Baek-kimchi

Kimchi with no chilli in it at all, stuffed with pear and radish and left in a pale brine.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains honey. Vegetarian only if you leave out the optional fish sauce, shellfish.

Ingredients

For the brining

• 1 napa cabbage, about 1.5 kg
• 100 g coarse sea salt
• 1.5 litres water

For the stuffing

• 200 g Korean radish, in fine matchsticks
• half an Asian pear, in matchsticks
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• 1 piece ginger, 2 cm, in fine shreds
• 4 spring onions, in 4 cm lengths
• 2 dried jujubes, in fine strips
• 1 tablespoon salted shrimp or 1 tablespoon fish sauce, optional
• 1 teaspoon salt

For the brine it sits in

• 700 ml water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon honey or rice syrup

Method

1. THERE IS NO GOCHUGARU IN IT AT ALL. Not a pinch for colour. That is the whole definition: the kimchi on this site is dressed in a thick red chilli paste, and this one is pale, clean and faintly sweet, with the pear and the radish doing what the chilli does there. Add chilli and you have simply made the other page's recipe badly.
2. WHICH MEANS EVERY OTHER FLAVOUR HAS NOWHERE TO HIDE. Chilli covers a multitude of things; without it the garlic must be sliced rather than crushed, the ginger shredded fine rather than grated to a pulp, and both used with a lighter hand than in red kimchi. Crushed garlic in a white kimchi is all you will taste in a week.
3. THE BRINING TEST IS THE SAME AS FOR RED KIMCHI -- a thick white stem should bend double without snapping -- and it matters more here, because there is no paste to cling to a limp leaf and hold it together.
4. IT IS STUFFED, NOT MIXED. The matchsticks are tucked between the leaves rather than tossed through, so each quarter stays whole and is cut into pieces when it is served.
5. AND IT IS COVERED WITH A SEPARATE LIGHT BRINE, which the red one does not need. The cabbage sits submerged in salted water with a little honey in it, and that liquid is served alongside and drunk. Left dry, a white kimchi oxidises at the surface and goes brown.
6. Cabbage quartered lengthways through the core, the hard core tip cut out.
7. The salt dissolved in the 1.5 litres of water, the quarters laid in, and the rest of the salt rubbed between the white stems.
8. Left 3 to 5 HOURS, turned hourly, and TESTED BY BENDING A STEM from 3 hours on.
9. Rinsed 3 times and drained upturned 30 minutes.
10. Radish, pear, garlic, ginger, spring onions, jujube, the shrimp or fish sauce and the teaspoon of salt tossed together and left 10 minutes.
11. The mixture TUCKED between the leaves of each quarter, working from the stem outwards.
12. Each quarter folded over on itself and packed into a jar.
13. The 700 ml of water, 2 teaspoons of salt and the honey stirred until dissolved and poured over to COVER the cabbage completely.
14. Left 1 to 2 DAYS at room temperature until the brine tastes faintly sour and slightly fizzy, then refrigerated. Good from three days and best inside a month -- it has no chilli to carry it and goes flat sooner than red kimchi.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under South Korea · All recipes