(Relatively) Easy Kimchi Recipe From ‘Two Red Bowls’

Every week, we’re spotlighting a different food blogger who’s shaking up the blogosphere with tempting recipes and knockout photography. Here, Cynthia of Two Red Bowls proves that making homemade kimchi doesn’t have to laborious affair.

Photo courtesy of Two Red Bowls

Easy “Mak” Kimchee
Makes about 3 pounds, serves 18-24 as a side

The most traditional way of fermenting cabbage kimchi is keeping the head of cabbage whole — and you can see in stores that it’s sold both as whole heads and diced. But making kimchi the traditional way requires at least overnight salting before you begin fermenting it in the kimchi paste, not to mention having large enough containers and storage space to hold a whole head of cabbage. So this method is called mak, or easy, kimchi, and it requires only a few hours of salting. I’ve seen other translations that say it’s “carelessly made” kimchi.

2 very large bowls
1 large head Napa cabbage, about 2 ½ to 3 pounds
¼ cup (4 tablespoons) kosher or sea salt, plus more as needed
1 ½ cup water
¼ cup sweet rice flour (also called mochiko flour, or chapssal garu)
½ cup fish sauce
1 ¼ cup gochugaru (Korean hot pepper powder), or more or less depending on your spice preference
½ cup pureed or minced garlic
1 tablespoon pureed or minced ginger
½ cup pureed or minced onion
4-5 green onions, sliced into two-inch pieces
¼ cup julienned carrot (optional)
1-2 leeks, sliced into two-inch pieces (optional)

Trim off the discolored outer leaves of the Napa cabbage. Slice into fourths, remove the core, and chop into bite-sized pieces. Wash thoroughly.

Soak the pieces of cabbage in cold water, drain, and place into one of the two large bowls. Your next task is to make sure that each piece of cabbage is salted. In order to do this, I worked in batches, salting each piece as I went. Once salted, I placed the chunks into the second bowl. (I used at least ¼ cup of salt for one head of Napa cabbage, if not a bit more. Use kosher or sea salt if you have it available; I’ve read that this adds more flavor than table salt. Table salt will work too — you just may need to add a bit more, up to 1/3 cup.)

After salting, the kimchi will need to wilt in the salt for the next 1 ½ to 2 hours. Every 30 minutes, turn the cabbage over to salt evenly. (I just transferred the cabbage from one bowl to the other every 30 minutes.)

After 1 ½ hours, the cabbage should have shrunken to about half the size it was originally. Rinse the cabbage in cold water several times to clean it thoroughly, then drain. At this point, taste it to make sure it’s salted enough. If it’s not salty at all, you may need to add more salt and let it soak for a bit longer.

Next, make the porridge. Combine 1 ½ cups of water and ¼ cup sweet rice flour in a small pot over high heat and bring it to a boil. Keep stirring until the porridge makes thick bubbles — about three to five minutes — then take it off the heat and set aside to cool.

Once the porridge is cool, add ½ cup of fish sauce, 1 ¼ cups of gochugaru (depending on your taste), ½ cup of minced garlic, 1 tablespoon of minced ginger, and ½ cup of minced onion to the porridge and mix thoroughly. (You can also purée the garlic, ginger, and onion together in a blender or food processor before adding.)

Add the green onions and carrot and mix thoroughly. You can also add leeks if you like.

Finally, pour the kimchi paste over the drained cabbage and mix by hand until all pieces are well-coated. (Again, I did it in batches.) Finally, store in airtight glass or plastic containers. The kimchi will need to ferment at room temperature for at least 24 to 48 hours before it is ready to eat. You will know when it’s ready when the lid pops when you open it and you can see bubbles rising to the surface. (It’ll also announce itself with a very strong smell.)

Note: If you don’t have sweet rice flour, it’s fine — all the flour does is help create a porridge to more evenly distribute and infuse the kimchi paste’s flavor. Just replace the mochiko flour with 1 tablespoon of sugar to make up for the difference in sweetness.

More Asian-inspired recipes:

A spicy kimchi stew to warm up with

Matcha mochi popsicles for sticky summer days

A spicy cumin-infused lamb stir fry

Are you a kimchi fan? Tell us below!