How To Make Kimchi - Mom's Famous Spicy Kimchi Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make kimchi more spicy? ›

If all you want is More Heat, just use finely minced habanero or scotch bonnet peppers. (Use appropriate practices for handling extremely spicy peppers.) After adding the peppers, stir well and let sit for a day or two to let the flavors disperse.

Napa cabbage

Baechu-kimchi / Main ingredient

Napa cabbage is a type of Chinese cabbage originating near the Beijing region of China that is widely used in East Asian cuisine. Since the 20th century, it has also become a widespread crop in Europe, the Americas and Australia. In much of the world, it is referred to as "Chinese cabbage".

Wikipedia

Add more hot pepper flakes if it's not spicy enough for you. Happy cooking! Sometimes even the spicy versions of hot pepper flakes isn't spicy enough for me. What I learned to do (from a friend of my mom who is quite well-known in local circles for making fantastic kimchi) is to add some hot peppers to the mix.

Early history

The pickling of vegetables was an ideal method, prior to refrigerators, that helped to preserve the lifespan of foods. In Korea, kimchi was made during the winter by fermenting vegetables, and burying it in the ground in traditional brown ceramic pots called onggi.

Kimchi is expensive in stores, but it's cheap if you make it yourself. Kimchi may seem complex to make, but it's no more difficult than making a salad. Summary: Kimchi is typically made with cabbage, radish, garlic, onion, ginger, carrot, fish sauce, and chili flakes.

What is kimchi? While many families have their own proprietary blend of ingredients, a traditional batch of kimchi will likely be made with napa cabbage, fish sauce, gochugaru (Korean coarse red pepper powder), sugar, ginger, garlic, scallions, radishes, and carrots.

Along with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, kimchi contains natural probiotic bacteria. If you eat them regularly, the probiotics in fermented foods can be beneficial to your gut microbiome. Studies suggest that eating kimchi on a daily basis could help to improve some digestive problems.

In general, kimchi is made using Chinese leaves (Napa cabbage) or radish as the primary ingredient, with red chilli pepper powder, garlic and spring onions used as supplementary ingredients.

Almost all Koreans use sea salt for making kimchi, fish sauce, hot pepper paste (gochujang), and fermented bean paste (doenjang), and a less granular Korean brand for everything else. When I lived in Korea, I did too. I would buy a big straw sack of sea salt that would last a year.

Kimchi technically doesn't really expire because it is already fermented. If it's properly fermented and refrigerated, it should be good up to 12 months or more from when it's jarred (or crock-potted).

How do you know if kimchi is fermented enough? ›

If you opt for fermentation, the kimchi will be ready to eat when it begins to taste and smell sour or when tiny bubbles begin to move through the container.

Why is the kimchi so sour tasting? Kimchi will always have a high level of acidity. This is caused by gut-healthy bacteria in the kimchi, which create acid during their lifetime, lowering the pH of the kimchi and preserving it naturally. If the kimchi was not acidic (read: sour) it would go bad!

Your Kimchi has probably not fermented enough. Freshly made Kimchi from Korea is known to be slightly bitter and more salty! But this will change overtime to a tangy and umami flavour as it ferments in the fridge.

As a way of preserving the harvest just before winter, Koreans would first salt then tightly pack their cabbages into large clay urns, burying them underground to avoid the frost. The resulting fermented product took on a delicious flavour, and Kimchi began bubbling up across the whole country.

Taste. The biggest difference between fresh and fermented Kimchi is the taste. Fresh Kimchi is more like a salad, so it taste more raw, fresh and crunchy. Fermented Kimchi is softer and tangy.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean method of salting and fermenting vegetables such as Cabbage, Radish and Cucumbers, this helps the vegetable last longer. Fresh Kimchi starts off salty and gets more sour as it naturally ferments over time.

How long does it take to make Kimchi? Allow 1 hour to prepare the kimchi and get it in the fermentation jar. Plus 4 hours waiting while the vegetables salt. It takes 5-10 days to ferment depending on room temperature.