Homemade Kimchi

 Yes, I’m still hooked on pickling things. This time, I’ve pickled cabbage, Korean-style.

I started with a brine, less salty than usual because I added lots of fish sauce, which is very, very salty. I also used oodles of pepper flakes, garlic cloves (cut in quarters), fresh ginger slices, a little simple syrup (dissolved sugar), and green onions. I didn’t measure, only eyeballed and tasted the brine as I adjusted it. I did count the squirts of fish sauce I put in: 25 each jar. Each squirt is the amount that come out with one shake of the bottle. This might be too much for some, but I love fish sauce.

The jars are filled only half full, of course, so there’s plenty of room for the cabbage.

I didn’t really follow a recipe, although I read several to get a sense of what’s usually done to make kimchi. I also depended on my memory of how other kimchis tasted and the ingredients I could see as well as the flavors I detected, especially in the style that’s sold very fresh and lightly fermented in a brine.

Before I prepared and spiced the brine, I cut up a head of nappa cabbage and thoroughly rinsed it, and let it soak in salty water for an hour, as several recipes suggested. (I’m not sure this step is necessary for this style of kimchi. I did it anyway since it also seemed a good way to make sure the cabbage was nice and clean.)

When the brine was all ready, I packed that cabbage in tightly, and it turned out I had exactly enough room for one head of cabbage in these two large jars.

Kimchi bubbles up quite a bit as it ferments, so I placed the jars in a casserole dish to catch the overflow. Also, make sure all the vegetables are pushed down below the water line, so they don’t mold. I found that those little glass Fire King custard cups are perfect weights for this purpose if the veggies won’t stay down on their own. The lids stay open as it ferments for three or four days at room temperature. I covered the jars with a kitchen towel to keep the dust out.

The kimchi is delicious, fresh-tasting and spicy! The fish sauce has a funky smell which some find pretty nasty, but it bothers me no more than the stinky-foot smell of tasty cheese. The only changes I would make: more ginger, and a little more sugar to round out the flavor more, the amount I used was too little for so much brine.

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By Amy M Cools

Amy M. Cools is a historian, educator, researcher, and author. She is a Research Fellow in English and Creative Writing at Northumbria University, Newcastle, as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2026). She specializes in the history of ideas, African American and United States history (especially antebellum), the study of civil rights movements, biographical explorations of extraordinary people, the history of philosophy, issues in ethics and law, and other topics in history, philosophy, and intellectual history. Amy holds a PhD in History (2021) and an MA in Intellectual History with Distinction (2018) from the University of Edinburgh (2018); a BA in Philosophy: Ethics, Politics and Law, Summa Cum Laude from California State University at Sacramento (2013), and an AA in Humanities and Fine Arts from Riverside City College (1999). Her doctoral thesis, ‘The Life and Work of James McCune Smith (1813-1865),’ is the first completed book-length biographical study dedicated to this pioneering intellectual, scientist, and physician. Amy’s project as a BA Fellow at Northumbria is to compile and edit McCune Smith’s complete written works. She is also currently writing a biography of McCune Smith, under contract with the University of Georgia Press. A native of California, USA, she currently makes her home near Newcastle upon Tyne, England, with her beloved husband and dog

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