Make Your Own Kimchi

Kimchi is a term used in Korea to describe a wide array of fermented vegetables and fruits, and is the national dish of South Korea. The most common kimchi is made from cabbage, with cucumber kimchi being a solid number 2 in North America. Although all kimchi is not spicy, the most popular types are easy to spot because of their red color highlights coming from the generous use of gochugaru or dried, ground, red pepper flakes. Expand your love of fermentation and learn how to make this great side dish yourself at home with BYO’s Technical Editor Ashton Lewis.

For more details on making kimchi please also check out Ashton’s BYO article in this link: https://byo.com/article/kimchi/

Here’s a rundown of the equipment and recipe steps Ashton covers in this video:

Equipment
Large cutting board
Sharp chef’s knife
Colander or homemade double-bucket set-up
Mandolin (optional)
2-quart saucepan
Whisk
Kitchen scale
Vegetable peeler
Kimchi fermenter (this recipe will yield about 2.5 liters of volume and require at least 3 liters of total vessel volume)
Blender
2–3 mixing bowls
Spatula

Ingredients

Cabbage and Salt
2 kg (4.4 lbs.) napa cabbage (optionally, you can substitute up to 200 grams (7 oz.) of napa cabbage with baby bok choi)
120 g (4.2 oz.) coarse kosher salt

Porridge
130 g (4.6 oz.) water
20 g (0.7 oz.) sugar
15 g (0.5 oz. ) sweet rice flour*

Kimchi Paste Components
120 g (4.2 oz.) Korean radish*
90 g (3.2 oz.) minced garlic
80 g (32.8 oz.) minced white onion
60 g (2.1 oz.) matchstick carrots
55 g (1.9 oz.) Korean coarse red pepper flakes (gochugaru)*
35 g (1.2 oz.) Three Crabs Brand Fish Sauce (Vietnamese nuoc mam nhi)*
15 g (0.5 oz.) salted fermented shrimp*
10 g (0.4 oz.) whole green onions
5 g (0.2 oz.) minced ginger

*These ingredients are carried in most Korean markets.