When I was first looking into fermenting vegetables, I noticed several sites stating that the presence of surface moulds were ok, even referring to them in a positive way (a 'bloom' for instance).
While I am no doctor or scientist, in my experience the answer to the above question is a firm no. Every time I have had mould on my sauerkraut it has made it taste poor and smell 'wrong', even when the affected layer has been scrapped away - as a general rule, moulds are best avoided unless part of a decent cheese.
How do I prevent them?
There are two key things to preventing moulds and as long as I have adhered to them I have never had moulds crop up in my sauerkraut batches:
- Use the correct type of container
- Sterilise the container with hot boiled water before adding the cabbage
