Kimchi Kickoff

This past wednesday we had the first group experiment of our fermentation club.  Emma graciously hosted the event and organized a grill out to coincide with the Kimchi-making.  Kimchi is a traditional Korean sidedish made of fermented vegetables, aka Korean sauerkraut.  We gathered our bounty of ingredients, each of us providing various vegetables.  Emma and Zannah broke out their prospective food processors and made quick work of slicing and dicing the vegetables with their dualing Cuisinarts.

The recipe we followed was quite simple:

Basic Kimchi Recipe

1 head cabbage (napa cabbage is traditional but any kind may be used

1 bunch green onions

1 pound carrots

Garlic

Radishes (Daikon radishes are traditional)

Red pepper flakes to taste

Salt (up to 2 T per quart size jar)

Other vegetables and spices may be added as desired. Things we thought of were fish sauce, regular onions, seaweed, etc. Let you imagination run wild here.

Compress the veggies with a blunt insturment releasing the natural juices. Pack the jar until the liquid is to within an inch of the lid. Place the lid on tight and let it sit out for about 72 hours. The goodies inside will start to bubble and come alive. Put them in the fridge at the end of 72 hours and those puppies should be ready for eating.

The mashing was the hard but fun part of the process:

Everyone filled their jar, found a wooden spoon or blunt-ended ice cream scooper (this really was the best tool!) and gradually packed the jars, adding more layers of veggies and salt.  We packed the jars until the juices were released from the veggies.  There should be enough liquid released to cover the veggies. We continued until the jars were filled  to within an inch of the lid. The mashing process releases the natural bacteria and enzymes occurring in the vegetables that allow for the fermentation. We found it easier to release the juices with the kimchi then with sauerkraut.  Finally, the fun of blogging is that we're posting this from Cambridge!