There are lots of different types of kimchi. The two main ways to make it seem to be “dry” (where a rice-flour and chilli porridge is rubbed on the leaves after a salt has been rubbed on the leaves) or wet (where the leaves are soaked for longer, then the other ingredients added later). Dry seems to be quicker but more labour intensive, and wet takes longer but seems to be much less effort.
This recipe uses the wet method - it takes a night and day to prepare, then 3 to 5 days to ferment.
(When I follow the link I had to the recipe I based this on I end up at a completely different recipe on a different site. No idea what happened there…)
Active time is about an hour It takes a night and a day to get the kimchi from ingredients into the jars and start fermenting
- Chopping board
- Knives
- Probably a colander
- Big mixing bowl
- Bowls you can add weights to (plates)
- 3 preserving jars with rubber rings
- Garlic mincer
- Big spoon
- 5 Cups water, dechlorinated
- 1 nice big nappa cabbage/chinese leaf/chinese cabbage
- 1 big radish - mooli or daikon (optional)
- 3 tablespoons of salt
- The prepared, dechlorinated water (5 cups)
- 1 tbsp minced garlic (about half a bulb)
- 1 tbsp dried chives or a bunch of spring onions (chopped)
- 1 tbsp nori flakes or a shredded nori sheet (probably optional)
- 2 tbsp of chilli pepper, either:
- 2 tbsp of proper gochugaru pepper OR
- 1 tbsp chilli pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp ground chilli powder
- 1/2 tsp sugar (I tend to use fruit sugar but any will do)
- 1 thinly sliced carrot (optional)
- 1 sliced chilli pepper (optional)
- Get 5 cups of water and leave out for a day, or boil for 20 minutes and leave to cool. This removes the chlorine.
- I put the water in a large glass bowl, then put some chopsticks on the top, then a plate on top of them. This hopefully lets the chlorine evaporate without the risk of me dropping stuff in it accidentally, and keeps the dust out.
- I leave the bowl out overnight (8 to 10 hours) rather than a day. Actually I normally start the next stage 4 hours late, so 12 hours is more accurate.
- Mix in 3 tablespoons salt for each 5 cups of water, and put in a bowl big enough to contain the cabbage.
- This seems like a lot of salt but most of it will be left-over at the end.
- I tend to use those wide rectangular Pyrex containers for this, and a little metal whisk to mix the salt and water. Salt flakes take ages to dissolve, so avoid them.
- Slice the nappa cabbage vertically into 4 pieces
- Discard the outer layer of leaves, then rinse.
- Chop off the base/heart, then chop into 2cm wide horizontal slices. Avoid using any black, brown, wilted or otherwise tatty bits.
- Put the cabbage into the salt water and put plates on it to weight it down. You want all the cabbage pieces to be submerged.
- Some recipes say to wash the cabbage before slicing, others say afterwards. I tend to rinse the leaves before chopping.
- If you are adding mooli/daikon then slice it up now, and pickle it with the cabbage.
- Leave it for 8 hours or more, at room temperature.
- It’s a good idea to put some cling film over the bowls. If the cling film touches the water you’ll probably get a puddle on your countertop (I regularly cause countertop floods)
- Peel the garlic then crush it/puree it, and put to one side. This is probably the most awkward bit of the entire kimchi making process.
- Measure all the dry ingredients into another small bowl or mug
- If you are adding a carrot or chilli pepper then slice them up now and put them to one side.
- Get a large bowl, and make sure it is clean.
- Take the cabbage out of the water and dump it in the bowl. Scoop handfuls of it out, and don’t worry about it being wet - you need this water.
- Leave the leftover water in the containers for awhile, you might need it in a bit.
- Dump the garlic, dry ingredients, and any other optional ingredients on top of the cabbage in the mixing bowl.
- Give it a good stir with a spoon.
- Make sure your hands are clean and use at least one of them to mix and scrunch/squeeze the cabbage. Be rough. This stage is important - if you just mix the ingredients with a spoon the kimchi won’t be right - you need to scrunch it all together. The cabbage should now start to look as if it is in a chilli sauce, and the ingredients will seem to be smaller than when you started.
- Get the jars and make sure they clean - they don’t need to be sterilised with boiling water, etc, but they do need to be clean.
- Pack the kimchi into the jars. You want to leave about a finger’s depth clear at the top, as the ingredients will expand and bubble.
- Push the ingredients down - you don’t want to have cabbage exposed above the water level. Add some spare salt water to just cover it.
- Put the jars into a cupboard. Put them on a plate with a rim, in case they bubble over.
- Leave for 3 days or more, but less than 6 days. Bubbles and gaps will start to form in the kimchi, and a lovely-smelling liquid may start to leak out (possibly spraying out…). You might hear the jars hissing to themselves.
- How long you leave the jars to ferment depends on how warm your home is, the ingredients, and how sour you want the cabbage.
- If you open the jar immediately it might spray kimchi over your arm and redecorate your kitchen a little, so open gradually and have a tea towel ready
- The jar might sit there bubbling and blooping like lava when first opened. This is fine. The kimchi may actually taste fizzy in your mouth - this is fine too (there’s pressured gas trapped in the cabbage).
- Put the jars into the fridge. They will continue to ferment, but slower, and with less explosive tendencies. They’ll last a long time but I usually eat within a couple of weeks. They’ll get tastier as time goes on.
- Adding one fresh red chilli, chopped into slices, looks nice
- Adding a single thinly sliced raw carrot also works well
- You can use a big radish (mooli or daikon) to pad-out the kimchi and get a stronger flavour. I salt-pickle mine with the cabbage rather than adding it at the mixing stage as there’s so much of it. You can add an entire mooli to get a 50/50 cabbage/mooli mix.
- I normally double the quantities for each batch - so I use 10 cups of water, two pyrex containers, two cabbages, etc.
- The cabbages can vary in weight quite a bit - some have lots of gaps inside, others are dense.
- Don’t store or mix it in plastic containers. If you do, you will end up with plastic containers you only use for kimchi.
- Your rubber seal rings for your jars will never ever lose the stains or stop smelling of kimchi. Worth bearing in mind if you intend to use them for jam making later.
- When you wash your used jars in a dishwasher and open the dishwasher, it may smell amazing.
- If you mix kimchi with your bare hands they might go a disturbing Tony Blair/Trump-style orange colour afterwards. It does eventually wash off. They’ll smell very strongly of garlic for awhile though. Some people wear gloves to avoid this, but I don’t.
- If you rush to eat large quantities of home-made kimchi all at once for the first time you’ll experience what in Germany is known as “musical food”. It’s very good for your digestion and general health, but not good in some social situations.
- Do not try this with brussels sprouts instead of nappa cabbage - it creates a very bitter, intense kimchi that smells like nail varnish. It’s actually quite nice but i couldn’t eat more than one or two brussel sprouts with a meal, and given the number of sprouts vs time taken to get to eat them was worried about how strong it would get…