Go to any Korean restaurant, and you’ll always get an array of small dishes for free, and you can bet money that cabbage kimchi will be part of the rotation. Garlicky, spicy, fishy, and a little bit sour – kimchi has this unique kind of depth to it that makes it rice’s perfect companion. While you can find it in any Korean grocery store and even your local Trader Joe’s, it’ll never taste like a batch made at home.
I grew up in a Taiwanese household, so I can’t claim that I’m reproducing my sweet mom’s recipe, but rather, my sweet Korean piano teacher’s recipe. I started piano lessons in first grade, and by some sort of miracle, continued until my senior year of high school. In those 12 years, I both dreaded and looked forward to my weekly lessons. Dreaded because I never practiced and always felt the pre-class guilt of being a bad student, but excited because I’d leave with a small glass jar of her homemade kimchi.
So, here I am now, taking the hours I should’ve spent practicing piano and putting them towards practicing making kimchi. There are some fantastic recipes out there already – I’ve drawn inspiration from Maangchi and Korean Bapsang, but they produce portions way larger than I can handle. As a result, I’ve tinkered around until I found something that worked for me. So, if you’re a little Asian girl like me, half a head of cabbage is probably more than enough for you.
Anyways, making kimchi is still more of a feeling than an exact science. Still, you should probably invest in a pair of mad scientist rubber gloves, because this process will get your hands deep in red chili pepper territory. Staining your hands is one thing, but try taking your contacts out with your spicy fingers (but actually, don’t). Let me know how your kimchi turns out, and send lots of pictures! If your journey’s going to be anything like mine, your first few attempts are going to be too salty – but practice makes perfect, and eventually you’ll get that symphony of flavors just right!
Link to ingredient explanations
Tips and Tricks
- Use fresh ingredients! Just because you’re fermenting something doesn’t mean you can get away with old cabbage. Trust me, I had old napa lying around and whipped up a batch of kimchi just to use it. Lo and behold, it just wasn’t good! You can taste the quality of the cabbage, so learn from my mistakes.
- I don’t give a concrete amount of salt in the ingredients, because it’s not easy to measure. If you’re using coarse sea salt (preferable), sprinkle the salt in between each leaf liberally, concentrating on the bottom of the leaves. If you’re using table salt, make sure to put a little less, and wash your cabbage thoroughly before rubbing in the kimchi paste. Don’t worry about the kimchi not being salty enough. You’ll get that from the fish sauce and the saeujeot, which gives the taste some more dimension rather than using straight up salt.
- USE GLOVES. PLEASE JUST DO IT.
Ingredients
- 1 pound of cabbage (~1/2 a head)
- 1 inch slice of ginger, minced
- 5 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2.5 tablespoons of saeujeot (salted shrimp), minced
- 1 tablespoon of saeujeot juice
- 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
- 1/4 cup of gochugaru (red pepper flakes) – add more if you prefer it spicier
- 3/4 cup water
- 1.5 tablespoons of glutinous rice flour
- 2 scallions
- 2 tbsp of sugar
- Salt (Korean sea salt preferred)
- (Optional) 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds
- (Optional) Korean radish and carrots
Instructions
- Wash the cabbage
- Cut the cabbage into quarters
- Generously rub salt between every leaf
- Let it soak in a basin of water for ~1 hour
- Mince the garlic, ginger, and suljeot
- Cut the scallions to around 1 cm in length
- Cut the carrots and radish into matchsticks
- Put the water in a pot and let it start to simmer
- Add rice flour and gently stir until it thickens into a paste
- Turn off heat and add in chopped up ingredients to the pot
- Add the red pepper powder to the pot
- Add the fish sauce and suljeot juice to the pot
- (Optional) Add in carrots and radish
- (Optional) Add in sesame seeds
- Stir until it thickens up
- Take the cabbage out of the bowl
- Rinse out every leaf
- Put on your gloves!!
- Stuff paste between every leaf – focus on the bottom of the leaf and gently rub sauce further up to top of leaf
- Tightly pack into glassware and seal
- Leave the container out at room temperature room for 3 days (more if you want it to ferment more)
- Put it in the fridge and enjoy!