My Kimchee Recipe and Instructions

 NOTE: Plan one day of salting and 3-5  days of fermentation.

Things you will need:

- Sealed glass container
-Large mixing bowl, stock pot, or crock. Use only stainless steel, glass, ceramic, bamboo, or wood. 
-Wood, bamboo, or stainless spoon to stir with.

  If you like kimchee (kimchi), you need to either have a Korean grandmother, a very cool friend nearby who makes it, or make it yourself. Store-bought kimchee is ok, and some of it is pretty good, but homemade is always better. Just take a little time and do it right. Make your own.

  I usually make basic kimchee with napa cabbage (The Korean name for napa cabbage is baechu (Hangul: 배추) , but sometimes I will use some red cabbage too, or add wild green things like purslane or poke. You can put anything you want, really. I'm just going to tell you how to make the most common type (beachu-kimchi), which is napa-based.

Napa cabbage is the best for kimchee, and it is easy enough to find in pretty much any grocery store. The rest of this stuff is pretty common, too, except maybe the chili paste. Any Asian market will have an assortment of chili pastes to choose from, but if you don't live near one, look in the Imported Foods aisle of your Publix/Kroger/Wegmans, etc. You could make some chili paste if you really need to. (You are clever enough)

(Don't forget scallions!)

So, get some napa cabbage, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, carrots, fish sauce, shrimp paste (I use tiny frozen shrimps and soak them until they are less-salty, then I chop them up in a coffee mill), and either daikon or red radishes. I use jicama because it is easier to find, cheaper, and mostly because it stays crisp longer. And scallions. Try to use organic as much as possible.

Start by cutting  out the base of the cabbage where it is tough, and give the bits to your baby goat helper. She may not eat them, but she will probably at least smell them. Then the leaves are easy to separate. Traditional method (baechu-kimchi) is to layer the leaves with the paste in-between them,  but I do it a different way. I prefer to chop them into bite-size pieces and mix everything evenly, which makes  a lot of nice juice. (All that liquid is really great to drink or add to other things.)

STEP 1: Peel all of the leaves off and let your baby goat helper inspect them for quality with her keen sense of smell and discriminating tastes. 

STEP 2: Stack the leaves with sea salt in-between them in the pot. Cover it and leave for 24 hours. After that, rinse it several times in clean water until the salt is gone. Do a good job of this, because it's still going to retain a lot of salt.  

I give it a good stir in several changes of water until it is least-salty.

STEP 3: Drain and chop the cabbage leaves, slice thin the (peeled) ginger and garlic, carrots, and whatever else you want to put. I cut the jicama (or daikon radish) like matchsticks. Add the chili paste (in whatever amount you  want), a little fish sauce (be careful!), some shrimp paste (or not), and jam it all into the sealed jar. Put it somewhere out of the way for a few days with the top OPEN but covered with a cloth or something. Fermentation produces CO2 and will explode the jar if you seal it too soon.

In three or 5 days  it will be nice and tart with lots of liquid. I refrigerate it at this point to stop it from getting too strong or getting mold on top.