Kimchi

 Good news, Fridge Top Ferments has expanded into the wide world of kimchi!!!

After asking for and then receiving The Kimchi Cookbook by Lauryn Chun this Christmas (thank you Santa), I can finally feel comfortable about making traditional kimchi recipes to fulfill all my kimchi dreams!

Green onions, the pepper/onion/garlic/ginger/mushroom broth paste, and salted napa cabbage.

If you've never had kimchi, its basically the Korean version of sauerkraut.  It can be used as just a side dish, or it can be incorporated into other meals like roasted Brussels sprouts, fried rice, soups, sandwiches, and anything else you eat.  Everything is better with Kimchi!  Although it can be made with a host of different fermented vegetables and seasonings, the most common variety and what most people think of when they hear kimchi is made with napa cabbage korean hot pepper flakes.  And so, thats what I made!

Unlike my krauts where I'm just throwing things into the crock all willy-nilly and then attempting to figure out what I did after the fact, with this kimchi I stuck to the recipe for the square cut napa cabbage kimchi in the book.  Kimchi is often fermented with some sort of seafood, and in this case thats what the recipe called for.  But the author also offered up a vegan version by telling you to substitute in a mushroom broth for the shrimp and anchovies called for in the regular version.  Being a vegan, I started making mushroom broth!

The broth, which is was just dried shiitake mushrooms simmered in water and salt (she gives the recipie for it in the book as well), was then set aside to cool while I started working the cabbage.

Unlike sauerkraut where you work the cabbage with the salt while packing it into your fermentation vessel, kimchi has you mix up the cabbage with the salt ahead of time, let it sit for an hour or so, and then rinse all of the salt off.  This draws the water out of the cabbage, which is supposed to help it absorb the spice mix better.  Scientists in Korea study these things, so I'll trust them that its worth the extra time.

The spice mixture before blending

Anyway, while the cabbage sat in the salt I made the spice mix, which was yellow onion, garlic, ginger, sugar, that mushroom broth I was letting cool, and a whole crap ton of Korean hot pepper flakes!  Seriously like half the mixture is just pepper flakes.  Just mind blowing.  Luckily, I got a giant bag of the stuff from an Asian food store, so I have plenty to go around.  Moving on though, all of the spice mix was thrown into a food processor until it was some sort of firey hot paste, and then massaged into the napa cabbage and some chopped green onions so that no green or white was showing anymore.  And because I like to live dangerously, I did all this without gloves and still managed to take my contacts out later that night.

The cabbage, green onions, and spice mixture mixed together in all its glory!

Then all of that goodness was jammed into two large glass jars, packed down tight, topped loosely with thier caps, and left to ferment for 3 days at room temperature.  3 days, that's it!  Sauerkraut your sitting around for 4 weeks wondering whats going on, this stuff is ready in just a long weekend.  Those Koreans are onto something.  It fermented so fast it left me no time to get creative with the name of it.  I just called it "kimchi". 

 After the 3 days of room temp fermentation was done, I packed it all into 4 smaller jars so I could hand some out and bring some to work, as well as leave it in the fridge to keep fermenting and changing over the next few months.

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

 The end results were fantastic!  It came out tasting like the kimchi you would expect from a Korean restaurant.  Its hot, but not so hot that you can't keep eating it.  I made this with just two heads of cabbage, and since it came out so good I plan to double that and ferment it in my new crock I got for Christmas (thank you Amy) right next to the sauerkraut's.  And who knows, I may even get more creative with the name next time now that I'm prepared.