Making Kimchi

We’ve been making our own Kimchi for the past few years. It makes for a nice in-between snack and goes well with a lot of different dishes. Here’s the recipe we’ve improved and revised with each attempt. The measurements are very approximate as we usually taste and adjust as we see necessary.

Ingredients

(for about a year of Kimchi supply)

2 Napa Cabbages
1 Radish
500g of Carrots
500g of Caigua (optional, but we love them in Kimchi)

Kosher salt

~100g of Garlic
Gochugaru (Korean hot pepper flakes)
Cooked rice (a little bit of stale rice from the previous day is fine)
Fish sauce
Sugar

Preparing the vegetables

Start by cutting the cabbage and caigua into pieces. If you want to do it the proper traditional way you would cut the cabbage into halves or quarters lenght-wise and keep the pieces together like this, but it is so much easier in preparing and eating the Kimchi with pre-cut cabbage, and we are lazy, so…

Mix the cabbage and caigua with plenty of salt in a large bowl. Let them rest for about 2 hours stiring once in a while.

In the mean-time peel and cut the carrots and radish into thin strips and peel the garlic and cut it into pieces.

Once the two hours are over thoroughly wash the cabbage and caigua with cold water to get as much of the salt off as possible. Then mix them with the carrots and radish.

Preparing the paste

How much paste you will need depends a lot on how spicy you want your final Kimchi to be. The 100 g of garlics mentioned above is a rough estimate, and you will need about half the amount of rice and then add Gochugaru to taste.

The proportions we usually use are 2 parts of garlic + 2 parts of Gochugaru + 1 part of rice.

Add the two tablespoons of sugar and a little bit of fish sauce and water to make the blending process easier. You should add enough fish sauce and/or water to get a smooth but pasty sauce. Taste as you go along, we really love fish sauce so we usually add more instead of adding more water.

Once you are happy with your sauce, mix everything together. This is easiest done by hands. You might want to use disposable gloves or make sure to really wash your hands properly afterwards.

Fermenting

Fill the mixture into jars or other suitable containers. Pack everything tightly but leave 2–3 cm free on top, since the Kimchi will expand during fermentation. After filling all jars add a little bit of water to your mixing bowl to get the rest of the sauce and distribute it on all jars so the vegetables are well covered.

Keep the jars in a warm but dark place. Make sure to check on the jars every day and open the lid to release the fermentation gases. Once the Kimchi has reached your desired taste (it usually takes about a week) put it into the fridge to stop the fermentation. Once refrigerated you can keep the Kimchi for a fairly long time.

For the latest batch we did a few weeks ago we got a fancy Kimchi container with an adjustable inner lid to keep away most air from the Kimchi, which worked really great. It also could be left alone without having to release the pressure every day.