Making Kimchi
After living in South Korea for two year, I discovered that having fresh or fermented vegetable side dishes with each meal is a great way to eat healthier! In a normal Korean meal there is a soup, rice, and side dishes called "banchan." The most iconic of these side dishes is kimchi. Kimchi is a spicy, fermented cabbage dish with added green onions, garlic, and red pepper. It's is a great addition to any Asian-style meal, and it's also a healthy probiotic.
This post is a down and dirty way to make kimchi from a foreigner's perspective. It is not 100% authentic, but its easier to make and a lot less fishy than the traditional stuff.
Warning: if you are salt sensitive and have high blood pressure, eat sparingly or skip it all together. Fermented vegetables like kimchi have a somewhat high salt content so as to not spoil! As for the rest of you, hopefully, you can take the time to try out this South Korean favorite!
By the way, when I return to the US I will try to have more pictures with my recipes, for now I will have text instructions only.
Ingredient List:
2-3 lbs Napa cabbage (approx. 2 large heads)
1/4cup salt
3/4cup chopped onion
1/4cup carrots, julienned
1cup daikon radish, julienned
1cup green onion, chopped
For the Sauce:
1/4cup Rice flour
1.5cup Water
1/8cup Sugar
1/3cup Fish sauce
1.5cups Korean pepper flakes (go-chu -- you can find this in most asian grocery stores)
1/2cup Crushed garlic
1tbsp Minced ginger
Special Supplies:
Canning jars (quart size)
One very large bowl!
Step 1: Salting the Cabbage
Cut the cabbage into approximately 1 inch squares.
Put them in a large bowl and mix them with 1/8 cup of the salt. Let it sit for 30 min.
Then add the remaining 1/8 cup salt and mix. This time let it sit for 1 hour!
After sitting, drain and rinse the cabbage thoroughly! Rinse 2-3 times to get the excess salt out.
Step 2: Making the Sauce (completed while cabbage sits in Step 1)
Put the 1.5 cups water and the 1/4 cup rice flour in a sauce pot. On medium low heat cook the "porridge" mix until it comes to a full boil.
Next, add the 1/8 cup sugar.
Continue to cook and stir constantly until it forms a thick consistency
Let this mixture cool completely while the cabbage is salting
While the "porridge" mixture cools chop the ginger and onion and crush the garlic
Add the ginger, onion, and garlic into a food processor and blend until they are finely minced (If you don't have a food processor, you can use a blender or mince by hand)
When everything is cooled, add the fish sauce, pepper flakes, and the garlic, ginger, and onion mixture with the porridge and mix thoroughly
Step 3: Vegetable prep. and Storing
Chop the carrot and julienne the green onion and raddish
Mix the carrot, green onion, raddish, cabbage, and sauce together in a large bowl
Put the finished kimchi into canning jars and push the contents down as you fill it (this will force out some water from the cabbage to submerge the kimchi and remove air pockets that spoil the cabbage)
Leave the jars out at room temperture for 2-3 days to ferment
Make sure to open the jars once a day to let the gases out! The probiotics need to breathe : )
After it has fermented for 2-3 days store it in the refrigerator
It will continue to ferment slowly and will taste the best 2-4 weeks after you make it. If you wait longer than 4 weeks it gets a sour taste, but is still healthy to eat!
Note that the sodium in the nutrition label is higher than it should be. If rinsed correctly, there should be much less salt in the final kimchi!
Bonus Info!
At the end of some recipes I will try to give you some information on why the recipe is healthy and show you some sources for the scientific information. I will always put this at the end because I know that some people would skip it anyway! This way it's up to you to decide if you want to read the bonus info. : )
I find kimchi to be a fascinating food. It is the national food of South Korea. Its origins date back to 60 BC, however, the modern cabbage version is from the 1800s.
Kimchi is an overall healthy food and also packs some serious probiotics in it! The bacteria that are found in kimchi are lactic acid bacteria. These are the same type of organisms that you find in yogurts and have beneficial properties for your large intestine. According to the studies from the Busan University, the levels of lactic acid bacteria in fully fermented kimchi can be 10^8 -9 CFU/g. (CFU = colony forming units) This amount is similar to the average store bought yogurt (I have seen it measured at ~10^7-8 CFU/g). This makes kimchi a great alternative to dairy probiotics. There are even studies that have isolated a new type of lactic acid bacteria that has been named, fittingly enough, lactobacillus kimchii!
Although I had difficulty finding replicated studies, there is also a study done by the Busan University in South Korea that linked eating kimchi regularly to the health benefits of anticonstipation, improved colorectal health, antioxidant properties, improved immunity, and anticancer properties! There may be some bias in these studies due to the Korean pride of their national food, but nonetheless, the probiotics in kimchi are definitely good for you!
Sources for bonus info:
Park Kun-Young, Jeong Ji-Kang, Lee Young-Eun, and Daily James W. III. Journal of Medicinal Food. January 2014, 17(1): 6-20. doi:10.1089/jmf.2013.3083.
Yoon JH, Kang SS, Mheen TI, Ahn JS, and Lee HJ. Internation Journal of Syst. Evol. Microbiology. September 2000, 50(pt.5):1789-85.
Watson Ronald, Victor Preedy. Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics. 2016 :391-408.
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