Proper kimchi is a communal event with a name — kimjang — and it involves several families, a great many cabbages, and a day. This is not that.
This is the version that fits a Tuesday, in a crock, with ingredients from one shop.
Ingredients
- 1 large napa cabbage (about 1kg)
- 60g coarse sea salt
- 1 tbsp glutinous rice flour and 120ml water (optional, but it helps the paste cling)
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 5–6 garlic cloves
- A thumb of fresh ginger
- 40–60g gochugaru (Korean chilli flakes) — start low
- 2 tbsp fish sauce, or 2 tbsp soy sauce for a vegan version
- 1 daikon, julienned, or a few carrots
- 4 spring onions, cut into batons
Salting, which is the part that matters
Quarter the cabbage lengthways, leaving the core in so the leaves stay attached. Rinse, then work the salt between every leaf, using more toward the thick stem ends.
Lay it in a large bowl and leave for two hours, turning every thirty minutes. It is ready when a thick stem bends without snapping.
Rinse thoroughly — three changes of water — and drain properly. Under-rinsed kimchi is inedibly salty and there is no fixing it later.
The paste
If using the rice flour, whisk it into the cold water, bring to a simmer stirring until it thickens to a thin gel, then cool completely. Stir in the sugar.
Blitz garlic and ginger to a paste. Combine with the gochugaru, the fish or soy sauce, and the cooled rice gel. Fold in the daikon and spring onions.
Wear gloves for the next part unless you want chilli under your fingernails for two days.
Assembly
Working a quarter at a time, smear the paste between every leaf. Fold each quarter in on itself and pack it into the crock, pressing down hard as you go.
Press until brine rises. Set the weights on top so nothing floats. Fill the water channel, fit the lid.
Timing
Leave at cool room temperature for 2–3 days. You will see bubbling and smell it working — sour, garlicky, alive.
Then move it to the fridge, where it will keep fermenting slowly for months and keep getting better. Week one is fresh and sharp. Week four is deeper and funkier. Month three is what you want for kimchi jjigae.
A note on the crock
Kimchi is aggressive. It stains, it smells, and it will find any porous surface and live there permanently.
A fully glazed interior matters here more than with sauerkraut — the glaze is glass, so nothing penetrates, and the crock washes back to neutral with warm soapy water. An unglazed or crazed vessel will carry the ghost of your first batch into every batch after it.
How to eat it
Straight from the crock, cold, standing at the fridge. With rice and a fried egg. Chopped into fried rice on the third day of a cold. Stirred through a cheese toastie, which sounds wrong and is not.
And keep the brine. It is the best thing in the jar and most people pour it away.