How to Make Kimchi
Making winter kimchi (kimjang) in large amounts from start to finish can take a couple of days since you have to wait several hours for the cabbages to be properly salted and then there’s the huge mountain of radishes waiting to be sliced. Garlic and ginger won’t crush themselves either, but at least they can be done in advance.
Last year we turned up on day 2 when the rest of the family had already salted the cabbages and finished chopping and slicing the vegetables for the filling. This year we were there from the start but we had no idea what was in store for us and that we would have to get up at 5 am to rinse cabbages…
Napa Cabbage
We started with about 100 heads of napa cabbage! They had to be cut in half, dipped in water and salted. Small handfuls of salt were spread in between the leaves in two or three places. Then the cabbages were stacked ‘face up’ in two huge containers for several hours.
The rest of the afternoon was spent chopping vegetables for the filling. Later in the evening the cabbages had to be rearranged so that the ones at the bottom of the bucket were on the top and the ones on the top were at the bottom.
We had an early night and at 5am got up to help wash the salt off the cabbages… It was dark outside but my parents-in-law were already hard at work. The clean cabbage halves were stacked ‘face down’ ready to be filled.
salt
This large grain coarse sea salt had been kept in an earthenware pot outside for months so that the moisture from the sea water would drain to the bottom of the pot. Apparently this stops the salt tasting bitter. There’s a filter at the bottom of the pot which collects the water which is used to make tofu.
We got through 2 buckets of salt for the salting process! Salt goes into the kimchi filling mix as well and my mother-in-law uses the same salt, but this time it’s been dry-fried first so that it’s not as ‘salty’ – if that makes sense!
Korean salt is produced in the West Sea mudflats and the mudflat of Shinan-gun is one of the world’s top 5 mudflats. And according to the area’s website Shinan Sea Salt is low in sodium chloride content, but relatively high in moisture and sulphuric acid ion, calcium, potassium, magnesium and other minerals. And they say that if other salt is used to make kimchi, the kimchi may turn sour quickly – something to do with a slow lactic acid fermentation process compared to a faster acetic acid fermentation process…
This salt is available on Amazon but it isn’t cheap. But according to Maangchi any salt will do to make kimchi and since Korean salt is expensive and not so easy to find abroad, she recommends kosher salt as an alternative. Anyway, it’s a good idea to at least look out for pickling/canning salt.
making the kimchi filling
After the napa cabbage, the next most important vegetable in this kimchi is moo radish (aka daikon) which has to be sliced into long thin strips.
My father-in-law bought a mandoline slicer which was cleverly advertised on the home shopping channel in the lead up to the kimjang season. For 100 cabbages we needed enough sliced radish to fill a small bath! That’s about 60 radishes.
Next we had to cut up a huge bag of spring onions and leeks. And a ginormous bag of mustard leaves. The mustard leaves smelled peppery like watercress when I chopped them up. It looks like a lot of veg but it shrinks in the chilli mix.
For the filling we need salt, crushed garlic and ginger, fermented shrimps, fish sauce, and maesil plum syrup. Some kind of stock – often beef – is used too, to make the filling more juicy and rehydrate dried ingredients like the chilli powder.
It takes quite a lot of strength to mix this amount of filling!
You have to get both hands right down to the bottom of the bath turning the mixture over to the top and then lightly spreading it around so that the ingredients separate into an evenly juicy mixture without dry clusters of chilli or blobs of raw garlic…
The kimchi station is open for business
We’d been up since 5am washing the cabbages, so the kimchi station was ready for action by breakfast time.
It was so cold last year when we were filling the cabbages that this year my father-in-law made a tent to protect us from the wind. The kimchi bath was put on the ground and we sat on low stools around it. But leaning over is quite hard on your back and there was talk of having the kimchi pool higher up on a table next year so we can make kimchi standing up!
The final step of kimjang is putting the filling in between the cabbage leaves. Cabbages and ladles of filling are put in the kimchi pool. Then you have to dab some filling between each layer of leaves. Some people like a lot of radish filling others don’t. I suppose it’s personal taste.
A kimchi expert at the Seoul Kimchi Festival explained that when you are filling the cabbages, you should take a handful of the filling and start at the very base of the cabbage leaf and then spread the mixture out to the end of the leaf in one smooth stroke. So there’s no need to be rubbing the mixture aggressively into every leaf! Or dabbing away for ages to make sure every area of leaf is covered in filling – although that is quite tempting to do.
After the the filling has been spread between the cabbage leaves, the cabbage is folded in half and an outer leaf wrapped around it to hold everything together.
The final step is to box the kimchi ready to take home. The cabbages are stacked into the boxes ‘face up’ again to keep the filling inside. Then the boxes need to be left out for a few days to ferment before they are put in the kimchi fridge.
But while the kimchi is left out to ferment you need to keep an eye on it.
Last year I wasn’t vigilant and after a few days there was a pool of red kimchi juice all over the floor around the boxes. Walking into the apartment was liking arriving at a crime scene.
When kimchi starts to ferment it will fizz and bubble and the juice can force its way out of a sealed container. if the kimchi is in a plastic bag the bag will blow up like a balloon. In the past when kimchi pots were buried in the ground to keep them cool, they could burst out of the ground from the sheer power of fermentation!
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
We made so much kimchi that it will last until next spring or summer. Actually I still have some left from last year!
But I couldn’t tell you the exact measurements of the ingredients we used! Only that there were a lot of them. So for a recipe for a smaller amount kimchi, here’s the recipe for traditional winter kimchi from Maangchi.
for more on kimchi see
Awesome article! I’m surprised by the addition of maesil plum syrup and beef stock, I’ve done Maangchi’s recipe a couple of times but next time I may want to add the plum syrup as this will definitively accelerate the fermentation process. Im always in the lookout for salts when I travel for my ferments, but I never heard about the high sulphuric acid ion content affecting the end product, very interesting. I’m glad that making Kimchi is still a family event in some areas there. When I was a child, we used to make Puerto Rican pasteles for Christmas and it was indeed a family endeavor, everybody had a task (mine was cleaning the banana leaves) and at the end of the day we were able to taste the freshly made pasteles. Good times!
making pasteles sounds fun. It’s so interesting hearing about Puerto Rican customs. Thank you!
I adore this post. It was so well written and such a good adventure. Although I haven’t had a chance to do kimjang with my in-laws yet, I’ve been to that Kimchi Festival before, and your descriptions made me feel like I was right there with you! It was so interesting to read about maesil being included, too. I always have some around and yet have never added it when making kimchi. Definitely going to try it next time 🙂
I hope you enjoy making kimchi!