Napa Cabbage and Daikon Kimchi
20 whole cloves of garlic!
Let it be known that there is a lot of minced garlic and ginger in kimchi. I like doing things the hard way so I minced everything by hand. A food processor would be perfect for this, but having garlicky smelling hands for the rest of the night was so much more appealing! Feel free to use a food processor when making kimchi. A mandolin would help too, for the julienned carrots.
mincing ginger
If you don’t want your fridge to smell like kimchi, make sure you use some nice airtight containers. I used some glass jars from Ikea. I am happy to report that the fridge doesn’t smell like kimchi, but if you do have left over minced garlic, wrap it up in an airtight container as well or your fridge will smell like garlic. Which is what happened to me, naturally.
green onions in kochukaru, fish sauce, and usukuchi
Once your massive mounds of garlic and ginger all minced up, mix all the ingredients into a super-red spicy slurry and toss with the napa cabbage and daikon you had overnight in the fridge. Give the vegetables a quick rinse before you combine them with the kimchi slurry.
napa cabbage kimchi!
Don’t forget to add your salted shrimp! The salted shrimp helps start the fermentation process. Somehow I forgot to mix it in and I had to re-toss and re-jar.
daikon kimchi!
I had a quick taste and was pleasantly surprised. Spicy, but not in-your-face spicy, with a very fresh flavour. We’ll see how long the freshness lasts before the fermentation kicks in.
kimchi-licious
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How do you feel the sugar affected the recipe? The other two times I’ve made kimchi, there was no sugar involved (just glutinous rice flour). After tasting Chang’s red dragon sauce, even with half the sugar he calls for, I’m worried he has more of a sweet tooth than I do.
KT,
If you don’t like sweets I’d recommend cutting the sugar down. The kimchi isn’t super spicy and it doesn’t really have that super-funk that other kimchi usually has. I actually have a sweet tooth, so I liked the spicy-sweetness of it, but cut it down to 1/4 cup if you’re worried. Let me know how it goes!
Just pulled my kimchi today (2 weeks after prepping), I was quite impressed at how authentic it tasted and the reasonable level of heat. I found the ginger to be a little bit too overpowering if I got a piece in my mouth. I too used a knife for all the prep and got a pretty fine dice on both the garlic and the ginger. I find if I get a couple of pieces of ginger on the fork it ends up a bit too sharp, maybe food processor is the way to go. Consomme this weekend, maybe some other preps involving kimchee if the rest of the mise is reasonable!
I love Chang’s kimchi. Didn’t have a problem with the chunks of ginger, but I eat a lot of ginger. Let me know how the consomme goes!
Thanks so much for this site! Where did you get jarred salted shrimp in Vancouver? I’ve looked at T&T, Granville Island, Korean Grocery stores….. help please!
recipe?
how do you think leaving the salted shrimp out would effect the final product? i live in a tiny town in japan and can’t find any. alternately, could i prepare my own?
WHERE is the recipe? Am I missing it somewhere?
Thanks
D