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!
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.
How to make small batch cabbage kimchi
Category: Side dish
Cuisine: Korean
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)
By Avery 