Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Im going to teach you how to make Kimchee

This is the easy way to make kimchee.  Its not going to taste as good as Moms but it will be good enough and I think it tastes better than the crap you buy at the grocery stores or costco.  Best of all its super duper cheap to make versus buying a small jar for $5 bones.

Get a head of napa cabbage.  Shits 39 cents a pound at the chinese market

Cut that ish up.  This is about half of a head in a big salad bowl.  Get some sea salt.  You can probably use kosher salt but dont use table salt.  Well I guess you could but definitely dont use iodized salt I think that might alter the flavor.  Anyhew take about a third of a cup of salt and sprinkle that shit in and mix it up.  If youre using kosher or finer salt use a quarter of a cup.

after a few beers the salt will start to leech out the water from the cabbage

after about a six pack shit will be nice and wilty and salty!!!  (about an hour for you non drinkers)

Heres the hardest part of making kimchee my way but also what makes it somewhat fail safe.  Add enough water so that the brine is salty.  How salty?  about as salty as you would want your kimchee to taste.  If its tool salty add more water.  If you added too much water then put mo salt.  See you cant realy f that ish up!
Leave it alone to get all salty and even more wilty.  6 hours to a day is fine you cant really screw it up at this point.  Youre almost done!

So the next day continue by dumping out almost all of the water.  Now chop up your green onions 

grate about two tablespoons of ginger

and about the same amount of garlic.  Lucky me I had a big ol tub of pureed up garlic that I stole from my moms fridge.  Shes in heaven so she doesnt need the garlic any more so I took it.  Sandy and Sue took some too.  Mom had a ton of garlic already pureed.  I think she was in love with garlic.  Poor Dad didnt have a clue.

so add that shit up!  if you want more garlic add it!  if you want more ginger add it!  

then more seasoning.  Sugar, fish sauce, and probably the most exotic ingredient in the recipe korean red pepper flakes.  This bag is crazy.  I took it from Moms house.  Again I dont think she needs pepper powder up in the clouds.  Anyhow for some reason this bag of flakes is the hottest bag Ive ever worked with.  Its so damn spicy I think it must have been some special burn the butt batch.  Maybe thats why it was stashed away in the cupboard. 

anyhow about 3 tablespoons of sugar, same amount of pepper flakes, and two tablespoons of fish sauce.
These are rough measures since you have no real way of knowing how much napa I have in these pics.
Just add a tablespoon at a time of each ingredient and mix and taste.  It should taste delicious enough to eat straight away and be just salty enough that you can eat it by itself but only a few bites before youd want some water.  Sugar is also subjective.  I like it somewhat sweet.  Make sure you can taste the sweetness.  When the kimchee ripens the sweet will transform into sour.  

pour that ish into a container.

Leave it out for another day or two until it starts to sour a tad.  Then store in the fridge for up to a few weeks. The older it gets the more sour it gets.  When it gets really sour you can make stews with it.
Youve just made a batch of kimchee for around a dollar something.  
Its so easy please do try and make it yourself.  If youre Vegan you can leave out the fish sauce.  If youre adventurous you can add raw oysters or tiny shrimp things.  This is roughly the same method I use to make radish kimchee.
THE END

3 comments:

  1. Thanks David! I'm going to try your shitty KimChi recipe. I'll email you photos when I'm done. And I'm so sorry to hear about your mom.

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  2. Your mom must be nodding approval from somewhere :-) and I'm reposting on my kimchee blog. http://fuckyeahkimchee.tumblr.com/

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Janet!!!
      Looks like you know a hell of a lot more about Kimchee than I do!

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