little spice, go for a kimchi sauerkraut on your sandwich.

Mac and cheese fans often turn to the dish when they need a little comfort food to lift their soul. However, tummy-filling comfort can sometimes create a little guilt for not eating more vegetables. Believe it or not, sauerkraut can come to the rescue here, even if you’ve never thought of it as comfort food. That’s because you probably haven’t had the right accompaniments to go with said sauerkraut mac and cheese.

You have a couple of options for this mash-up. Go straight for German-influenced cuisine by combining your favorite mac and cheese recipe with a helping of sauerkraut for tanginess, some sliced kielbasa for a touch of umami, and some beer to add some malty undertones that pull the flavors together nicely. To say that these ingredients will seriously upgrade your mac and cheese is an understatement. 

If you lean toward vegetarianism and need to skip the kielbasa, you’re still in luck. Mac and cheese flavored with sauerkraut and stuffed with fresh green peas and plenty of shredded cheese ain’t half bad — actually, it ain’t bad at all. A willingness to experiment with different kinds of cheeses, like pepper Jack or Gouda, makes this dish more fun, too.

Baked potatoes — particularly those we call “bakers,” Idaho and russet potatoes — are essentially cradles of fluff whose function it is to give delish toppings a place to rest. No wonder they’re the star of the baked potato bar. While ingredients like cheese and bacon bits are common, you shouldn’t overlook sauerkraut as a topping option. In fact, it can be argued that potatoes and sauerkraut are a natural pairing given how often the two ingredients appear together in German cuisine. 

Sour cream, a pat of butter, chopped green onions, a smidgen of chopped dill weed, and some bacon bits are good starters if you’re set on having simple offerings on your baked potato bar. These ingredients complement sauerkraut nicely and are a good foundation on which to build the bar. When the time comes to build up the potato bar even more, look for inspiration in recipes that include sauerkraut. The basic ingredients of a cheesy sauerkraut soup, for example, include shredded cheddar cheese, onions, kielbasa sausage, and cream cheese, and all would taste yummy on your potato spread. Of course, there’s no rule that says you must limit your potato bar to ingredients that appear in the same recipe. Your potato-bar eaters may be keen on experimenting with flavor combos, like sauerkraut and olives, or sauerkraut and prosciutto or ham. There’s no limit but your imagination.

Meatloaf is like the ground-beef equivalent of casserole. It takes a pinch of this and a portion of that and turns all those disparate ingredients into a whole whose sum is greater than its individual parts. Meatloaf is the ultimate stretch-your-spare-ingredients-out dish. Because sauerkraut is cheap and flavorful, it deserves your consideration as a stuffer for your meatloaf just as much as other ingredients, like carrot bits, celery, and bread crumbs.

Speaking of bread crumbs, you might want to change things up a bit when you add sauerkraut to your meatloaf. Swapping out your regular bread crumbs for some rye and filling the meat with Swiss cheese gives a nod to other popular sauerkraut-based meals, like the Reuben. A dollop of pickle relish brings in the side of dill pickle that normally hangs out next to your Reuben. Finally, if you can get your hands on some ground corned beef, consider substituting it for ground beef to up the flavor of the meatloaf even more.

This one’s a foodie no-brainer. Sauerkraut just goes on a hot dog or sausage like peas go with carrots. It’s such a common thing that you’re unlikely to meet a hot dog street vendor without piles and piles of the tangy stuff in his bins of frankfurter fixin’s. Indeed, since about the 1860s, sour-and-umami combo has been the stuff that street food and fast snacks are made of. Although there are pockets of places in the U.S. where you can find hot dogs offered sans sauerkraut -– oh the horrors -– the long history of the combo more than suggestions that it should just be a thing no matter where you go.

This isn’t to say that your dog must stand alone. Mustard and pickle relish make great complements for it. A sweet and fluffy bun sprinkled with sesame seeds gives the sauerkraut-and-hot-dog combo a flavor and textural juxtaposition that makes it taste all the better. All you need to complete the set-up is a frosty cup of ice-cold Coca-Cola to wash it down with.

One of the appeals of the BLT sandwich, most of the time, is its simplicity -– a few slices of bacon, a blanket of lettuce, and a slice of tomato. It’s so good and wholesome that it’s the kind of sandwich you turn to when you can’t think of anything else to eat. Because it’s pretty much perfect as-is, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about piling on ingredients like sauerkraut to try to make it better. It’s called a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich for a reason, after all. 

However, there’s an argument to be made for sauerkraut on the BLT. The fermented cabbage is often served to tasty effect with other kinds of pork, so why not this kind, too? This upgrade requires a few swap-outs. Marbled rye or pretzel roll is the way to go here. It enhances the flavor of the sauerkraut and the spicy sauce you’ll eat with it. This can be Russian dressing, or you can make up your own by doctoring up some Ranch dressing with the likes of Sriracha. Finally, try latticing the bacon together to give the shreds of sauerkraut something solid to sit on.

There’s a reason that crisp apple strudel is one of “Sound of Music’s” Maria von Trapp’s favorite things. It’s Austrian, like the von Trapp family, and while the lyrics from the famous musical may make one think that all strudel recipes are sweet, they are not. Sweet strudels, like apple strudel, are for breakfast. Savory strudel, like bratwurst and sauerkraut strudel, is for dinner. 

Making strudel savory requires savory ingredients. The sausage and the sauerkraut create the foundation for the savoriness of this dish, but they are only the beginning. Sour cream, chopped onion, sharp cheddar, and Muenster cheese create a harmonious and delicious blend of umami flavors. You’ll amp up the flavor even more by including your favorite smokey bacon recipe and some chopped walnuts for some crunch. Given how common it is to serve apples with pork in German and Austrian cuisines, apple-smoked bacon would be a great choice here, too.

Eggs Benedict is one of the most popular breakfast recipes around, and for good reason. Sizzling bacon rests atop a crisp, buttery English muffin. A soft egg and sliced ham or Canadian bacon smothered with a thick homemade Hollandaise sauce brings in additional layers of flavor. Some Eggs Benny recipes include other ingredients along with this basic setup. A slab of heirloom tomato. Slices of avocado. Possibly lobster or crab, or maybe some smoked salmon. It’s a straightforward dish that has the potential to be chi chi, depending on the ingredients you add to it.

For those who’d like something less luxe but still delish, there’s another iteration of the Eggs Benedict, one that is inspired by the luck o’ the Irish. Sauerkraut, instead of tomatoes or avocados, gives this dish a more Ruben-esque slant, having taken the dish’s inspiration from the beloved sandwich. The Irish inspiration doesn’t end there. Thin slices of corned beef replace the ham or Canadian bacon. Swiss cheese and thousand island dressing introduce both a savory and sweet flavor to the dish and offer a viable substitute to Hollandaise sauce for those who aren’t fans of the yellow stuff. You don’t do away with the English muffin, unless you want to, in which case, you may find a bagel or pretzel roll to be a divine replacement. It’s a dish that’s good enough to eat not only on St. Patty’s day, but everyday.