Kimchi

Salted cabbage dressed in chilli and left to ferment, where the brining is judged by bending a leaf rather than by the clock.

Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce. Everything else in it is vegetarian, so it becomes a vegetarian dish if you use vegetarian fish sauce — which is sold, including by Thai brands.

Ingredients

For the brining

2 napa cabbages, about 2.5 kg
150 g coarse sea salt, not table salt
2 litres water

For the paste

60 g gochugaru
1 tablespoon glutinous rice flour
150 ml water
1 tablespoon caster sugar
10 cloves garlic
1 piece ginger, 3 cm
1 small onion
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons saeujeot, salted shrimp, optional
1 Korean radish, about 400 g, in matchsticks
6 spring onions, in 4 cm lengths

Method

A LEAF SHOULD BEND DOUBLE WITHOUT SNAPPING, and that is the test the whole thing rests on -- not a time. Take a thick piece of white stem from the base and fold it: if it cracks, the cabbage needs longer in the brine; if it folds limply like wet cloth, it has gone too far and the kimchi will be soft. Depending on the salt, the cabbage and the kitchen it takes anywhere between two and six hours, which is why the clock is no use.
COARSE SEA SALT, NEVER TABLE SALT. Table salt is finer, so the same weight is far saltier, and most of it carries anti-caking agents that cloud the brine and can stop the fermentation. This is not fussiness -- it is the one substitution that reliably ruins a batch.
THE RICE FLOUR PORRIDGE IS NOT OPTIONAL. A tablespoon of glutinous rice flour cooked into water makes a thin paste, and that paste does two things: it carries the chilli so it clings to the leaves instead of sliding off, and its starch feeds the lactic bacteria for the first few days. Without it the fermentation starts slowly and the chilli collects in the bottom of the jar.
IT IS RINSED THREE TIMES AND DRAINED PROPERLY. Salt left on the leaves keeps drawing water out into the jar and the kimchi ends up swimming and over-salted. Rinse, then upturn the quarters in a colander for 30 minutes.
AND THE JAR IS PACKED DOWN AND LEFT ROOM TO RISE. Pressed until the brine comes up over the cabbage, which keeps air off it, and filled no more than four fifths -- it will bubble up and over otherwise. One to three days at room temperature until it smells sour and tastes faintly fizzy, then into the fridge.
Cabbages quartered lengthways through the core and the hard core tip cut out.
The salt dissolved in the water, the quarters laid in, and the remaining salt rubbed between the thick white stems where it is needed most.
Left 2 to 6 HOURS, turned every hour, and TESTED BY BENDING A STEM each time from two hours on.
Rinsed 3 times in cold water and left upturned in a colander 30 minutes.
Meanwhile the rice flour and 150 ml water whisked and cooked over a low heat 3 minutes to a thin porridge. The sugar stirred in. COOLED COMPLETELY -- warm porridge on gochugaru dulls the colour.
Garlic, ginger and onion blitzed to a paste and stirred into the cooled porridge with the gochugaru, fish sauce and saeujeot. Left 15 minutes for the chilli to bloom.
The radish matchsticks and spring onions folded through the paste.
The paste worked between every leaf of each quarter with gloved hands, thinly, right down to the stem.
Each quarter folded over on itself and packed tight into a jar, pressed down until the brine rises over the top, filled four fifths at most.
Left 1 to 3 DAYS at room temperature until it smells sour and tastes slightly fizzy, then refrigerated. It is good from a week and better at a month; past two months it is sour enough that it is worth cooking rather than eating raw.

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