The Costco Sauerkraut You'll Want To Add To Every Summertime Hot Dog

Cookouts are the calling card of summer: Burgers, corn, watermelon, and hot dogs (or brats, if you're from the Midwest). And though there are many ways to prepare a hot dog, sometimes a simple brown mustard and sauerkraut dog can't be beaten. Luckily, Costco has you covered for all your sauerkraut needs. The wholesale warehouse is stocking 50-ounce jars (why yes, that is over three pounds) of Wildbrine Raw Organic Sauerkraut for $8.39.

With three ingredients — cabbage, salt, and garlic — it's simple but packs a lot of flavor. According to Wildbrine, it's an "ode" to the classic taste (classic kraut is typically unflavored or flavored only with caraway seeds) and meant to be tart and crunchy. This kraut is a big crowd favorite. It has a 4.8-star review on Amazon, with most of the critique centered around having a plastic container instead of glass. On Instagram, @creekdazed claims that his family loves it so much that his daughter drinks the brine, and @coco.sol says that her four-year-old eats it straight from the jar, and her daughters come running if they smell the kraut jar open. If you're getting your four-year-old to eat sauerkraut straight out of the jar, you better buy it in Costco volumes!

If you're not kraut-crazy enough to eat it straight out of the jar, three pounds of the stuff means a lot of hot dogs or bratwursts. If you're not regularly hosting big family reunions with dozens of hot dogs coming off the grill, you'll need more ways to use that big jar of sauerkraut.

Adding sauerkraut to grilled cheese is a great way to perk up the creaminess of the melted cheese. Sandwich the kraut between two layers of cheese and get it toasty. Get really into Reuben sandwiches, one of the most iconic sauerkraut favorites. Topping a pizza with sauerkraut adds a tangy crunch to cut the cheesiness, much like adding it to grilled cheese. Roasting it with apples and sausage balances the tart with fat and sweetness. Stir it into your potato and leek soup or beef stew, beef stroganoff, or with saucy Swedish meatballs to perk them up. 

To use the liquid, the olive juice in a dirty martini can be swapped for kraut brine, and you can use the kraut brine instead of pickle brine to marinade your chicken before frying it. For a more adventurous use, some folks make chocolate cake with it (really, it's a thing, we promise). You'll have plenty of kraut in the jar to try new recipes.

As a naturally fermented product, sauerkraut is full of probiotics. Wildbrine's sauerkraut, in particular, kickstarts its fermentation with lactobacillus, giving the kraut its tang. These lactic acid bacteria produce naturally occurring acids, vitamins, and flavor. Probiotics help to balance the good and "bad" bacteria in your gastrointestinal system and are thought to help regulate GI distress and possibly even mediate lactose intolerance.

Wildbrine started as a part of the Ceres Community Project, a San Francisco Bay Area organization dedicated to providing whole, healthy foods for community members struggling with serious illnesses. Antibiotics and other medical treatments can seriously disrupt your gut biome, so the Ceres Project hired some folks to make a bunch of sauerkraut as part of their meal offerings. The kraut was such a hit that Ceres started selling to local stores for extra funding to go toward its work, and in 2011, it became its own brand, where it can now be found at a Costco near you.