Greetings my beautiful lovelies! It's
Emmy. Welcome back! Today's video is sponsored by Audible where you can find
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Take advantage of it; start listening; and yeah, thanks Audible. All right, today
I'm going to be making a much requested recipe for kimchi. Kimchi! I've been
making kimchi for years -- it's one of my most favorite fermented foods: kimchi is
a beautiful pickled cabbage that comes from Korea. It's seasoned with lots of
garlic and chili powder and sometimes contains daikon, carrots, and other kind
of vegetables; but mostly, the most traditional ones, consists of cabbage --napa
cabbage. Today's focus on kimchi is going to be making a small batch. If you've
never made kimchi before, this might be a little less daunting to you because
you're just gonna use one head of napa cabbage. It's not gonna take a lot of
space in your refrigerator. I've got basically one quart of kimchi right here.
And my original recipe is based on the queen of Korean cookery and that would
be Maangchi. I will put a link to her original recipes down below. I have made
some changes through the years -- just based on my personal taste, and in terms
of what I can do in my kitchen. So the first thing we're going to do is get ourselves one
napa cabbage. So we're gonna give this a rinse, and then we're going to cut it in
half; and then we're gonna remove the core; then cut it in half again; and then
cut this whole quarter into about two inch pieces. Next we're gonna take a
medium carrot and we're going to peel it; and then we're going to cut it into
little matchsticks. I like to use my mandolin because it makes perfect little
slices, but you certainly don't need to, so you can just chop it thinly with a knife. Now
we're going to take our prepared vegetables and put them into a large
basin; a sink; or, in my case, a large pot. I'm going to sprinkle that with a half
cup of kosher salt; and then we're going to add water to cover
and then we're gonna let this soak for an hour and a half to two hours because
we really want that saltwater to kind of penetrate into the cabbage. So while our
cabbage and carrots are soaking, we need to do two things: number one we need to
make a rice paste, and number two we need to make the love sauce which is the
flavorings that are gonna make the kimchi taste like kimchi. Let's start
with the paste because we have to allow that to cool.
So one and a half tablespoons of glutinous rice flour, or mochiko flour;
and add a half cup of water. Before we add any heat, we want to whisk this
together and make sure there's no lumps... and then heat this up on medium heat. Now,
towards the end of cooking we're gonna add one tablespoon of sugar; and again
continue mixing this -- we don't want this to burn -- until it's nice and thick. It
should take about five minutes total for the paste to form. Another reason why I'm
focusing on the small batch is that I want this recipe to be accessible. So you
don't need a food processor; you don't need anything complicated; you just need
a grater. So we're gonna take one small yellow onion; cut it in half; and grate it
on the fine tooth of a box grater; then we're gonna take five cloves of peeled
garlic and either press them or mince them or grate them, whatever is easiest
for you. Then we're gonna take a one-inch piece of fresh ginger and grate that as
well; a half of a ripe pear -- peel it and grate that as well. Next we're gonna take
the green parts of two green onions, and then we're gonna add three tablespoons
of fish sauce; and then we're gonna add a half a cup of Korean red pepper flakes -- you
can't substitute any other kind of red pepper flakes! You must use the Korean
style. So now we have our cast of characters -- we are now going to combine
them together. After about two hours we're going to
drain our cabbage and our carrots. I would recommend wearing some kind of
gloves -- I'm just using disposable nitrile gloves -- and combine the cabbage and the
carrots with our paste, really massage it; squeeze it; and get all that paste
well incorporated into the cabbage. When everything is coated in the paste,
we're going to pack this very, very tightly into a nonreactive container. And
you pack it as tightly as you can into your vessel: really, really tightly. We
don't want any air pockets, if we can avoid them. So then we're going to put
the lid and the canning ring on top -- and just turn it ever so slightly;
make sure there's some room. So what we've created here is alive: this is a
living thing, and it's going to ferment and bubble and create gases... If you
tighten it down really tightly you... your jar could explode, or crack, because
you're forming gases here. So pressure can be built up. So make sure you don't
put your lid on too tightly. And we're gonna let this sit at room temperature
for 24 to 48 hours until we get a kimchi that's nice and tangy. So while we're
waiting for the kimchi to ferment, let me tell you a little bit more about Audible.
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slash Emmy and take advantage of this great offer. Alrighty, let's check on the
kimchi. So this is the point I'm at right now. And when you put your jars at room
temperature it is imperative that you put some kind of plate or tray
underneath your fermenting vessel because as you see much of the liquid
will kind of percolate upwards and overflow and you don't want this, you
know, on your table, on your floor. This has, you know, fish sauce in it and
cabbage so.... My son actually came downstairs and was like "what is that smell?!
It smells like chicken poo." I'm like: "Oh yeah, that's the kimchi." I didn't say that,
but I'm like "Oh honey, don't worry about it. Let's go upstairs and play
Trouble." And here is the canning lid. And as you can see, everything is kind
of puffed up. One of the tricks to keeping kimchi for a long time I find is
making sure that the vegetable pieces are submerged beneath the brine. So push
this down and try to get rid of some of those air bubbles -- you see that? I'm
trying to get the kimchi to kind of be submerged underneath some of this brine.
If you watch my insta story you knew that I made this at one o'clock in the
morning. Everyone else was asleep and I was kimchi-ing. It was great!
Let's give this a taste. Here we go. Itadakimasu! So, so good! Perfect level of seasoning: it's not too salty; it's a little bit fizzy; it's got a great
tang; huge garlic punch; just wonderful! Absolutely beautiful -- you've got these
great colors of orange and red.... So, so good! And kimchi is so versatile, too. It
adds this nice little bit of tangy punch to all kinds of dishes. I love making
fried rice with it; I love serving it with eggs; and, like all pickles, I really
like it served with something kind of fatty. If you're having like a fatty
steak, something like kalbi, pickles like kimchi are wonderful. So, if you've never had
kimchi, try it! If you like it, make it, because it's super fun to see the
process of this fermentation and it's satisfying work to say "yes, I made this
bottle of kimchi." And it makes really great gifts, you know, for those that love
kimchi. You're like, "hey I brought over the kimchi." Awesome!
Big thanks to Audible for sponsoring this video. Be sure to head over to
audible.com/emmy, or text "emmy" to 500 and 500 to receive three months of
Audible for $6.95. And thank you guys so much for watching! I hope you
guys enjoyed that one; I hope you guys learned something; tune in for more
episodes of Fermented. Be sure to share this video with your friends; follow me
on social media; subscribe; like; and I shall see in the next one! Toodaloo! Take
care! Byeee! Kimchi, kimchi, kimchi. Kimchi, kimchi, kimchi....
