Basic Ingredients:
2 lb Napa cabbage, rinsed well and cut into 2″ sections
1/4 c carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks
1/4 c green onions, cut into 1″ strips
Optional add-in: 1/4 c daikon radish cut into 1″ cubes
For the sauce:
3-4 garlic gloves
1 tsp freshly grated ginger
3 Tbsp fish sauce, soy sauce, soy sauce alternative, or plain water
3 Tbsp red pepper flakes, more or less to taste (or leave out for a ‘white kimchi’)
Optional add-ins: asian pear, 1 tsp sugar, etc.
Where to buy coconut aminos: https://amzn.to/46PolPp
Where to buy fish sauce: https://amzn.to/45JOQnW
Where to buy fermentation weights: https://amzn.to/46MGGMJ
Where to buy red pepper flakes: https://amzn.to/3MItnVZ
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Hello friends and welcome my name is Ki and today I’m going to take you along with me as I make some kimchi now if you’ve never made kimchi before it does not take any special equipment or special cooking skills but it does require a little bit of patience so I’m
Going to take you along with me today as I share with you just some basic tips and tricks that I have found over the years to make this kimchi process very simple and easy and perfect for just the average home cook so napa cabbage is generally the
Cabbage of choice when making Kim cheese so I’ve got uh 7 lb here from the garden I’m going to have to wash this off really well but for an average recipe to make one quart you’re going to need a 2 lb head of nappet cabbage so I’m going
To cut this into 2 in segments to make cleaning the Cabbage much easier easier so with kimchi there are two stages we have the salting stage and the fermenting stage so similar to sauerkraut we are going to Salt the Cabbage but unlike sauerkraut we’re actually going to discard all of that
Liquid that comes out of our cabbage we don’t want a watery kimchi we want a kind of sauce that’s going to coat every cabbage leaf so I popped all of this into some water in my sink make sure everything is nice and clean just to
Rinse it off a couple of times and after this we’re going to Salt it I generally aim for 1/4 cup of salt for every 2 lbs of cabbage that I have so here I’ve got a full cup of salt that I’m going to put on this cabbage and toss it like you
Would a salad we’re going to let this sit for at least an hour but I want you to think more about what the lettuce looks like than the time that goes by so what we’re looking for is a cabbage that’s going to be nicely wilted down
Down to about 50% of what it was before now we make the sauce this is what I’m going to be using instead of fish sauce this is a uh soy alternative it’s coconut aminos so if you’re avoiding soy this is a good one um but otherwise you can use fish sauce you can
Use soy sauce you can use water if you don’t have any of those okay the choices are endless there are as many different types of kimchi as there are mothers in Korea so the saying goes so I’m just going to use some ginger and some garlic
And whiz that up with some red pepper flakes for some spice keep an eye out on how much flakes that you use because some are going to be spicier than others so just give it a taste test but you can also leave that out so you don’t have a
Red Kimchi you have a white kimchi that’s not spicy you can also mix in a pear here for some sweetness this is what it looks like after about an hour of sitting in that salt you can see a lot of the water has come out of that
Lettuce but it still has a little bit of tension in there so a trick that I use is to fold over the ribs of the cabbage and if it folds over really soft without snapping you know you’re ready for the next phase we’re going to rinse rinse
Rinse once we’ve salted the Cabbage we need to rinse most of that salt off so you’re still going to have some salt on it but give it a taste it should not taste as salty as sauerkraut it’s still going to have some salt to it but it’s
Not going to taste nearly as salty as it did so let it all strain off really well and once you’ve drained off as much water as you can go ahead and take your sauce and coat the Cabbage as well as you can I recommend wearing some gloves
Here if you do have the red pepper flakes in here and then add whatever vegetables you want to add I have green onions and carrots here but you can add a daon radishes or even just regular radishes um you can foro the carrots and add pars make it yours make whatever
Vegetables that sound good to you we’re going to pack these into quart sized jars and as you go press down with your hands so that that juice comes up over your vegetables so this is very similar to making anything fermented but especially sourkraut so I’m going to
Show you what that looks like you want all those air bubbles to get out of the bottom you want to make it as compact as you can so that we don’t have a bunch of air trapped into our bottles now you don’t have to weigh it down with the
Fermentation weight but I do it just makes my life a lot easier but you don’t have to you can just make sure you push the vegetables down enough that that brine is going to cover them completely while they ferment put this in a cool dark place for anywhere from 1 to 7 days
Just keep the lid Loosely on don’t tighten it so that all the excess air can escape and there you have it a super simple kimchi that anyone can make