Kimchi is the national dish of Korea and it is pretty rare to be served a meal without it. Kimchi is a fermented spiced cabbage dish served traditionally as a side to offer spice, crunch and sour notes, cutting threw heavier dishes and refreshing the palate when necessary. I like to add it to everything from miso braised short rib tacos, to fried rice, to scramble eggs. It’s super versatile adding a good hit of fermented funk to wake up the palate across a plethora of dishes, hence is kitchen must for us at home.
Korean boasts an insane amount of varieties of its national dish The version below uses more seafood notes to add salty tones and is more typical of a South Korean version of the recipe.
For those unfamiliar with kimchi it really packs a punch even before you taste it. The first thing to note is the rather robust smell. Don’t be intimidated as the wonders of this exceptional ingredient can only be truly appreciated when tasted. The flavour is far less fierce, offering a complex blend of spice, garlic and sour notes.
Making kimchi is really simple and really all you will need in terms of equipment is a scale and sterilised jars. The waiting time before you can enjoy the final product is a little lengthy, but don’t be put off as the rewards will be well worth the wait. Once made and, the kimchi can be stored in an airtight jar for months in the fridge. Time = FUNK!
I have used a white cabbage in this version. I realise this may offend some purists out there, but I find it works really well and retains nice crunch.
Shredded vegetables and weighed out spice paste
Ingredients;
1 white cabbage, finely sliced
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
3 spring onions
400 g daikon radish, peeled and shredded
6 garlic cloves, minced
20 g ginger, minced
8 g baby shrimp (optional)
palm or coconut sugar (caster sugar is fine also)
table salt
light soy sauce
fish sauce
shrimp paste
gochugaru chilli flakes (other chilli flakes will do)
Method;
- Place a large mixing bowl on some electric scales and tare (reduce to zero). Mix together the cabbage, spring onions, carrot, radish, garlic and ginger.
- Note the weight of the ingredients now in the bowl and calculate 2%. Weigh and add 2% salt to the bowl.
- Mix well, with your hands, don’t be shy, the idea is to coat everything evenly with salt and extract some moisture from the vegetables. Set aside for an hour, coming back to mix with vigour every 20 minutes.
- By this point quite a lot of liquid will have been released and the mountain of shredded vegetables won’t look quite so daunting.
- In a separate bowl, calculating from the weight of your vegetables weigh out 4% caster sugar, 2% soy sauce, 2% fish sauce, 2% shrimp paste, and 3% Korean chilli flakes. -NB- using grams for even the liquid will keep this consistent. Mix the paste together and add to the cabbage mix, combining well to evenly coat.
- If you are using the dried shrimp you can add them directly to the mix, or you can get a little crazy and blitz them into shrimp candy floss before adding to the mix. Something quite radical happens when you blitz dried shrimp in that they transform to a candy floss like strands and texture. This process is fun, but not a essential. It will help the dried shrimp break down though.
- Once well combined, pack the mixture tightly into sterilised 2-litre Kilner jars and top up with the released liquid. Seal the jars, label and date them before leaving to ferment at room temperature, but out of direct sun light for 3 months.
- You will need to ‘burp’ the kimchi weekly to release the air build up from the fermentation process.
- After 3 months, open and enjoy, imparting kimchi funk where and whenever you can.
- Store in the fridge.
FORKIN DELICIOUS 