the sauerkraut dilemma

[darkoshi]

Or, sauerkraut odor, reprise.

I need to eat about a cup of sauerkraut before going to bed, as it's the only way to stop it from continuing to stink up my refrigerator. Other than tossing it in the trash, which would probably make my trash bin stink. I hope that eating it won't make me stink too much. Dang, I'm not really in the mood for eating sauerkraut.

It's in a glass bowl covered with foil fastened with a rubber band and closed within not 1 but 2 ziplock bags. But the smell still gets out. As if the open containers of baking soda, vinegar and coffee grounds that I put in the fridge weren't in there at all.

Yesterday at work, I noticed an unpleasant smell while drinking from my water bottle. The smell was coming from the rubbery ring on the lid... I finally realized that it had absorbed the stinky sauerkraut smell from the refrigerator. Gah.

Search on "How to dispose of sauerkraut" (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+dispose+of+sauerkraut) and the results include titles such as:
How to dispose of or recycle Sauerkraut - Township of Scugog
How to dispose of or recycle Sauerkraut - Region of Durham
How to dispose of or recycle Sauerkraut - City of Oshawa

But no, don't get excited; those pages don't actually have any useful info specific to sauerkraut.


https://www.maangchi.com/talk/topic/keeping-the-kimchi-smell-out-of-the-fridge-and-in-the-kimchi
"Keep in mind that generations of koreans fought with that problem and while our ancestors came up with the idea of keeping it outside of the house, with all our technology today, all we could came up with was to buy a separate fridge."

Comments

[randomdreams]

I read this out loud because our household has a long and glorious history of both sauerkraut and kimchi disasters. There's a double-bagged container of kimchi self-glued to the shelf in the refrigerator right now.

[darkoshi]

Well, I ate it up last night to get rid of it. A big bowl full, along with some corn chips. My guts didn't appreciate it, but at least it's gone now. Today I realized that I could have dug a hole and buried it in the yard instead.

The thing is, some sauerkraut doesn't smell as strong as others, and you never know what you're going to end up with. I had a partially-eaten jar of sauerkraut in Q's fridge for probably at least a month, and it didn't smell bad. Unless the jar was just very air-tight. I'm going to stick with glass jars from now on; no more canned sauerkraut.

[marahmarie]

I was truly fascinated by this (in part) because as most of my access list knows, I still have mild PTSD from coming to rent our apartment two years ago only to find I had to ask the landlord to have the freezer cleaned before we moved in mostly because it stank so bad of sauerkraut (also, because it looked yellowish and slightly nasty, but that didn't do to me what the smell did).

And I like sauerkraut, and don't mind the smell when I'm eating it. I can't imagine what non-sauerkraut people go through having to smell it.

The other reason my imagination was captured was I thought I was the only person in the universe who puts a rubber band around tin foil around a bowl. I feel like sending you all my plastic storage containers (since we know I don't want them, anyhow), but fwiw, I still do the rubber band around tin foil around the bowl thing, just not as much as I did before I bought and came into some (admittedly, mostly crappy, pretty cheap) containers starting about two years ago.

[darkoshi]

The reason I started using tinfoil for sauerkraut was this:
https://darkoshi.dreamwidth.org/385982.html

I stopped using the container's normal plastic lid over the foil (and using a rubber band instead) because of this:
https://darkoshi.dreamwidth.org/501157.html

I had checked the foil this time, and there were no tiny holes in it, at least none visible when holding it up to the light. But still, I didn't want to risk the bowl's plastic lid taking on smell again, so I stopped using the lid entirely. I thought that foil and a rubber band was a good enough cover on its own.

I could designate one glass container with a good tight-fitting lid as the "sauerkraut container", and then it shouldn't matter if the lid takes on the smell. But so far, I haven't wanted to sacrifice a good container for that as I don't eat sauerkraut that often. And as sauerkraut is acidic, I don't want to keep it in a plastic container. But as mentioned in my other comment, I plan to only buy the ones in glass jars from now on. And if necessary, I'll use foil on them too!

But then again, the jars are larger than cans and take even longer to use up... I'll just have to see if my "desire to eat sauerkraut" comes to outweigh my "fear of smelling up the fridge again" whenever I'm passing sauerkraut in the grocery store aisles.

[marahmarie]

Maybe a canning jar with just a metal lid? I also came into these huge white ceramic jars like the kind one might use to hold anything from flour to dry pasta with attached ceramic lids that have metal snaps to close and lock the lids into place. Either idea (or similar) might work.

After replying I read what inspired your rubberband around the tin foil trick (not wanting a plastic lid to smell of sauerkraut) which is a great idea, but not why I do it - sometimes I just don't have the right container (or any) so wrap the bowl the food's in instead, then use the rubberband to prevent any spills (for example, the cucumber salad in the fridge is in a clear glass bowl with plastic wrap around it and a rubberband around that, because there is tons of vinegar and water.

To prevent OP ruining the fridge because he's a bit careless, I put paper towels on a dinner plate and stuck the plate under the bowl. The next day he sloshed it, but yay, no spills outside of the plate). Been doing that...at least 10 years now or longer.

[darkoshi]

A canning jar is a good idea for the sauerkraut. I even used to have one, but I think I got rid of it. But I have other spare jars I could use. Using the rubberband & foil to prevent spills is a good idea too.

[marahmarie]

Necessity's the mother of invention! I keep meaning to make a post about all the McGyvering I've currently got going on around here but time keeps getting away.