Tastes amazing, and it's healthy to boot!
Kimchi is a Korean staple food, traditionally made from Chinese cabbages, or Napa, and fermented in earthenware jars. It's natural and has great health benefits, you'll find kimchi consistently ranked in the top 5 healthiest foods you can eat. Modern kimchi has been influenced by the Japanese, who added hot red pepper to the recipe. My version uses Red Hatch Chile powder instead, and I think it's the bees knees.
So, a couple of things that you're going to need other than the food ingredients here, namely: A vessel to ferment in. The absolute easiest method that I know of is using a product called "Pickle Pipes". You just put one of those on a wide mouth mason jar, screw the band on, and let them go. As the product ferments, the Pickle Pipes let air out, but nothing in.
Combine these with "Pickle Pebbles", a thick glass weight meant to hold the vegetables under the brine. They also compress the ingredients and draw additional water out.
Here are the ingredients:
This will make around a quart.
- 1 large head of Napa cabbage.
- 1 Daikon Radish
- 1 bunch of green onions
- 1 Bulb of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 piece of ginger, chopped
- 2 Tablespoons salt (I like to use kosher, but really any is fine)
- 1 Tablespoon Red Boat Fish Sauce
- Hatch Red Chile pepper powder (As hot as you like it)
I may have just identified another ingredient that you're not familiar with. Fish sauce is made by combining anchovies and salt, and letting that age in vats for about a year. The liquid produced is drained off, that is the sauce. The end product is almost sweet, and rich in umami flavor. Red Boat unquestionably produces the finest fish sauce available.
Fish sauce has a lot of applications. It's good on just about everything that you can add salt to. I especially like it in sauteed vegetables and soups (Fish sauce and ramen, holy moley). I even put some on steaks when I'm preparing them for cooking, but that's a later recipe :)
Preparing the cabbage:
Napa has a lot of water in it. You need to get that water out. Chop the Napa into 1" squares, and put it into a big bowl. Add all of the salt, and toss it thoroughly. Every 15 minutes or so, give it a good mixing. The cabbage will start to wilt, and water will be drawn out. Don't discard that water just yet. After about an hour, you'll be ready for the next step.
You can add all the remaining vegetables now. Cut them into pieces that are also about 1" wide so that everything is about the same size. The water that's come out of the cabbage will also salt the vegetables. Let all of this sit for about another hour. This should get most of the remaining water out of the mixture.
Almost done.
Now, drain the water off, you won't be needing it any more. Now add the garlic, ginger, red pepper, and fish sauce. Mix everything well, and you can start packing it into jars. You want to really cram it in there, and you'll see that even more of the brine will come out of the mix.
Don't pack the bottles too full.
As kimchi ferments, the liquid is going to expand from the gasses created. If you pack the kimchi any further than the shoulder of the jar, it will still ferment, but delicious liquid will spout out of the pickle pipes, which could potentially make a mess out of your countertops. You should actually press down the pickle pebbles a little bit so that they are under the brine. It's a good idea to place the closed jar on top of a dish just in case the liquid starts to spurt.
That's it, the rest is waiting.
Kimchi flavors change as it ages, but you should have a tasty product in as little as 3 days. Because the product is raw, natural bacteria go to work producing lactic acid, which makes the kimchi more sour. Those bacteria are the same ones that give yogurt it's characteristically sour flavor, and they give you the same health benefits. Full sourness will be achieved after about 14 days, and this is where I recommend opening the jar. It will be delicious and bubbly. The maximum benefit of fermentation will occur somewhere around 28 days.
Once the jar has been opened, replace the original seal and keep refrigerated. The kimchi will last for many months, but good luck keeping it around that long.
