I made homemade kimchi for the first time during quarantine! I used up a lot of fresh vegetables that my housemates brought home when their workplace (restaurant) closed down during the pandemic. I made a small batch of kimchi using up what they brought home: 1 head of Napa cabbage, some baby bok choy, and parsnips. The recipe below can be adjusted depending on the types of vegetables you have!

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Ingredients

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• 10 pounds baechu (napa cabbage)

• 1 cup kosher salt

• 1/2 cup sweet rice flour

• 1/4 cup sugar, water

• 1 cup crushed garlic

• 1-2 Tbsp. minced ginger

• 1 cup minced onion

• 1 cup fish sauce

• Brined shrimp paste (to taste)

• 2 1/2 cup hot pepper flakes

• 2 cups chopped leek

• 10 stalks green onions, diagonally sliced

• 1/4 cup julienned carrot

• 2 cups julienned Korean radish

 

Instructions
 

1. Trim the discolored outer leaves of 10 pounds of napa cabbage.

2. Cut the cabbage lengthwise into quarters and remove the cores. Chop it up into bite size pieces.

3. Soak the pieces of cabbage in cold water and put the soaked cabbage into a large basin. Sprinkle salt. Every 30 minutes, turn the cabbage over to salt evenly (total salting time will be 1 1/2 hours).

4. 1 1/2 hours later, rinse the cabbage in cold water 3 times to clean it thoroughly.

5. Drain the cabbage and set aside.

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Make porridge:

1. Put 3 cups of water and sweet rice flour (chapssalgaru or mochiko) in a pot and mix it well and bring to a boil. Keep stirring until the porridge makes bubbles (about 5 minutes).

2. Add sugar. Stir and cook for a few more mintues until it’s translucent. Cool completely

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Make kimchi paste:

1. Place the cold porridge into a large bowl. Now you will add all your ingredients one by one.

2. Add fish sauce, hot pepper flakes (depending on your taste), crushed garlic, minced ginger, minced onion.
   *This is much easier to do in a food processor.

3. Add the shrimp paste to the kimchi paste. Add sliced green onions, chopped leek, Korean radish, and carrot. Mix well.

 

Mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste!

1. Put the kimchi paste in a large basin and add all the cabbage. Mix it by hand.
   *If your basin is not large enough to mix all the ingredients at once, do it bit by bit.

2. Put the kimchi into an air-tight sealed plastic container or glass jar.
   You can eat it fresh right after making or wait until it’s fermented.

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• If you want your kimchi to get sour more quickly, you can separate some of the kimchi into smaller containers. That way, each small amount ferments faster. You can use this sour kimchi for making things like kimchi jjigae or kimchi fried rice where sour kimchi is better.

• How do you know it’s fermented or not? One or 2 days after, making open the lid of the kimchi container. You may see some bubbles with lots of liquids, or maybe sour smells. That means it’s already being fermented.