Super Bowl? How About The Kimchee Bowl?

[sudsmaster]

First you raid the local Asian market and assemble the following ingredients:

Napa cabbage
White radish
Green bok choy
Green onions
Chinese broccoli (Gai Lan)
Fresh ginger
Fresh garlic
Korean red pepper flakes
Bonito soup powder and/or dried bonito flakes

Optional but nice to have:

Red bell peppers
Red (purple) cabbage
Cucumbers

Realistically, there are many different types of kimchee, and basically any cruciferous (cabbage family) vegetable can be used, as well as radishes and other vegetables. But the above is a basic guideline - actually, the Napa cabbage is the basic ingredient that is used in most kimchee. The rest just adds variety/color/taste/nutrition.

Kimchee is an old Korean staple - probably developed by the Koreans to help tide them over the long winter months there by pickling vegetables in the summer and fall. It is a fermented product not unlike natural sauerkraut or pickles, but with various spices added and a special preparation process. The various steps include:

1) Brining
2) Room temperature fermentation
3) Cold fermentation and storage.

The basic result is release of lactic acid by the fermentation bacteria, which along with the brining and cold storage works to preserve the vegetables for long periods. Many traditional recipes incorporate significant amounts of various seafood, such as shrimp, oysters, anchovies, etc. This recipe uses bonito soup powder and/or flakes, which has a much milder aroma and taste. The addition of the protein source from seafood not only adds flavor but also protein to enhance the fermentation processes.

The traditional Korean method involves preparing the pickled veggies in earthenware containers and long term storage underground. This method uses more modern containers and long term storage in the fridge.

[this post was last edited: 1/27/2013-21:33]

 

[sudsmaster]

Next, chop the cabbage and other veggies into suitable size pieces. Traditional kimchee may use large pieces of cabbage, such as whole leaf sections. I prefer a more bite size approach, which makes eating the product more convenient.

I used a simple cutting board and santoku knife to chop most of the veggies. The cucumber got processed in a Cuisinart with a 3 mm slicing blade. The white radishes got processed in the Cuisinart with a 6x6 mm julienne blade.

And oh, yes, that's the biggest bowl I could find. It's huge, bigger than it looks in the photos - but the big size makes mixing the ingredients much easier.

 

[sudsmaster]

Next, prepare the brining solution. The basic recipe for that is 1 cup of pure salt for every 1 gallon of water, which is enough for 1 large head of napa cabbage plus the additional optional veggies. For this quantity I used 2 gallons of brine.

Make sure the salt is not iodized. I use pure water softener sodium chloride salt, which has no additives (such as silicon). It's worked well for making kimchee for the past few years. Kosher pickling salt will also work well.

It may take a while for the rock salt to dissolve, since it's almost at the limit of concentration for brine. So it can help to dissolve it in advance.

 

[sudsmaster]

Pack the chopped cabbage mixture into stainless or plastic containers, and add the brine solution.

 

[sudsmaster]

Compress the brined veggies with a plate and a suitable weight. I use jars of water with tight fitting lids (you don't want the fresh water to leak and dilute the brine).

The idea is to force all the veggies to be fully immersed in the brining solution.

 

[sudsmaster]

Let it brine overnight!

Let the cabbage mixture soak in the brine overnight. I do not recommend longer than that. Once I let it sit for two nights, and the result was way too salty.

The next day, drain the brine solution from the veggies, and rinse a couple of times with fresh water. Drain the fresh water and move the veggies back to the big bowl. It's ok to sample salted veggies at this point - they are kind of tasty after just the brining.

Assemble the ingredients for the kimchee sauce. Here are the suggested quantities per large head of cabbage:

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup Korean red pepper flakes
3 garlic cloves, peeled
about 1 oz fresh peeled ginger, sliced to break fibers
1 tbs sugar
1 tsp salt
4 tsp bonito soup powder

If you like a hotter result, hot peppers like serrano can be added to "taste" as well.

Put above ingredients in a blender. Blend until garlic and ginger is well pulverized. The mixture seems to work best when at the consistency of a milkshake. If the blender cavitates, add more water and mix the ingredients to force them down to the blade area (motor off of course).

Mix the kimchee sauce in with the brined vegetables.

 

[sudsmaster]

The blended kimchee sauce:

 

[sudsmaster]

Brined cabbage mixture. Notice that the veggies have compressed from their original volume.

 

[sudsmaster]

Brined cabbage mix put back into big bowl.

 

[sudsmaster]

Kimchee sauce mixed into brined cabbage.

 

[sudsmaster]

Now put the seasoned cabbage mixture back into the compression containers. In this case, what formerly took two pots now has compressed enough to fit into just one pot:

 

[sudsmaster]

Compress the seasoned cabbage mixture with tight fitting plate and weight. Compress the mixture enough so that a little of the sauce comes up around the sides of the plate. This indicates that the cabbage mixture is fully immersed in the kimchee sauce.

Usually, as in this case, I revisit the container after a while to compress the plate further to make sure the mixture is fully immersed.

Then, let the mixture sit like this at room temperature for two to three days. It's ok to sample the mix each day to track how the flavor/fermentation is developing (at least that's what I usually do). I think at colder room temps in the winter, it might take longer to ferment than in the summer. My patio kitchen is not heated so I expect it will take at least three days to develop the flavor that is achieved in just two days during the summer.

Tune back in on Wednesday for the next installment!

PS-While the mixture is fermenting, clean up the mess!

[this post was last edited: 1/27/2013-21:28]

 

[mattl]

That is a very tempting recipe!  Thanks for the step by step directions, I am going to give it a go soon.

 

[sudsmaster]

Hey, make kimchee, not war.



PS-It occurs to me that it's not absolutely necessary to blend the pepper flakes. This would make blending the garlic and the ginger a lot easier. I've been blending the pepper flakes and it results in a smoother mix with the flakes not very apparent in the final product. But I doubt that this is necessary, and I think the traditional methods don't use a blender anyway. The blender is however very handy for mixing in the garlic and ginger. I suppose that could be done by hand by mincing these ingredients with a good knife on a cutting board, however.

 

[tolivac]

The Mount Olive Pickle bottle-the pickles came from out my way!!!Mt Olive is about an hour from my house-Besides pickles,pigs are grown there and a pig growing equipment company is located there!The Mt Olive plant takes up most of the town-and you SMELL the pickles!

 

[sudsmaster]

Yes, I think Mt. Olive today has the best name-brand pickles available most supermarkets.

Used to be that Vlasic sold a great Polish-style whole pickle. But for some unfathomable reason, they discontinued those a few years back, along with their "Homestyle" pickles that tasted very similar. They do sell polish spears but to me it's just not the same.

But the kimchee is better.

 

[hydralique]

Mmmm . . .

Korean food is so good in the winter, I love to go to Koreatown and chow down

 

[tomturbomatic]

Thanks. Very Interesting

One year in the early 90s, John wanted to try, for his birthday, the new noodle restaurant that opened in a shopping center on the edge of our neighborhood. We were seated and looking at the menu when I saw the pot of red stuff on the table. I asked the waiter who took our order what it was and as he started naming the ingredients, my brain suddenly started to function and I said, "Oh, Kimchee." He got a great big smile on his face and left to turn in our order. The noodle soup was a little bland, but a small amount of the Kimchee not only gave it great flavor, but also kept my mouth warm. If it had not been so hot, I would have used more to get the great flavor. Best thing of all, it does not stink like sauerkraut.

Does anyone remember the MASH episode where Frank thinks the Koreans are burying a roadside bomb, but it's just the earthen jar of Kimchee?

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, it's day three of the room temp fermentation phase of the kimchee recipe.

I've been sampling it every day, and today it's almost there. It's developing that complex, and mellow taste that I associate with good kimchee. I think I'll wait another day before transfering the stuff to smaller containers for storage in the fridge.

The temp in the patio kitchen lately has ranged from between 46F and 56F. Warmer than outdoors but definitely cooler than indoors (which gets up to 68F when I'm here). So this would account for the slower "ripening" of the kimchee.

After I decide it's ready, I'll be transferring the kimchee in smaller containers to the nearby refrigerator, which will keep it below 40F (about 34F to 38F). As I understand it, that's when the acidic bacteria take over and add some tang to the mixture.

I'm not quite ready to bury my kimchee in the back yard. However when I used to go on long camping trips with friends in the 60's, we'd bury the cheese and lunchmeat (in sealed containers) under a big rock in the campground. Kept the raccoons away from it and also kept it cool enough not to spoil. Nobody died of food poisoning ;-).