Water Kimchi Dongchimi 동치미

Here's another easy kimchi recipe from Marja Vongerichten's The Kimchi Chronicles cookbook. This kimchi is unusual in that it doesn't contain red pepper. I've seen other versions with green peppers included to give it a kick but this would be a good kimchi for those with no heat tolerance. Btw, I forgot to have sugar in the photo. It's an important part of the fermentation process.

Here's is the finished product. I think the head of cabbage may have been way too big. It should have only filled the two half gallon jars and I'm thinking it should have a higher liquid to solid ratio. It will sit on my counter for a few days and then into the fridge it goes.

Making kimchi 막김치

I ordered Marja Vongerichten's Kimchi Chronicles DVDs and companion cookbook. It's been an inspiration to get back to sharing my Korean cooking. I decided to start with her recipe for cabbage kimchi.

I started the day driving down to H Mart in Lynnwood. This is the closest Korean store to my town. It's about 40 miles. Not only is it a grocery store but it also has a food court and a good selection of housewares.

Here are the ingredients for this version of kimchi. From left to right, napa cabbage, Korean radish (mu or moo), green onions, fish sauce, garlic, sugar, sweet rice powder, salted shrimp, yellow onion, coarse salt and coarse red pepper.

 Here is the cabbage cut up in pieces.

 And here is the cabbage after being salted and resting for a couple of hours. Notice that it has wilted quite a bit.

 This is the seasoning. It's a mixture of garlic, ginger, fish sauce, green onion, yellow onion and salted shrimp.

This is the kimchi after the cabbage has been mixed with the seasoning. 

This just makes my mouth water.

1.5 gallons of beautiful cabbage kimchi!

Pre-Cut Kimchi 막김치

Considering the cost of kimchi at Paldo, I've started investing the time to make our own kimchi. I made a couple of gallons of cubed radish kimchi a couple of weeks ago and Monday I made just as much cabbage kimchi.

I hadn't made kimchi in about a year so I was a little worried but the recipes I started with were apparently good. The students have eaten about 20% of the cabbage kimchi in two days with a lot of discussion between them about how good it is. At this rate there may not be any left for kimchi jjigae.

My parents picked up 6 heads of cabbage and 2 radishes (about $12) on their way over from Prosser and I already had everything else so it worked out well. I put in the usual cabbage, radish, green onion, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, red pepper and sugar. The only thing different from a lot of recipes was I used fresh shrimp (or thawed Costco shrimp in this case) instead of the salted shrimp I've used in the past. It was important to me to use Costco shrimp because it's not soaked in chemicals like a lot of other seafood.

Kimchi - the finished product

Someone pointed out that we didn’t have pictures of the finished product. One of my students took these last night. The large jar is cabbage kimchi and the quart jar is cucumber kimchi. The cucumbers are cut so they can be stuffed with shredded carrots and chives.

Mini kimjang at our house

I’ve always wanted to make kimchi but my sole previous attempt was not successful. A few weeks ago I asked my Korean student, Younsang, to ask one of his fellow Korean students if they would like to come to my house to show me how. A woman whose grandmother is a royal cuisine cook offered to show me how. Other students came along to help. We had a great time making many gallons and quarts of kimchi.

Kimchi is a fermented food that comes from Korea. It is similar to sauerkraut but usually has a lot of red pepper, garlic, ginger and other strong flavorings.

The basic sequence of events is as follows:

Cut and salt the Napa cabbage. Let it soak for several hours to release a lot of water. Younsang and Seungjoon started Saturday evening and looked after the cabbage until after midnight. This is a very important part of the process. Too soon and the cabbage won't ferment properly and too late the cabbage will be very salty.

Rinse the salt out of the cabbage.

Make red pepper/rice flour paste and dump in an oversized bowl.

Prepare additional ingredients including green onions, garlic, ginger, Indian mustard, salted shrimp, fish sauce, fresh oysters and shredded Korean radish.

Add ingredients except cabbage to bowl and mix well.



Set cabbage on top of the mixture and pull down outer leaves. Coat the inside with the mixture. Continue pulling down additional leaves until center is reached.

Squeeze out excess sauce and fold outer leaves over and place in a sanitized jar.

Leave on kitchen counter for 2-3 days and then refrigerate.

Kimchi will slowly become tangier. It can then be used in kimchi fried rice or kimchi stew.

After all the hard work is done, a festive meal is in order. All the students and myself contributed to this table full of Korean food.



If you want to learn more about kimchi here are a couple of links that will provide you with the details of this delicious and unique Korean food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi

http://kimcheedepot.com/aboutkimchee.html

I hope to visit this museum when I’m in Seoul this November:

http://www.kimchimuseum.co.kr/english/information.htm

In addition, I hope to visit the Garak market during Kimjang. Garak is the premier market in Korea.

http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/eng/info_db/shop/shop_detail.jsp?seqno=15

Kimjang is the time when families prepare several months worth of kimchi in order to see them through the winter. It’s becoming less popular because of modern conveniences but it is still a big event.

From what I’ve heard, our kimchi is very much appreciated by the many students who received it.