Kimchi

I first had kimchi in 9th or 10th grade - I would go to my friend's house after school and we would pile the kimchi on top of rice and eat it with chopsticks (me very haphazardly). I remember having to keep my mouth wide open after bites because the combo of the hot rice with the spicy kimchi made my mouth feel like it was on fire. I liked it so much that I got my mom to drive me to the korean grocery store across town so that I could buy my own, which my family then made me eat outside on the porch because they didn't like the fermented garlic smell. (This was not a familiar scent in my German/Irish/Czech/Norwegian home!)

I didn't eat kimchi again for years and years, and only in the last 5 or so did I realize I could make it myself. I've tried it a few times now, and am still working to perfect my own favorite version. There are so many recipes and ways to salt the cabbage! This time I modified a recipe from 2 places: a blog called Eating and Living - A Korean American mom's home cooking, and Anna's Korean Kitchen Diary - both had easy directions and nice photos. The kimchi turned out really good. It was also a bit saltier than I like, so I will use Anna's salting amount and method next time. Hers is what I include in the recipe below. My recipe changes include: no garlic, a food processed onion instead of rice powder, and anchovy paste instead of salted shrimp/raw shrimp/fish sauce. I have made kimchi without any fish sauce/anchovy/shrimp before and it has still turned out good, so if that sounds better for you, just take that out.

Kimchi (makes 2 quarts)
1 large napa cabbage (6 pounds)
1/2 c. course sea salt
5 c. water

1 daikon radish, cut into matchsticks
3 scallions, cut in 1-2" pieces
1/2-1 cup (korean) chili red pepper flakes*
2 T anchovy paste
1/2 onion minced in food processor
2 t. grated ginger
1/2 c. water
 *Korean red pepper flakes are recommended, but mine turned out fine with the kind sold at the co-op. I used 1/2 c. and it turned out mildly spicy. Like a 3 on a 1-5 heat scale.

See Anna's recipe for preparing the cabbage - the napa does need to sit for about 2 1/2 hours, so allow that much time. While the cabbage is pickling, you can prepare the "sauce". Cut the daikon and scallions and put in a bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients together (you could start with the onion in the food processor, and once it is well minced, add the other ingredients - or just do that in a bowl by hand).

Once your cabbage is ready, it needs to be well rinsed (several times) to get the salt off. You will then stuff the radish mixture into the cabbage leaves (as in Anna's blog post). Notice that she keeps the entire quarter of the napa together so that the radish mixture can be stuffed inside. I found that it is really hard to pull out the cabbage (once it is all finished) and eat it this way, so at this point I would chop up the stuffed napa and fill up my quart jars. However you want to do it - just get all the stuff in the jars!

Once the jars are stuffed, make sure to press the filling down so that it is submerged in water. They will continue to "juice" water as they sit out, so you can leave extra space or be prepared for them to overflow. I just covered mine with the canning lid (without the screw on part) so that they were covered, but could still breathe.  Let them sit out 24 hours or more - taste to see when it is fermented to your liking, then refrigerate the jars. They will keep a super long time - more than a year.