Kimchi is probably the most famous Korean food. To make kimchi at home, I used Maangchi’s recipe for traditional napa cabbage kimchi. What makes the recipe ‘traditional’ is to leave the cabbage leaves whole rather than chopping them. The only ingredient I could not find is saeujeot, Korean fermented salted shrimp in a salty brine. According to other online sources that ingredient can be omitted, and so I did. I made this batch of kimchi with my friend Melvin, who is great at Asian cooking.
Ingredients
For 1 napa cabbage of about 800 grams (1.8 lbs)
1 napa cabbage
salt as needed
150 ml (2/3 cup) water
2/3 Tbsp sticky rice flour
2/3 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup carrot julienne
2/3 cup daikon julienne
3 scallions, sliced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp minced ginger
1 small onion (70 grams), minced
2 Tbsp fish sauce
1/3 cup Korean hot pepper flakes (Korean style means without seeds)
Instructions
Make a slit of about 5 cm (2 inches) in the bottom of the cabbage.
Split the cabbage using your hands.
Make a slit in each half, and split them again.
Dip each quarter cabbage in cold water to rinse, shaking off excess water.
Now it is time to salt the cabbages.
Put salt in on all of the leaves on both sides, lifting up the leaves as needed.
As soon as they are salted, place the cabbage quarters in a container.
Close the container and allow the cabbage to rest for 2 hours, turning every 30 minutes for even salting.
In the meantime, prepare the porridge. Put the water in a saucepan together with the sticky rice flour…
…whisk to mix, and bring to a boil.
Add the sugar as soon as it boils, and allow to boil for another minute. Turn off the heat and allow to cool.
Prepare all the other ingredients.
Combine the fish sauce, garlic, chilli flakes, onions, and ginger with the rice porridge in a bowl.
Stir to mix.
Add the daikon, carrot, and scallions.
Stir to mix.
After resting for two hours, the cabbage will have released quite some water from the salting.
Rinse the cabbage under cold running water to remove any excess salt.
Dry the cabbage.
Now apply the mixture to both sides of all leaves, lifting up the leaves as needed. Use gloves to protect your hands.
Make sure the mixture is everywhere on the cabbage. Then fold each quarter in half…
…and arrange it into a container in which the cabbage fits snugly.
Cover and allow to ferment at room temperature until it smells sour. As it was winter time, that took about a week. In summer it would probably only take a couple of days. Move the kimchi to the refrigerator and allow the fermentation to continue slowly for at least a couple of weeks.
When it is time to use the kimchi, take a quarter cabbage out of the container. Cut off the stem and discard. Chop the kimchi and it is ready to use.
Transfer any remaining kimchi into a container in which it again fits snugly, so that the kimchi remains (barely) submerged in its own brine. It will keep for a long time in the refrigerator, where it will continue to ferment slowly.
Stefan's Gourmet Blog 
Excellent! I have been unable to make Kimchi since leaving my kitchen in the north last September. I am about to leave the tiny little apartment I have been living in as I have just purchased a house with two kitchens… One for everyday cooking, one for culinary projects 🙂
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And the advantage of having two kitchens is…?
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The house was subdivided to be two apartments, but my sister and I will be sharing the whole house. The lower kitchen is large and has lots of space for pickling, making beer etc… all the stuff that takes up quite a bit of space and would monopolize the functional kitchen if you only had one.
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I completely understand this. I’m planning a similar project. The other kitchen will be all stainless steel have a cleanup area for 25L pots … my adult playpen.
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for next time if you want the saeujeot you can get it at the Hong Kong supermarket in the kinkerstraat. When you enter the shop, you will see a fridge with a glass door and that’s where they keep it.
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Thank you so much. Melvin will also like this.
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Thank you ~! Since being born in NE Europe making sauerkraut was an early lesson in life, preparing kimchi became a natural follow-up once I became fascinated by Korean cooling. Half a year of cooking lost to the tragedy of our bushfires am enthused to make a batch as soon as able – have an idea our recipes may vary slightly but take your teaching to the kitchen !1
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Non conosco questo piatto, ma è una ricetta che potrei fare anche qui, senza problemi a recuperare gli ingredienti.
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Stefan there’s one thing I am curious about. In your meat explorations you have been quite rigorous about using just the right amount of salt in a cure – 1.5% if I remember correctly. Its an approach of using just the right amount of salt – as opposed to being overly generous and washing a lot off. With the Kimchi, you are suggesting a liberal salting then washing it off. Usually salting for sauerkraut is similar to a meat cure – around 1-2%. Can you explain why this method as opposed to weighing the cabbage and applying (for example) 2% salt, and then NOT washing it off? Or do you think this would be OK too.
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Lovely. After our daughter Lucy and her boyfriend Jer returned from a trip to Japan, they started making kimchi (I understand the geography). It is really delicious. I once watched a demonstration of kimchi making at a Korean embassy function. There is a lot of ceremony about proper preparation.
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