Jayce made this kimchi a few years ago and it blew my mind. We polished off the one mason jar she gave us in no time, and were quickly begging her for more. Like addicts. Please Jayce, PLEASE! Just one more jar. We LOVE IT. We DESERVE IT. What can we trade you for it? Anything, PLEASE!
We didn’t get another jar. It was gone. It’s taken us years to finally get our shit organized and make it together. Which brings us to today: Kimchi party!
This post will be a bit different - I’m going to send you weekly updates of how the fermentation is going. Jayce thinks she left it out to ferment 4 weeks last time, so we’ll see what the magic number of days is this time around. I’ll be handing this out like gold after. You’ll know you’re in the inner circle if you get one.
Today’s fermenting song:
Today’s takes (1 hour in):
Jayce: “It’s getting better already. Not as fishy. But fishy aftertaste. The weight of expectation is high.”
Ellisa: “Uuuuuuuu. Spicy, slimy, fishy on the end. I need a drink.”
What we used:
We tripled the original recipe. I definitely do not want to run out anytime soon.
3 Napa cabbages
1 large daikon radish ~700g
5 carrots, various sizes
3 bunches green onions
1 medium yellow onion
2 medium knobs of ginger
1.5 heads of garlic
1.5 cups salt
3 tbsp glutinous rice powder
1.5 cups water
4 tbsp sugar (should have been 6, but turns out I have no sugar in the house)
1.5 cups fish sauce
3 cups Korean red chili powder (Gochugaru)
What we did:
Chopped bottoms off the cabbage. Put leaves in a large container, added salt and filled with water until the leaves were covered. Weighed everything down with plates to keep the leaves submerged. Let sit.
Put 1.5 cups water and 3 tbsp rice powder in saucepan. Turned heat to medium. Whisked continuously until boiling and thick. About 3-to-5 minutes. Removed from heat and transferred to a bowl to cool.
Peeled yellow onion, garlic, and radish. Cut into chunks. Thawed ginger (we keep ours in the freezer.)
Chopped in batches in mini food processor. Got it as small as we could. Added to rice paste.
Added fish sauce, sugar and chili powder to the mix. Stirred until combined. Kimchi paste done!'
Had two different bags of chili powder - newer one is redder.
Moved onto veg. Julienned carrots (had purple and orange ones).
Diced green onions.
Waited 2 hours. Cabbage was supposed to sit for 4 hours, ours probably sat for 3.
Drained and rinsed cabbage. Cut into bite sized pieces. Added to container large enough for mixing.
Added the other veg. Tossed.
Added the kimchi pasta. Mixed well. Used tongs because I didn’t want my hands to smell like fish sauce for the next 3 days.
Packed into our jars (2 were large, ~4L. One small 500ml one)
Done!
Next time:
We’re going to post in a week - let you know what it looks like and how it tastes.
So much funky, spicy goodness in our future.
😋😋😋
-Ellisa & Jayce