Hello again and thanks for all the kind greetings.
A forum member has suggested adding 3 T. raw (active cultures) sauerkraut juice per lb. ground meat and notes that an extended fermentation period is required. I'm planning to try this with a simple summer sausage recipe (do I use cure #2?) stuffed into an unbleached muslin sack. If all goes well, the sausage will be smoked then cooked to temperature. [Give me a couple weeks--if I survive I promise to report back, even if it's from the hospital.]
One of the main strains in sauerkraut is lactobacillus plantarum. Apparently there are numerous strains that rise and fall during a sauerkraut natural ferment, and L plantarum is dominant after 2 weeks or so. However, there may be 20 different cultures alive in there.
L plantarum is one of the main cultures used in meat fermentation. Another one found in both is Pediococcus pentosaceus.
Because sauerkraut is a wild ferment with numerous strains, using juice to ferment meat introduces a lot of variables. In the past, meat wild ferments were the standard, and professionals used backslopping once they had a good culture going in their shop. And while using sauerkraut juice may give a more assured start for LAB cultures, you may also be adding some wild bad stuff.
Due to the high cost of meat, the relatively low cost of professional cultures from Chr Hansen and low amount used, and the ease of availability now of freeze dried cultures, I think it is worth just using them. I don't want to have to toss a bunch of meat.
On the other hand, Lebanon baloney is still made with wild ferment often. And I just reread Rytek Kutas book through, and he is pretty much 100% wild ferment in that book, being written before easy Chr Hansen culture availability. He does do artificial chemical acidification using Fermento, which does lower pH rapidly thus providing some initial pH protection. But anyways, it really was the standard, so we don't have to treat it like craziness ;)
However, it would be an interesting experiment, and in absence of acess to Chr Hansen cultures, sk juice might be the best option! If you experiment, I recommend using sk juice that is at least 2 weeks old so L plantarum has proliferated.
I would love to hear results!! I have a thread at wedlinydomowe.pl with comments on using yugurt cultures as starter, it was for folks in Asia without access to meat cultures. I like the sk juice option better!
