Both. I love kimchi. I have made several versions some hewing close to recipes and others not so much. Fermenting is too difficult once you understand the basics. I have a fermentation tops for mason jars but I would love to get a Korean fermentation crock.

I have been trying to be (or low dairy at least) dairy free for awhile. So between no yogurt and lots of greens in the garden I have been enjoying savory oatmeal for breakfast. Still not sure whether I would like kimchi with it but I might try it.

I love kimchi and also make it. I have the fermentation tops for mason jars like Agmss, and they work pretty well.

There are a lot of recipes for kimchi, and you have to adjust them to your taste. I do not like the addition of daikon radish, and I will add that you must your Napa cabbage - regular cabbage is a bad substitute, even though I was told it would work - it didn't.

I also ferment cucumbers, and I have some now that I just finished making last week.

I do have salted shrimp paste, but then there are tons of Korean markets in Los Angeles. If you are in Chicago, try going to H Market, which I think opened recently. They even have a store in Austin now. The one in L.A. has been open for decades, but there are better Korean markets here than that one.

Thank you agmss, and Lars. I think this post was in limbo for a while. I did't know there were special fermentaion tops for mason jars. Lars, I live 40 miles south of Chicago. I don't like driving into the city for cooking supplies. The highway traffic is bad, and trying to find parking there is insane. If I really feel I need the salted shrimp paste I'll just order it online. For my first try at making it, I was thinking of using napha cabbage, daikon, carrots, and scallions. I have some gochujang sitting around. I need to use that for something also. Kimchi, I read, is very good for ones health.

I like it but have to be in the mood for it. I don't make it myself but purchase it at an Asian/Korean market. It's full of good "probiotic" type stuff.

can hardly wait for the Napa to start appearing in the stores regularly here. love the stuff.

lars, would you please share your recipe again? or provide a link.

My daikons didn't grow this year ... no biggie. Like it either way.

Always something fermenting here.

I only use Napa and often fuss around with different add-ins. Not tried shrimp paste. We just use fish sauce being a household staple. I don't make big batches. Usually 2/3rd's a cabbage and the rest for slaw salads this time of year.

Maangchi taught me and never looked anywhere else, HERE

Here's the recipe I use:

3# Napa cabbage
1 cup distilled water
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup Korean chili flakes
1/2 onion
6 cloves garlic, peeled
2 oz. Ginger
2 carrots cut into matchsticks
1 tsp minced red pepper
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp fish sauce

Cut cabbage into pieces and put in large bowl. Add salt and mix; add water and toss. Allow to rest for 20 minutes and toss every 20 minutes for one hour.

Blend garlic and ginger into a paste (use mini food processor), put into bowl, add chili flakes, red pepper, and sugar. Add distilled water to form a paste. Add fish sauce.

Strain cabbage, rinse, and strain again twice.

Wearing gloves, put vegetables (cabbage, onion, carrots) into large clean bowl and add chili paste and massage together. Pack into jar and cover with airlock lid. Place jar on bowl or plate and put in a dark place at room temperature for two days. Check after two days, and allow to ferment one or two more days. Should take four days to be ready.

It is based on this video, but he uses way too much chili flakes:

There are a lot of kimchi videos on Youtube. I also like Maangchi, but her quantities are too huge.

That sounds like a great recipe Lars. Can't wait to try it.

I don't can, and don't go through enough kimchi to be worth making it, but there's all kinds of really good kimchi available for sale where I live. I'm not a wuss with Mexican or Middle Eastern food, but I don't really like melt your tooth enamel kimchi. OTOH, I love fairly mild kimchi piled on sandwiches. Straight, I'm fine with a modest amount.

Good luck with the project! If you get really serious, besides the crock, you might want to invest in a kimchi fridge. :)

My husband, Elery, makes it, he also found Maangchi on YouTube, smiled at her declaring that it was "so delicious", and so he makes his own. He loves it. I don't know, I've never tried it because I can't get past the smell long enough to taste it. He eats it for breakfast, with his eggs, or straight out of the jar for a snack. I can do that with sauerkraut, but not kimchi.

I grew Napa and daikon in the garden this year just for his kimchi, the stuff is expensive and hard to find here in Northern Michigan.

Annie

Annie, don't be scared, give kimchi a try. If you like sauerkraut you should like kimchi too. Is daikon easy to grow ? Not too many stores carry it near me either.

I love kimchi too, but it hasn't occurred to me to make it. When we go to Korean restaurants a kimchi pancake is a given for me :-)

I haven't tried kimchi pancakes yet. I love kimchi, but like some of you said, I have to be in the mood for it. I first heard about it from a Korean friend, and she said they buried it in the ground to ferment. Maybe it was the buried part that caused me to wait so long to try it. And then, lo and behold, I found out you don't have to bury it in the ground. The buried story made me think of those Chinese 1000 year/day old eggs which I just can't imagine tasting good. Maybe I would try one if I were to see it on the menu at a Chinese resturaunt, but I never have.

I would think that burying the jars in the ground help insulate them and keep them at a constant temperature. Also, they’re biggish pottery jars and burying them would also protect them from being knocked over.

I’ve never used shrimp paste but the name is reminding me of dried shrimp which I find awful. I’m gonna take a guess that it tastes similarly rotten.

Colleen, I agree. Burying the jars would be approximately equivalent to our "root cellar", where Grandpa kept his crocks of sauerkraut and pickles. They stayed cool enough to "keep" all winter, and when we wanted sauerkraut we just went down and dipped some out of the crock, it was never canned or frozen. The further into spring we got, the more sour the kraut became, same with the fermented crock of pickles.

Jay, daikon is super easy to grow and is usable size in about 6 weeks. You can leave it longer, it just gets bigger and bigger. The tops are also edible, but they definitely have a bite, I cooked some and it was kind of like eating horseradish!

I'm still suspicious about the kimchi. I'm also a heat wuss, so between the gochugaru Elery uses and the smell, I'm just not thinking it's something I'm going to love. Elery doesn't press the matter, it just leaves more for him, but I try to be adventurous, so one of these days I'll have to actually hold my nose and taste some.

Annie

Annie, thanks for all the good info. The first time I tried kimchi it gave my mouth a strange sensation that's hard to describe. It reminded me of carbonation. It wasn't like it was so good it knocked my socks off, like when I tried steak au puave for the first time. I was thinking it was interesting while wondering why they love this so much in Korea, but as I tried it more times it grew on me, and now I get cravings for it. foodonastump, if you think the shrimp paste is gross I read that especially in North Korea they use the slime from those scavenger sea eels that eat dead whales to thicken their soups and stews. LOL .....edit..... They call those eels that can tie their bodies into a knot hagfish.

I suffer from arthritis and read that kimchi is good for inflammation - so I decided to make some. I had tasted it long ago through my Korean friend but wasn't crazy about it but hey if it helps I figured I could choke it down. So I made it and ate some every day for about 3 weeks and finally I said "I just can't stand one more bite of this." My Korean friend warned me that I could get addicted to it but that didn't happen. It's one of those things that is interesting to the taste but to me I can only take so much of it.

Maybe I like kimchi because I've always liked pickeled, briny, salty, and vinegary foods. The hot and spicy kimchi they sell around here could use a bit more heat and spice.

Oh, Jay! I know the Midwest is slow to take up hot peppers, but that is sad! When I said melt your tooth enamel, while I was using hyperbole, I did mean that it should make it feel like your teeth are melting. I don't care for it that hot anymore--I hit a heat wall some years ago when all of a sudden jalapeño slices (with some seeds) all over the pizza wasn't yummy, but screaming hot kimchi is authentic, at least according to the Koreans I know. The ones whose grannies keep a separate kimchi fridge (the citified way of burying it).

I left out the fish sauce, because I couldn't find the bottle, and was too lazy to go to the store for another. Had to make a special trip to the city to find the flakes at an Asian market. I did two heads of Napa, which were quite small, IMHO. My wife thinks I'm nuts.

What's new with that?

Bragu, let me know your thoughts on the batch of kimchi you made without the fish sauce. Pillog, I don't know how slow the midwest is to embrace hot, spicy food. I have'nt spent enough time in other parts of the country to know any difference. I like heat, but there is a point where I can't enjoy eating very hot things. I don't think the gochujaro are as hot as the common crushed peppers we sprinkle on everything over here. I do like the Mexican pickled jalapenos with carrots. Those are very hot because you leave all the seeds in, but somehow I can handle them. Now if I order carne asada at a resturaunt and it comes with the traditional roasted jalepeno with seeds intact, I try to eat it, but they really burn my mouth. Go figure. I will probably order the shrimp paste online, because I would have to drive into Chicago to find a market that carries it, and it isn't worth all that hastle.

Love those pickled carrots! It sounds like you can handle good and hot, but maybe not to the point of tooth enamel meltingness. :) The great thing about making your own is that you can achieve just right.

I

I like heat up to a point. I usually just stick to using jalapenos. I start getting into trouble using seranos if not careful. Can't see the point in using capsicums that are way up there on the Scoville scale like habeneros and ghost peppers. They must really like hot peppers in India, because they even put them in their milkshakes. ?????

I've had very little that used ghost peppers, but I know a Texan who is quite fond of them. Habaneros have a different flavor than your average hot chili pepper. The trick is to only use enough for that flavor, and some well distributed heat, rather than a whole handful of chiles de arboles. The milk probably helps soothe the tummy ache from the ghost pepper. :) Serranos are nice. They're good for when you want heat, not a vegetable (well, fruit, but we tend to call not-sweet fruits vegetables). They're great for making sauces.

The ones that get to me are Hatch chiles and shishito peppers, where one in 20 is really hot but you can't tell ahead of time.

Thinking more on it, perhaps in India they're using them as anti-bacterial or something? Stories from the old days in the desert tell of mothers putting hot peppers in their babies' bottles and the public health workers figuring that was the underlying reason. The babies seemed content. :)

Well, although I'm a wuss when it comes to hot peppers, I do make a jelly with apricots and habaneros and I like it quite a lot. There aren't a lot of peppers in there, and the sweet apricots and sugar seem to moderate the heat, plus I eat just a tiny bit with some cream cheese on crackers or a bagel. Habaneros have a fruit flavor, and no other pepper tastes the same in that Habanero Gold jelly.

I also like chipotles, but I'm careful with jalapenos. They are another pepper that you can't really tell, some are hot and some aren't. This year I'm growing something called Hot Sweet Peach as well as poblanos, habaneros, serranos, jalapenos and one deadly Carolina Reaper. I grind up various peppers along with some carrots and onions, add vinegar/sugar/spices and make Cowgirl Relish. Elery loves the stuff, his middle son eats it on pancakes, and a co-worker of that son has offered to buy as many jars as I will make, LOL. I did promise the stepson that if the peppers do well this summer he gets his own case.

The gochugaru is different, though. One whiff of it or the open jar of kimchi and I start coughing violently, I can't even imagine eating the stuff.

Annie

Annie:

Tell us how your reaper does. I tried last year, but my season ended quite abruptly with a cold snap, and no fruit.

Something slightly poetic (not quite irony) about that ... a screaming hot pepper cut down in its prime by a cold snap.

bragu, I'm cautiously optimistic. It's got a bunch of blooms and a couple tiny little peppers, so perhaps they will have time to mature before frost. Here frost is generally about the middle of September, but last year the warmer weather hung on until the end of October, so maybe....

I need to quit comparing it to the Ajvarski, which are already loaded down with green peppers about 4 inches long, those things are going crazy!

Annie

Annie, you sure know your peppers. Now I'm wanting to try habeneros out for the taste, minus the seeds. A couple years ago I wanted to grow Thai birds eye chilis. I ordered them from Thaiiland, and when the package arrived I saw that it had been opened by customs. They must have suspected it might be illegal drugs or something. I also tried getting seeds for water spinach, (Ipomea) from somewhere in asia. That time customs seized the seeds. I was very upset until I found out the plant is banned because of its invasiveness. I found some at the market, and was going to try to root cuttings, but I stir fried and ate some first. I didn't think the flavor was that great, decided I like real spinach better, so I canned the whole growing it idea. It would have been a pain anyways, having to grow it in water and all that.

Jay, I'm a farm girl, grew up on a farm and I now live on the farm that I grew up on as a child. I've had a garden of my own for about 45 years and helped in the family garden before that. I like to try new things, though, and new varieties, and I save seeds and start my own small plants. Since I live in Michigan, with our hot summers and short growing seasons, I keep trying new varieties as some things just won't grow here. Okra, for example, will grow and will bear, but not heavily, it's just not very happy. The Reaper needs a long growing period, so I'm hoping my weather stays warm enough long enough to make it at least a little bit happy!

Annie

I don't grow reapers, as Habanero chilies are hot enough for me, and my favorite is chocolate Habanero, which is also somewhat difficult to grow. You have to buy the seeds and start them indoors in February. This year my seeds did not do a good job of germinating, and I only started them in March, and so I might not get a crop this year. I have three or four tiny seedlings, and I'm afraid they might not make it. The chocolate Habanero chilies have a very distinctive earthy flavor that is almost smoky, and so they would not be best in kimchi, but they make a great hot sauce. I made a fairly large batch last year, and it is almost gone already. Anyway, if you are interested in experimenting with chilies, I highly recommend the chocolates. I can send you some seeds, if you want, and you can try them next year. They do seem to require a fairly long growing season, however, and I harvest mine in November and December - just in time to make hot sauce for Christmas presents. My plants continued to make chilies through January and into February.

I like kimchi, and I have made a lot of different Korean food, and I even have the ingredients here to make at least a couple types of kimchi (I may need to re-stock on the fresh produce parts) but I have not yet brazenly tried to make it. Yet.

I guess it ends up there are so many other Korean foods I want to make first. Or something like that?

Nah. It's because you're chicken. :D (teasing) Suggestion? Try making a fairly mild kimchi first. Get the fermentation down, and the flavor balance, and then you can add more heat the next time. The worst that could happen would be vaguely Korean cole slaw. :)

Jay:

tried my kimchi today. Didn't miss the fish sauce, tho I will use it in the next batch. I went a touch overboard on the pepper flakes, for my enjoyment. Got that nice forehead sweat and a nice heat in the mouth. Perhaps heaping Tablespoons was a bit much. Will trim it back to three level Tbl next time, and add a touch more sugar, and believe it or not, more salt ... very wonderful texture/flavor tho ... used Lars' recipe, sans carrot

The Korean chili flakes that you buy come in several different heat levels, and so you have to adjust the amount based on how hot they are. I'm starting some kimchi this evening, and I have some new chili flakes that I have not tasted, and so I'll have to sample them somehow before I determine how much I will need to use.

I also have a huge daikon radish that I bought at the Japanese market, and so I might use that instead of carrots this time. I don't like daikon with cucumber, but I might like it with cabbage.

Glad I opened this thread. I've heard of kimchi but never tried it. I do like pickles, sauerkraut and spicy foods. Based on everyone's descriptions, it sounds like something I'd like. Thanks for posting!

I started the kimchi yesterday. I only had 2/3 head of cabbage because I had used 1/3 of it for okonomiyaki, and the remaining cabbage weighed 2 lb, 2.2 oz. I made my recipe without reducing any of the other ingredients, but I did add quite a bit of daikon radish instead of carrot. The radish was quite large and went through my new mandoline quickly and easily to make matchsticks, and I think I will keep this substitution for the future, as carrot matchsticks are more difficult to make. I also put the onion through the mandoline, and that went very quickly also. I had bought some dried shrimp at the Japanese market, and so I added 2 Tbsp of that to the chili paste, in addition to the fish sauce, which is Thai sauce, but I don't think that matters much. I tasted it before I put it in jars (it only filled two jars about 3/4 full each), and I think the seasoning proportions were correct. I threw out my old chili flakes, as they were old, and I think the new ones are not quite as hot. I then stored the leftover chili flakes in the freezer so that they will keep better. They had an expiration date of Aug 31, 2018, and so I did not want to leave them out any longer.

The daikon radish that I bought at the Japanese market tastes a lot better than what I bought at the regular market, and so I think I will buy them there from now on. I have some Tsukemono recipes for daikon that I might try for some of the leftover radish, as I only used about 1/3 of it in the kimchi. One of the recipes if for daikon kimchi. This is the book I am using. It has some good recipes for cabbage as well as for cucumbers and other vegetables.

Book looks good! Not familiar with it. I find all radish is subject to growing conditions. And storage. I just pickled a 'pico de Gallo'. No tomato, just various radish and golden beet, (small cubes),red onion, poblano, habanero. Tomatoes and red pepper I'll add to the table.

I started soaking, de-seeding some of the less hot Mexican dried peppers so I get lots of flavor without so much heat. Dry/roast low and slow, then spice grind.

I keep trying to to grow Habanada. The flavor without the heat but keep getting very low harvests.

Sounds like you whipped up a delicious batch Lars. I haven't got around to making kimchi yet, I've been too busy with the gardening. Just bought a couple jars of the hot and spicey to hold me over. It's going to be basil Thai shrimp tonight.

I like kimchi, and when I saw Napa cabbage at the farmer's market this morning, I bought a small head with the idea of perhaps trying to make my own kimchi this coming week.

A good, timely, thread! And I'll apparently will be attempting this sooner than I'd thought!