How to make KIMCHI (Korean napa cabbage pickle) 〜キムチ〜 | easy Japanese home cooking

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make kimchi. So kimchi is not Japanese food at all. Kimchi is a traditional Korean pickled napa cabbage. But this has become very popular in Japan in the last 20-30 years and nowadays you can buy in pretty much any supermarket in Japan, even convenience stores. And a lot of people eat kimchi in Japan. So it might be kind of interesting to introduce in this video. Also since I make the kimchi myself quite often because when I was in university I had a flatmate from Korea. We shared the same kitchen so we often cooked together or she would cook for me, I would cook for her. I also kind of exchanged our recipes. This is a recipe she showed me at the time and I've been making kimchi pretty much every year since then. And this is also a very winter recipe because napa cabbage is a winter vegetable. It has the most nutrients in the winter and it tastes the best in the winter. And within the eastern medicine, napa cabbage is thought to warm up your body. But also too, it has the chili peppers that's also going to warm up your body from inside. So this is a bit complicated process and also requires a very special Korean chili peppers. But nonetheless it's not that difficult and it's also quite difficult to fail. So I hope you enjoy the video and maybe give it a try someday. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for making kimchi. So as you see I have quite a lot of ingredients. You don't necessarily have to have all these ingredients but the more ingredients you put in, the richer and the flavorful the kimchi will be. So I suggest to get as much of these as possible. So the main part, I have napa cabbage. I'll be using two of them today. I have an apple, daikon radish, carrots, regular onion, scallion or green onion, ginger, garlic and I'll also be using just regular salt. Any salt will do. To make an authentic and really flavorful kimchi you do need these kind of special red pepper. This may be a little bit difficult to find. You may have to go to like a larger Asian supermarket or you can find online. But you definitely need this. These Korean pepper have this very distinct sweetness to it which give the really this rich flavor. And I'll also be using the sweet rice flour also known as mochiko or if you don't have this you can just use regular rice flour or you can just use regular flour. The starch in the rice flour will help to fermentate and have a richer flavor. To make really flavorful kimchi in Korea they use these kind of salted mini shrimps and also some fish sauce. And this might be quite difficult to find but if you go to like a really large Asian supermarket you may be able to find this in a frozen section. But if you can't find this or if you're vegetarian then you can skip these as well. Then you have a vegan kimchi. And the fish sauce may be a bit easier to find so you can use without the shrimp but only the fish sauce. And don't worry these will not make the kimchi smell fishy in the end result. They'll help just to fermentate much more and give rich flavor. Then let's get into it. So the first thing to do is measure the napa cabbage so that I can get the right amount of salt because we'll be using about 10% of salt to the napa cabbage. So together the two cabbages weigh exactly 2.4 kilogram. So I'll be using about 240 gram of salt. So about that much of salt. So you may think this is a lot of salt but don't worry we'll be washing most of it away. Now let's cut up the cabbage. There's a special way to cut up the cabbage but you can just cut them up just small chunks. That'll be easier to make and that'll be easier to handle but through this way somehow it tastes better I think. Just try different methods and then after a couple times you'll definitely find your own way of making kimchi. The thing is you want to have the bottom part attached together so what we're going to do is cut through and then with your thumbs you want to kind of separate into two parts like this. The most recipe that I've seen they cut up in fourths. I personally like to make it six like this so that each piece will be a bit smaller and then you want to separate them like this. And so the important thing is that this bottom part stays attached. Then this is finished for cutting up the napa cabbage. Now we're going to salt these napa cabbage. So what you want to do is you want to put salt all through in between the leaves right here. So I'm going to try to get as much salt in between as possible like this. Then this is finished for salting the cabbage. You want to let it sit like this at least eight hours or so. Better is to let it sit overnight and every three four hours you want to mix the bottom and the top and you'll be very surprised at how much water this will give out. The salty water stays on the bottom and the top stays without the water so you want to try to mix them so that the cabbage will be salted evenly. Then let's go to the next day. So a day has passed. Overnight a couple times I have changed the bottom to the top and you can see how much water has given out. I'm going to drain this as much as possible squeezing the water out like this. So you want to make sure you squeeze out as much water as possible otherwise the end result will be too watery. So you see a lot of water has come out from the 2.5 kilogram of napa cabbage. This is way too salty you want to throw this away. Now the napa cabbage is ready to be pickled. I'm going to have a little taste. Not really salty and if you taste it really salty then this is perfect. I've seen some recipe where you wash this with water. I personally don't think that's a good idea. One because this has to be stored for a long time. It needs that saltiness but also to this comes other ingredients and that will kind of thin the saltiness and you also never eat kimchi as it is. Always eat it with rice or other ingredients so it needs to be that salty. Then let's go to the next step. Now we're going to make the marinade. To make the marinade we need this rice mixture. For that I'll put a half cup of water in a small pot and this I'm going to put 3 tablespoons of sweet rice flour or mochiko. If you don't have this you can use regular rice flour or also you can just substitute this with just regular wheat flour because what we need is a starch for the fermentation. So 3 tablespoons and mix this and let it dissolve. Once it's been dissolved thoroughly and there's no lump I'm going to turn the heat to medium and let this heat up. You want to keep mixing this and otherwise the bottom will start burning. So once this mixture has reached this slimy gooey texture then this is finished. I'll turn the heat off and now we're going to put this to the side and let it cool off so that we can mix with the rest of the ingredients. Now let's prepare the rest of the ingredients for the marinade. So I'm going to cut up the scallion first. I have here 6 stalks of scallion. This may seem quite a lot but they'll also shrink so don't worry and don't be stingy with these ingredients. And when you're cutting here you can use so-called cat's paw. Instead of holding your finger like this which you have a risk of cutting your finger or fingernail but instead you have your knuckle like this so that the blade is not going to touch your finger like this and then you slide the pan back like this. Next the regular onion. And next the carrot and the white radish. I'm just going to cut the top and the bottom off a little bit where it's a little bit dirty. Kind of take out like the dark part. And for the radish I probably just need half of it. And these I'm going to grate it with grater. You can cut them up in just small pieces but it's a bit of a work. I'm just going to be lazy and use this grater. And also the daikon radish. And the apple I'm going to do the same thing but I need to take out the pit and the top and the bottom. When you're eating an apple or when you're preparing apple make sure you take away this part because this is where all the pesticides get accumulated. I'm also going to grate this apple as well. And then here we're going to put the garlic and the ginger. So I'm going to use about half of this ginger and also about half of this which is about 50 grams. With this I'm going to be lazy and use the garlic smasher. And also the ginger. And then this we're going to put in this mochi slime that we made earlier. Then this I'm going to put three tablespoons of this fish sauce. And for those who don't like the fishiness don't worry even if you put this the end result will not smell fishy. This helps really to fermentate and gives depth to the flavor. And also we're going to put in some dried salted mini shrimps. If you're a vegetarian and want to make a vegetarian kimchi then of course you can skip the shrimp and the fish sauce. Also three tablespoons. And now we're going to put the Korean red chili pepper. Depending on how spicy or how mild you want it you want to put between five to ten percent of the original napa cabbage weight. So today we use 2.5 kilogram of napa cabbage so I'm going to put about a little under 200 gram of chili pepper. So one cup is about 90 grams so I'm going to put two cups of this. And now we're ready to mix this. When you're doing this I would advise you not to mix it with your bare hands. You can of course but your hands will smell like chili and fish sauce for the rest of the day. What my Korean friend suggested me was use a rubber glove like this so that the strong color and smell is not going to stay in your hands. You want to just mix it as evenly as possible. So after a couple minutes of mixing this has been mixed pretty thoroughly and as you can see my glove is just really red so you definitely should wear these rubber gloves. And then we're going to let this sit for half an hour or so and let the ingredients settle and also let the chili beans soak the fluid out of the ingredients. So let's put everything together. So make sure to disinfect the container that you're going to store the kimchi. So how we're going to do this is you want to try to get this marinade, sauce and all layers of the napa cabbage like this. Just like this and then you make a roll like this and then put this however way that fits in a container like this. So again try to put this marinade sauce in all layers and you kind of try to make a roll like this. This just helps to put out one portion when you eat them. That's quite perfectly done, perfectly packed. Let's put the lid on. So here make sure you use a container that can seal very tightly because one you want to get a little contact to oxygen as possible but also after a while this will start producing a little bit liquid that might run off and you don't want that. So this is finished for making the kimchi. You can let it sit for a day and you can eat it from the next day actually but you want to have a really fermented really authentic kimchi that you want to let it pickle for at least a week or two then you have a really rich flavor of kimchi and of course you want to store this in a refrigerator. Let's go two weeks later. So the two weeks has passed. Let's see how much this has been fermented. So the first couple days this was producing quite a lot of liquid. That's the water from the napa cabbage. You want to just kind of wipe off around the fridge so it's not spilling everywhere. Now let's see. Oh yeah this is looking perfect. The color has turned out and oh it smells really great. It's very distinct sourness of kimchi. So after a couple days of being pickled don't worry about your hands. Somehow the color doesn't transfer to your finger and you can just wash this out very easily. Let's cut these up and have a little taste. And when you're cutting with a wood or bamboo cutting board and make sure you wet it first. Otherwise when the cutting board is dry the color and the smell is going to sink in here in the cutting board. Whatever you cut them afterwards like apple or some fruits not gonna be very nice. So I'm gonna wet the cutting board first. So this is all connected with the stem here. So I'm gonna cut off the stem here first and then cut them up in bite-sized pieces. Then this is finished with kimchi. Let's have a taste. Oh I love the smell of kimchi. Okay let's eat. So of course with kimchi I gotta have some rice. So as you saw how much salt I use, kimchi is way too salty to eat alone. So you gotta have some rice with it. So perfect. Oh the flavor of the kimchi is so complex. I can't just point out what is the strongest flavor and even though I use these mini shrimps and the fish sauce it barely tastes any seafood. And it's just so complex. The sweetness from the vegetables and kick from the chilies with the very subtle sweetness of the napa cabbage. Oh this is so good. And also the bottom stem part and the top leafy part has also a slight difference in the flavor. So this top leafy part has kind of more kind of fresh sweetness of the napa cabbage. So this bottom part of the cabbage is a little more kind of deep flavor. It's hard to explain. So I also made a variation of this kimchi. It's also quite common to make kimchi with white radish or daikon radish and with cucumbers. So I just did the exact same process of salt in the vegetable and then mix up with the same chili sauce. They also have very different flavor and also very tasty. So cucumber has more of this fresh flavor, summer flavor and the daikon radish kimchi. The flavor of the daikon radish is very subtle and soaks in all the goodness from the kimchi sauce. By the way the cucumber kimchi is called oikimuchi and the daikon radish kimchi is called kakuteki. Those are also quite popular in Japan. That was so spicy and yet so savory. Oh I love kimchi. Oh that was so delicious. So my mouth is a little bit hot so after that I'm gonna have to drink some milk because it has quite a lot of garlic and also has this kind of sour fermented flavor smell and if a date afterwards I would suggest not eat this before that because it might be a little bit unappealing for your partner. Unless you eat with your partner kimchi then it's not a problem. So as you saw making kimchi is quite a complicated process but it's definitely worth it so I hope you give this a try. Whenever I make this I make a big portion and usually with three four napa cabbage and that'll last me like a couple months and also sometimes make it a lot more to give it to some friends so maybe you can spread your love in that way as well. If you enjoyed what you saw I'd love it if you give me the like button so that this video can be spread out to many people and if you have any questions or requests or any comments please feel free to write anything in the comments below. In the next video I'm planning to make different dishes using kimchi so stay tuned for that. And I look forward to see you in the next video Bye!