Kim Chee, the Korean Sauerkraut

[Beastmaster]

Kimchee is a sort of Korean saurkraut. It's quick and easy to make, tasty, and good for you-full of healthy bacteria, not to mention the medicinal benefits of ginger, garlic and peppers. I originally found this recipe at another mycological forum, but have since found a couple variations in Bill Mollison's The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition. First, I'll post the recipe as I found it, then add my suggestions at the end.

EQUIPMENT
quart jar
glass mixing bowl
collander or strainer
Tbs measuring spoon
(normal kitchen utensils)

INGREDIENTS (OK to improvise)
1 good sized head of Napa Cabbage or Bok Choy
1-2 large carrots
piece of Daikon radish (~4" long)
1-2" piece of fresh ginger
5 cloves garlic (or more)
1 fresh or dried chile (or more if you like it really spicy)
4 Tbs good quality salt (I like Real Salt-it is mined and a bit pinkish,with lots of trace minerals-but seasalt is fine too)

PROCEDURE
make a brine of 4 cups water and 4 Tbs salt.Stir to disolve salt
Chop cabbage fairly fine (dont need to mince it or anything)
For the carrots and daikon,either slice very thin into half moons,or grate.

Put veggies in brine,with a weighted plate on top to help them stay submerged.

Brine 8 hrs or overnight.

Strain veggies out of brine. Save the brine in case you need more to top up later.

Grate ginger,chop garlic and chile finely.

Mix everything together thoroughly.

Pack into jar.Push veggies down with a spoon or fork,and pack 'em really firmly.Fill the jar close to the top (it's OK if you didn't wind up with quite enough to fill).The level of liquid after you pack the jar should be right at or slightly above the level of the veggies.If for some reason it's not,then add a spoonful of the reserved brine.

Put lid on jar.Dont put it anywhere too hot-60-70 is fine.

Once a day,push down the veggies with a clean fork to make sure the tops ones are nice and wet.

I've been letting mine go about 5-7 days,but it's pretty cool in my house.Sometimes it smells kind of wierd in the middle of the fermentation,after a couple of days,but dont worry.It should be getting sour in a week or so.Taste it before then,and if it seems sour,it's done.

Store in fridge.

Enjoy!

[Bobcat]

Great stuff! I love fermenting things. One trick is to put your jar(s) in those scented white trash bags and tie them shut. That keeps the smell perfectly.

I use kefir, which I mentioned here a few times now. Instructions and what not can be found here:

http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirkraut.html

My house is cool too. I let mine go a week, then another in the fridge. I typically eat it just warmed or even cool. I am experimenting with making cole slaw in a similar fashion.

The guy that runs that site is a little gung-ho about kefir. But I just love it and can really feel a difference ever since I started culturing it.

[Beastmaster]

I've made this by chopping the daikon, carrots, and ginger, and also by shredding them, and shredding definately speeds up the process.

I tend to go overboard with things, and lately have been using both a head of napa cabbage as well as a couple heads of bok choy. (just add one cup of water+ one tbsp salt till everything is submerged) Not to mention tripling the amount of carrots, garlic, and especially ginger! For the chili pepper, I originally used a pair of dried red chili peppers (seranos, I think) but have since graduated to using at least one habanero. For larger batches, I'm thinking maybe two habaneros would be enough. Feel free to improvise and add green beans, practically any leafy greens, or even seaweed!

Keep in mind that I like my kimchee super spicey: if I'm not feeling flushed and sweaty after one bite then I'm not satisfied!

With my most recent batch, I neglected to strain the veggies from the brine before adding the ginger, garlic and habanero, and though I had doubled the amount of cabbage, bok choy, and carrots, it was done in a week.

It is important to make sure the veggies are completely submerged, anything sticking out of the brine will potentially get moldy. If that happens just remove the offending piece and stir the rest up a bit making sure when finished that everything is submerged. This isn't a petri dish...

Man this stuff is good, if you're not sure what the final outcome should be like, the crispy veggies such as the cabbage adn bok choy should be soft, and there should be a sourish aroma. Some people think it stinks, but I love it!

If you can find a jar at your local asian food market, you might want to pick one up for comparison. Take note that a pint of kimchee usually costs between $5 and $10, and this recipe makes at least a quart for about the same price, if not cheaper.

[duncan]

Kim chee originally took a month or 2 months burried in the ground in clay type vessels. Like sauerkraut it took time to age and become just right.

I love kim chee. I prefer it in bigger slabs of the cabbage. I have had it shredded before as well. We made it in culinary school it was taught to us by a chinese chef.

yummy

[Odin 13]

At one of the Asian all-u-can eats there is kimchee on the buffet. For the evening meal they have peel & eat shrimp. They had some poor excuse for cocktail sauce that some cook was mixing up in the back & I hated it. One day I threw a bunch of peeled shrimp into the kimchee! Man, that's good eats! I later found some shrimp kimchee for sale in an asian market, so it isn't an original idea. Try it, you'll like it! They also have some as yet unidentified stuff next to the kimchee on the buffet that has either squid or octopus in it. the little creatures are quite small ones. I've tried it, but the cephalopods (sp) are kind of rubbery which is pretty much par for the course.

i love kim chee and that looks like a very good recipe. i would make it but noone else in the house will touch it with a ten foot pole, so i usually but a good prepared kim chee from the korean market.

[Beastmaster]

Thought I'd give this a nudge, since its cold season, and I've found kimchee with lots of ginger and cayenne or habanero is a great way to clear out the sinuses!

[yerbaadam]

ThanKS BEaSTY Buddy!

I can"T wait to Eat mad olD smellY kim Chee!!!!

That looks awesome. My wiFe likes her's extra spicey.

Thanks for the recipe.

[vinz]

i love kim chi,
nice one beast!

i was looking for this.. hehe

[Birdman]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

Thought I'd give this a nudge, since its cold season, and I've found kimchee with lots of ginger and cayenne or habanero is a great way to clear out the sinuses!

Looking good Dude.I love kimchee and hot stuff to.
Asteroid wings and beer last night.Gotta love the after
burn.Hot spicy stuff is even supposed to purify blood
like garlic does.

[yerbaadam]

What is the reason that the ginger, chilis and garlic do not get fermented in the brine?

Do they interfere with the fermentation? Or will they go "bad"?

[Beastmaster]

I'm not sure for the reason for holding off on adding the ginger garlic and peppers. That's only for about 8-12 hours though.

After that it seems to me that everything in there gets fermented a bit. It becomes kinda homogenous, flavorwise at least.

I think that perhaps it might make the environment a little to hostile for baby yeasties? Gotta wait for them to be a little more robust before they'll appreciate the spicy stuff...

[Beastmaster]

Howdy do, toparinos!


Thought I'd give this a nudge and post some pics of my most recent kimchee effort. Most of the veggies come from my friend, AOK's garden, plus he helped out a lot with chopping the veggies.

This time I added beets to see if that might sweeten it up a bit. Also only about half the greens are cabbage, the rest are beet, chard, kale, and broccoli leaves.

Also, I stayed away from grating the carrots and whatnot, though if you want a quick kimchee, small bits ferment faster than large bits, but those tiny lil pieces are a pita when trying to pick em up with chopsticks. (Yes, yes, use a fork, I know, but its just not as authentic)

So here's my half:



Colorful huh?

So this is only day one after packing the jars, vented them this morning, its always exciting to vent those gasses and do cpr on the jars.

Over the next week (remembering to vent the jars daily), the salty greens flavor should disappear and be replaced with a homogenous kimchee flavor.

Happy Fermenting!

[eatyualive]

i used to live, eat, breathe and shit this stuff. good stuff. and the best part is 3 hours later when you get a kimchee burp. you feel like you just ate another bowl full...yummmmm hail the kimchee gods.

[Glasshopper]

My old tai kwan do teacher once told me kimchee was
the secret weapon that gave you the edge in a fight.

While you hollered HIIIIIYAAA!!
one extreme blast of kimchee breath,
timed right, is enough to give you the edge.

[eatyualive]

2nd best thing about kimchee when you get it at the store is the jar. 2 gallon jar enough to pressure cook some big casings! koreans thought of it all. a food that

a) tasted good and spicy
b) gives you a full meal when you burp it up 3 hours later
c) great kimchee canning jars!

[BillyJack]

My mom and grandma moved here from Korea in 1972, my grandma has always made kim chee. She uses 1 gallon glass jars and ferments them in a tub in a spare bathroom.

The pictures above don't look like any kim chee I have ever seen in 30 years.

[partially_veiled]

Originally Posted by BillyJack

The pictures above don't look like any kim chee I have ever seen in 30 years.

Maybe because there are many, many different varieties of Kimchi?
I don't know, just a suggestion. There's many different ways of making this stuff...so maybe your Grandma just uses a regional recipe, something like that? Either way, Beastmaster dude, this stuff looks SICK! In a good way . My mouth is watering...

There is so much more than I bargained for at this place...haha wow. Psilocybin and Kimchi, all in one spot?? It's like the Walmart of the underground! Haha, okay maybe not...but still, BM, I can't wait to try this recipe. I LOVE most types of Asian cuisine, and really love fermented foods in general...and this looks like a really tasty Kimchi. Thanks for sharing man!

BillyJack, if your Grammy wouldn't beat your ass red for doing so (I know my Grandma would beat me silly for sharing her recipes ), you should make a thread with your version of Kimchi?? I love this stuff, and I'm sure peeps would be into seeing an authentic Korean recipe. Food for thought, anyway.

THANKS FOR SHARING BEASTMASTER!!!

[mysticwonder]

Hey looking good Beast. I have never had the stuff myself. I think now I will try some. Thanks... I'm still scared of what it will taste like.

[BillyJack]

BillyJack, if your Grammy wouldn't beat your ass red for doing so (I know my Grandma would beat me silly for sharing her recipes ), you should make a thread with your version of Kimchi?? I love this stuff, and I'm sure peeps would be into seeing an authentic Korean recipe. Food for thought, anyway.

I will ask her how she makes it. Hers usually looks like what you can find in asian grocery stores or good korean restaurants run by korean people. I know it takes months to ferment, and that even in a very well sealed jar this stuff will ruin every other food product in your refrigerator.

The butter, milk, juice, other vegis, meat, anything thats not vacuum packed will smell like kim chee. Grandpa bought grandma a second fridge to keep on the back patio to store her food in.

Here is a quick, easy, popular korean recipe. Can be done with any meat, although marination time and technique is different for each type of meat.


5-20 cloves of garlic, minced, crushed, or pressed.

1-2 bundles of green onions, I chop the white parts very small and cut the greens to about 1.5 inches long.

1-2 teaspoons black pepper

1.5 cups soy sauce

1 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons dark sesame oil

2 tablespoons mirin

fresh ginger grated if making pork or fish.

put all ingredients in jar, shake until suger dissolves, place in fridge forever or until you need to use it.

For chicken i take a couple boneless skinless breasts place in a gallon ziploc, smash the hell outta them with a wine bottle. I like the meat smashed into pieces, not just flattening it out.
Pour in some bul gogi marinade, mix it up real well so all the meat is covered. This can be dumped onto a HOT bbq grill right away or marinated in the fridge for 30 minutes.
The grill has to be HOT HOT HOT, you want dump it on and kinda spread it out to make an even pile of meat, let it cook until it starts to turn from pink to white on the top, then flip it over and let cook for a minute or two until it's done. You want one side to have some burnt black parts, this is so tasty.
Serve over rice. This chicken takes about ten minutes to prepare and cook if your marinade is already done, so have your rice cooked first. Goes good with steamed broccoli or other greens.

I will add grandmas kim chee recipe once i get it from her

[Beastmaster]

hah, I was reading that and thinking "where's the cabbage? soy sauce? ack! he puts chicken in his kimchi?!?!?"

haha, yeah that sounds like a good recipe, and I'm looking forwards to a traditional kimchee recipe. You could have put the 'I'll be back with g'ma's kimchee recipe' first you know...

Yeah this last batch here has alot of improvisation in it. According to Bill Mollison (also not a Korean) in his book on Human Nutrition and Fermentation, there's a wide variation in the ingredients, especially regionally. South east asians like to put shrimp in their kimchee for instance.

And yes, when I get home, my house smells like kimchee (but only for a week). Which is a more pleasant aroma than cooking rye grains, imho.

And remember, folks, it doesn't have to be blazing hot. Not worth it in my opinion, but some people just can't handle spices. Put a habanero in there and you've got the most effective cold remedy I've ever come across.

Thanks for the interest, friends! Happy Fermenting!

[dead_diver]

When I was working in Guam I saw about fifty cabbages stuffed under a nasty dumpster behind a restaraunt. I asked my local Chomoro friend why they were throwing away the cabbage and he told me they were putting them there on purpose to rot before making kim chee with them. I have'nt eaten kim chee since :P

[Beastmaster]

Ok, well, here we are, ten days later and significant change has occurred in these magical jars. I've been sampling a bit, when hungry and brave, all along, and at first everything had their own individual flavors, and everything was crunchy and fresh still, and everything was very very salty.

Now, as you can see, the beets and carrots have lost color, and everything has mushed down a bit, no I haven't been sampling that much, just a little chunk every day or so. Overall it has a spicy gingery flavor, esp if you get some of those firey lil bits in a bite... the saltiness has been replaced with, well kimchee flavor. Don't know what else to describe it as. Maybe this is a little more colorful than what you traditionalists are used to, but as a way to preserve food, as well as create a healthy meal supplement that will colonize your gut with lots of healthy critters, it seems top notch to me.

At this point, I'm still continuing to vent the jars daily by opening them up and pressing the veggies down to squish the air bubbles out, the first couple days I had violent foamy reactions squirting broth everywhere, and now its calmed down alot, though it still fills the room with a big ol kimchee fart when I open a jar. The original recipe that I started this recipe had me packing my kimchee in pint jars, so I'm thinking that this change in volume might be contributing to a slower ferment. Perhaps the variation of heavy fresh greens, as opposed to rotten stuff as suggested by our Guamanian friends, and beets has slown it down, though you'd think the sugars from the beets would kick things up a notch. Its all speculation at this point, speculation while I munch away on my bowl of kimchee! mmmmm! this is good sweaty stuff!

[TastyBeverage]

Well, i guess i know what i'm making today! Good thing the farmer's market starts in 45 minutes...

[Oblivion]

Been making it for years. Now my mouth is watering for some again, off to the store tonight.

[catdaddy]

Gotta jump in here. My Dad, for YEARS has been raving about kim chee. I smelled it once and said..never!

Last year he brought me a gallon jar from a Korean restaurant in my home town. A vegetable I've never seen... shaped like a small butternut squash, and mixed with greens.

After a few months, I tried it. INTENSE. HOT. Sooo..

Later I tried chopping it and serving it over rice.

I'm hooked. Smells vile. Tastes like nothing else, and I love it.

Keeps forever.

Nice jar to keep, too...

Catdaddy

[wendal]

I had a friend from Vietnam that would make up similar jars of fermented food.

They contained pork or chicken, rice, cabbage, garlic, soy, and a couple other spices.

It smelled absolutely vile. But then it would taste great! Could never explain how something so nasty smelling could taste so good

[twoguysupnorth]

nice! i never thought about doing it in smaller batches. those fermenting crocks are expensive. i love saurkraut and pickles and beans ,so why not all mixed together? tried it once but it was on the too hot side of things, maybe a medium flavor.

[WilliamsEyeLophori]

thanks beastie! i love fermented foods, ginger, garlick, and spicy food, ive got a batch goin', cant wait to try... i tried it after the eight hour soak, is it less salty after fermentation?
i bought some from the market once and thought it was to salty, and once had it on a sand witch from the co-op, and it was awsome, didnt care for the stuf from the grocery store...

anyone gaot any other cool food items to make, esp fermented...im doin the kombucha now, interesting, think ill make some yogurt too. my kvass didnt turn out so well, just throwing ideas out...i love enzymes and magikal transformations...

[Beastmaster]

Yes, the saltiness should gradually disappear completely.

If you are using normal canning lids, remember that it is important to vent the jars daily, and when you do pack the vegetable material down into the jar, use plenty of force, all around the sides and in the middle. Just as when you were loading the jars. Seems to speed up the process a bit.

After a few days, there should be a strong kimchee smell and flavor present, the vegetable matter should loose alot of its crunchiness and it shouldn't be very salty either. Flavor will become more uniform.

someone had a pdf on sauerkraut in chat last night but i didn't save it? anyone? anyone?