Making kimchi- I will give you some kind of hints and tips and tricks about what you can do to change it up if you don’t like certain flavors.
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Your local kitchen witch and in today’s video we are going to be making kimchi I usually make kimchi around this time every year because in the fall the ingredients are in season so they are on sale they are cheap and they’re at they’re like flavorful peak so it’s the perfect time to make it and I make a huge batch that’s gonna last me all through the winter now if you are one of those people who doesn’t like funky food doesn’t like super spicy food kimchi isn’t really your thing I hope I can change your mind today because I know a lot of people don’t like kimchi because it’s too fishy or it’s too for menti or it’s too spicy or whatever but when you make it yourself you can completely customize it to whatever your tastes are and I think if you’re a person who can eat any kind of cabbage in general you can get to like kimchi if you make it the way you want to eat it the kimchi that I’m making today is a very traditional style but just adapted to the ingredients that I have here available in the rural Northwest United States the technique that I’m using is one that I learned from momchi who’s a very popular Korean youtuber who has amazing food tutorials of all things Korean and you should definitely check her out if you aren’t already at Stan but I learned her technique and that’s just some people that I knew that made kimchi regularly so that’s what I’m going to be showing you today but like I said before it’s slightly simplified we’re not using quite as many ingredients because we’re just using what’s on hand so it should be fairly easy and fairly easy to follow along and as we’re going through let’s get started all right all good kimchi starts out with napa cabbage I’m using two large heads which may seem like a lot if you’re not a big kimchi fan or very little if you eat Korean food on a regular basis but this is about how much my partner and I will go through in a period of six or so months two large heads like this once prepared will fill approximately three mason jars to give you some perspective to start off we’re going to tear off any outer leaves that are wilted or dirty or damaged then we’re going to trim the base of each cabbage if it protrudes like you see here then we are quartering each cabbage by making a slit through the base tearing it into two halves and then doing the same to each half to create quarters tearing it instead of cutting all the way through helps keep the leaves together so you don’t have as many messy cabbage bits all over the place and believe me this gets very very messy so you want to reduce the chaos as much as possible in these early stages now I’m trimming these small sections at the base of each quarter where the leaves attached to the main stalk or core of the plant these parts are really dense and tough and they won’t soften well during the fermenting process so we would just want to get rid of them then we just repeat that whole process with the second cabbage and give all of our neat little sections a good rinse now everything is nice and clean now we want to add a very liberal amount of salts to this whole pile but since the purpose of this salting isn’t to season but to soften the cabbage we’re going to use much much more than whatever tastes good or even be edible and we’re going to get it into every nook and cranny you really want a thin coating on every single leaf if possible this will draw out the water from the cabbage and begin breaking it down without this step the leaves would never be flexible enough to be able to pack into a jar without allowing for huge gaps and gaps equals air pockets which equals potentially bad and possibly even dangerous fermentation so salt away and don’t worry about the flavor because we’re gonna wash all that salt off before adding any of our other ingredients anyway 30 minutes later our cabbage has wilted and softened significantly but it’s still not quite where we need it to be if you make this you will notice that the water from the cabbage starts to collect in the bottom of the bowl and it takes quite a bit of the salt with it so you’ll want to turn that whole pile every pass hour or so just so that all of the sections have time to soak in the salt water it usually takes about 2 hours total before this is soft enough to use so be patient and we will prep the other ingredients while we wait there are three components to kimchi the cabbage the extra veggies and the paste the paste is where most of our flavors are coming from so it’s where you may want to get a little creative if you don’t love traditional kimchi to start out I’ve got a small pot over medium low heat and I’m adding 1/2 a cup of water 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and a tablespoon of rice flour as a thickener you can totally use cornstarch though instead if that’s all you have I’ve noticed that a lot of people say they don’t like kimchi because they only taste the fishiness and the heat but my theory is that they’re really just not getting the balance they expect between the heat saltiness sourness and sweetness so I found that increasing the sugar amount to three or four tablespoons as well as reducing the amount of pepper flakes and fishiness can help with that balance as well as speed up fermentation next we are adding dried shrimp you can also use camp fermented shrimp that’s a little more traditional but it’s not available where I live if you don’t know where to look for dried shrimp at my grocery store it’s actually in the Latin or Hispanic food aisle and it comes in these little baggies from a brand that sells all kinds of spices typically used in South American and Caribbean food if you can’t find it you can use fish sauce instead I use both because I love a strong fish flavor but the shrimp is the lighter of the two flavors so if you have the options and you want to go light on the fish use the shrimp instead of the fish sauce now we are bringing all of this to a simmer because we want to soften that shrimp slightly then we are adding our red pepper flakes now this is the only ingredient that I would strongly suggest to buy online if it’s not available where you live like it isn’t for me gochugaru is the dried out and coarsely ground korean red chili it’s mild and sweet and smoky and there’s really nothing else like it that you could ever substitute for it that being said while it is mild the quantities that we’re using it in will pack some heat so if you are sensitive to spiciness I would start by adding a quarter cup taste and add from there you want the paste to be just a bit hotter a bit sweeter and a bit saltier than you want the final kimchi to be because all of those flavors will be diluted with the cabbage you may notice that I didn’t add any salt and that’s because I added fish sauce which also acts as a salting agent but if you’re not using any fish sauce or just not as much as I am you will want to add some salt just make sure to taste it and make sure that it is salty enough also don’t forget to turn your cabbage by this point it’s going to have been around thirty minutes so you’ll definitely need to turn it around now and it’s a good break before our hands get really messy you definitely want to turn it don’t forget otherwise it will be too stiff to use and it will be very disappointing with that reminder let’s move on to our veggies I’m using a mandolin slicer to speed up this whole process but you can always make these little sticks or shards by hand if you want or if you have it in a specialty food processor with a julienne attachment I use about 1/2 of a large daikon which is much easier to find than Korean radish and to very large carrots obviously you can use more if you only have small carrots etc then I’m chopping up to huge bunches of green onions the green parts and the white parts we don’t want to waste anything here then we’re setting all of that aside in a mixing bowl the last thing we are going to do before we put all of this together is blend up some onions and garlic I like a very garlicky kimchi because I like garlicky everything but you don’t have to use quite this much if you don’t want to I peeled and halved one whole onion and peeled and remove the stem ends from an entire head of garlic then you’ll just want to throw all of that into a food processor to mince it very finally of course you could do that by hand too but it would take a lot more effort finally it’s time to throw everything together add the onions and garlic to the vegetables then add the paste we made earlier as well the paste may seem very thick and it might be difficult to mix in but the salt in the paste will draw out water from all the vegetables and after a minute it will be much easier to work with you can also use a pair of gloves and mix it by hand with your fingers this is much faster and easier but I definitely do recommend wearing gloves because the pepper flakes will cause major irritation to your hands as well as stain them red after a bit of futile cleaning it’s time to check on our cabbage to see if it is softened the basis of each leaf are our main concern but once they’re about this flexible it’s time to move on you want to thoroughly wash each section of the cabbage to remove the salt and then place it into a colander with the leafy side down and place that colander into a bowl to catch the water then it’s time to move on and actually assemble this I’m using a clay pot to store my kimchi it won’t fit the whole batch but it is bigger than it looks it’ll fit about two-thirds of our mixture and the rest will go in a mason jar but you can just use mason jars if that’s easier for you clay pots like this are very old school if you’ve got a Korean grandma it’s not unlikely that she uses something like this for her kimchi it’s been fermented this way for a very very long time and it’s totally safe so don’t be worried that it looks so different from the sterile glass and airlock lids we’re used to seeing with fermented foods the main thing to keep in mind is that we are trying to pack this very tightly no matter what container we’re using to get as many air bubbles out as possible so I take one section of cabbage at a time coat each leaf as best I can with the paste it is messy and then cut it in half and tightly fold each half into a little bundle before placing it in the clay pot or jar or you can do it I do and cut each section into little quarters to make it even easier we just want to reduce our chances of mold and other nasty things as much as we can and we do that by keeping the oxygen aka air bubbles out things are inevitably going to get very very messy at this stage so you probably just want to accept that and lean into it again gloves are highly recommended so just repeat that process over and over and over again and keep an eye on how much paste you’re using and how much you have left you’re rarely going to have the exactly perfect amount right at the end so just keep eyeballing it to make sure you’ll have enough paste to coat all the cabbage without having a ton left over because there’s no use in wasting it as you complete each little bundle really press it down into the jars and pack them as tightly as you can until each jar or pot is completely filled alright folks we did it we made it we made our kimchi I’m sorry about the light in here it’s 3:30 in November in Montana so that means it’s very dark sorry about that but we are really really done with step one of kimchi I’m not gonna make a video for step two because it’s very straight forward and I will tell you right now this what we just did is the recipe part of kimchi it’s just putting it together you can eat it like this if you want it’s perfectly edible but it’s not full of the wonderful probiotics that kimchi is famous for and it doesn’t have that unique fermenting funk that people love kimchi for it the reason why we make it what we need to do now is leave it on the counter for a few days until it starts activating and you get little bubbles and it gets that nice kind of funky smell and flavor you’ll notice within a few days the liquid will have risen and there’s gonna be little bubbles all over the top it will also have a distinctly pleasantly sour smell and when that does happen you’re gonna want to push all of the cabbage down you’re gonna want to push all that the guts of this down into the liquid so that we avoid any molding or any unpleasant fermentation we just want this to be active we don’t want right so push it down into the liquid everyday once you start seeing it become active and if you are using a mason jar like this make sure you burp it every day otherwise the lid might come popping off if you are using a clock like this you don’t have to worry about that so much because the lids just have sitting on here it’s not sealed or screwed down so you can just leave this on your counter and give it a little check every day and push down all of the cabbage so that it is submerged in the liquid as best you can and then within a few days it should start being a little funky a little fermenting a little bubbly and then you can either keep it on your counter to get super fermented and super probiotic goodness or you can just move it to your fridge and then it will slow down that fermentation process and it can live in your fridge too for months and months and months to come and you could just use it as needed I personally like the slightly less funky kimchi so I will only leave mine out for three or four days my partner really loves funky kimchi so we’re gonna be leaving the crop on the counter for maybe up to two weeks before we move it to the fridge it all depends on your nose and your tastes thank you so much for watching hopefully this was informative and answered all your questions but if you do have any questions leave them in the comments down below as well as any suggestions for future videos or anything else you want to tell me thanks so much for watching and I will see you in the next video.