Why You Should Serve Sauerkraut at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner might bring to mind turkey with gravy, buttery mashed potatoes, creamy casseroles, and mac and cheese. But in Baltimore, central Pennsylvania, and pockets of Ohio, there’s a surprising — and somewhat polarizing — counterpoint to those classics on the table. A mound of sauerkraut, the German word for “sour cabbage” fermented with salt in fermentation crocks or mason jars, brings tang, crunch, and acid to cut through the richness of a Thanksgiving feast. For some families, it’s as essential as pumpkin pie. 

“Sauerkraut, albeit underrepresented on most Thanksgiving spreads outside of central Pennsylvania, is here to stay,” says food historian Joanna “Bridey” O’Leary.

Here’s how the tradition began — and the case for adding kraut to your own table, wherever you call home.

A barrel of kraut in November

When Germans began settling in Pennsylvania and Maryland in the 1700s, they brought their food traditions with them. Cabbage was abundant, hardy, and perfect for preserving in the cool fall air.

“Sauerkraut can last for months on the shelf when properly stored, making it a great staple for wintertime,” says Julia Skinner, author of Our Fermented Lives. Packed with B vitamins and other essentials, it’s also a nutritious addition to meals. She explains that families would shred and salt cabbages in big batches right after the harvest, the timing of which lined up nicely with the holidays. “Sauerkraut would be ready to eat several weeks after you started fermenting it, so it makes sense people would be eating it around Thanksgiving.”

By the mid-1800s, Maryland newspapers were already pairing “turkey and kraut” in their holiday coverage. “Germans had been settling in these regions in waves since the 1700s so the tradition could be almost as old as Thanksgiving, which began to be adopted as a holiday annually on a state level in the 1820s,” says Maryland-based food historian Kara Mae Harris.

A tangy counterpoint

Thanksgiving is a rich meal. Without something sharp to cut through, it can all blur into starchy sameness. As Harris puts it, “Sauerkraut is acidic and sometimes pungent. To people not raised with that type of palate, it can be off-putting or an acquired taste. But anyone who traditionally had this fermented vegetable with rich meals during harvest season would come to expect it.”

Baltimore-based artist and designer Krystal C. Mack says sauerkraut even completes the perfect forkful: “In my opinion, it’s such a necessary touch. It is something that can balance out the perfect Thanksgiving bite, which to me has a bit of everything: savory, sweet, salty, umami, and sour.”

Sauerkraut is also an easy addition to your feast if you buy it at the store. While we prefer refrigerated fresh sauerkraut sold in bags or jars for its crisp acidity, you can also stock up on shelf-stable jars or cans, which have been heat-pasteurized to neutralize the bacteria that create kraut. This means they don’t continue to develop carbon dioxide that would cause the sealed container to explode. 

From pig tails to kimchi 

As with so many regional dishes, there isn’t one right way to serve sauerkraut at Thanksgiving. Some families serve it with mushrooms, some with sausages and apple, and others right out of the bag or can. Mack recalls, “My grandmother prepared sauerkraut cooked with pig tails every Thanksgiving and Christmas. To me, those dishes are a delicacy that evokes a sense of connection to my ancestors and the Black American South. The addition of pig tails to our very mid-Atlantic sauerkraut feels like an honoring of our rural past and more northern city-living present.”

For Mack, sauerkraut isn’t just food — it’s cultural memory. “It’s a reminder of how families of The Great Migration carried their culture with them and incorporated it into the regional foodways of the cities they relocated to. It also speaks to the collaborative spirit and innovation that exists between Black migrants and immigrants from other cultures.”

The dish is also evolving. “The nostalgia factor compels younger consumers to include it and the current ‘fermentation craze’ only strengthens this impulse,” says O’Leary. She has enjoyed sauerkraut involving heirloom or rare cabbage varieties, bolder seasoning profiles, and crossovers with its cousin: kimchi. 

Skinner has seen that, too. “There’s plenty of room for experimentation with sauerkraut: I make some that have pomegranate seeds, lemon zest, and rosemary, as well as traditional spices. If it’s too sour, you can ferment it for less time. It’s endlessly customizable.”

Community in a crock

Beyond its tang, sauerkraut carries symbolic weight. “Fellowship over food is a hallmark value of these communities,” O’Leary says. “That means not just eating as a group but also the communal act of preparation and preservation. The process of making and consuming sauerkraut encapsulates all these activities and therefore [it’s] a particularly important dish.”

Kraut also connects neighbors across backgrounds. As Harris points out, “When you’re reaching for the bags of sauerkraut piled up at the grocery store in November and you see someone else doing the same, it’s a linking together of neighbors, present and generations ago.”

Mack echoes that sentiment. “In a way, this fermented peasant food embodies the intended spirit of cultural exchange in the fiction of Thanksgiving more honestly than the actual story itself.”

Skinner sees sauerkraut as part of a much larger revival. “Each day, we actively choose what we carry over that bridge between past and future. When you make ferments, you’re adding your hands to thousands of years’ worth of tradition, and passing on traditions that have kept our ancestors alive and healthy.” If that’s not a case for adding kraut to your table this November, we don’t know what is.