Easy Fermented Kimchi Recipe

Author's Bio: Jessie Gutsue, MA, RDN, IFNCP

Hey everyone.

Today we're making an easy homemade ferment. It's called kimchi, and this is a traditional Korean type of sauerkraut we'll call it, but with lots of more flavor and some different ingredients that you may not be familiar with.

Hey, I'm Jessie Gutsue and I'm a functional medicine dietitian with Oswald Digested Clinic. If you're interested in more gut healthy cooking tips, then check out the link below for our Five Tips for Quicker Gut Healthy Cooking.

Now, let's get started on our easy kimchi for gut health.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

Easy Fermented Kimchi Recipe

All right, so I have here a Napa cabbage, also known as Korean cabbage. And as you can see, if you're not familiar with this type of cabbage, it is leafier softer than traditional green cabbage, and it also has a little bit higher water content. It's elongated, and this particular one is about four pounds. Our recipe does call for a two pound cabbage, so we're going to chop this in half.

Now, this recipe is different from the traditional fermented kimchi recipes that you typically find. Many will call for leaving the cabbage intact from top to bottom. So you would cut it lengthwise and then cut it again lengthwise so that you had four quarters and simply remove the core, but keeping the leaves intact. You then soak those leaves in a salt brine for a few hours and then rinse 'em off and then add the paste. This recipe is going to be a little bit different and I'll explain why on the way. So let's get started with cutting our cabbage right down the center, and then we will discard half or put away half for now and just stick with the half of it because that's two pounds.

Traditional vs. Modern Method

This type of cabbage is like, look at that, how much leafier it is. It's a little bit more like lettuce to me than traditional cabbages. So we'll set this half aside and then we're left with this. Now, if you are going to follow a traditional method of kimchi, what you would do is quarter this again and remove this core and quarter it again. And then what they do is it's soaked, and then those recipes will call for rolling the leaves upon themselves, sort of like how you would roll up a garden hose or something and you would ferment those leaves as sort of like a whole unit. And so what you end up with are long strands of ferment. Personally, I don't appreciate this type of cabbage. I prefer chopped bite-sized pieces. I don't like big long strands. I feel like I need a fork and knife.

So that's just my personal preference. But I also find that this chopping technique does something in terms of reducing the time that you have to soak. So like I said, many recipes will call for a soaking duration of a few hours, three to six hours maybe for a higher salt content of a brine, and even longer if you want to reduce that salt content.

Chopping and Prepping the Cabbage

So this is your Napa cabbage. We're just going to use the half, like I said, and what I'm going to do is reserve just one outer leaf so that we can top the ferment at the very end, and then we'll go ahead and chop our cabbage slicing out that core and then cutting it in strips. So what this does now, traditional cabbage is made by keeping these intact and then soaking them in a salt water bath and rolling the leaves upon themselves. I really just don't prefer that long texture. So what we're going to do is chop it into nice bite-sized pieces. What this also does, in addition to making the texture just more preferable to me, it also creates more surface area in the cabbage and more surface area allows the salt to do its work.

Benefits of Napa Cabbage

Salt is a really cool ingredient beyond just for flavor. Salt helps to break down the cell walls of our plants, which creates moisture, so it creates that brine that's needed to keep the ferment down. And submerged within kagen is a really great source of vitamin B. It's also a great source of vitamin K, and because it's a brassica, it contains a bioactive called glucosinolates, and glucosinolates is a powerhouse when it comes to detoxification. They are a part of phase one and phase two detox in the liver, and we really have to make sure to help and encourage our liver to detox as it should.

So I love this recipe. It gives me a new ingredient, Napa cabbage that isn't typically in my food rotation. I love Napa cabbage though, that softer texture, it's lettuce like. So it's a great one to incorporate into daily salads too.

Salting the Cabbage

But we are just going to salt this. So my cabbage hole was four pounds, so half of it is two pounds, and that's about 900 grams. And so I am going to do two to 3% of that. So oftentimes fermentation you use the amount of salt, that's two to 3% the weight of the vegetable. So that is 18 to 27 grams of salt for the two pounds of cabbage, which equates to be about three to four and a half teaspoons of salt depending on this type of salt that you're using. I like redmond's real salt. It's just a really nice tasty one. No additives. You don't want to use an iodized salt. So we're going to use about three tablespoons. So we'll just sprinkle this on and let this sit.

So I'm just shaking the bowl to try to mix around the salt. I find when I massage the cabbage, too much of the salt sticks to my hands. So I like this method. It works well and it keeps everything nice and clean. You can also use tongs or of course your hands. So traditional sauerkraut, which I sort of find kimchi to be similar to just because we're using cabbage, but in no way does the outcome taste the same with traditional sauerkraut. You typically massage the leaves with these because the leaves are already more delicate. You don't need to massage this. Now, if you were going to make this traditional kimchi, you would soak this in a salt water bath with whole intact leaves for one to two to maybe even six hours depending on the amount of salt used within the brine. So the higher the salt, if you have a 15% salt solution, you can soak it for a few hours and then you'd rinse it off.

For this one, because we've chopped the cabbage and created more surface area, we are going to let this sit for about 15 minutes. It'll really come down in size, and then we're going to add all of the flavoring. So we'll set this aside and let's get started on our paste.

Making the Kimchi Paste

So again, traditional kimchi uses a type of red pepper that I don't have on hand. What I'm going to use is red pepper flakes. One of the biggest differences in terms of flavor with the pepper that's used in traditional kimchi is a little bit of a smoky no, but also the texture of the pepper. So that's why I'm using this. I'm going to grind this up with a food processor. You're welcome to use whatever if you want to use the traditional red pepper. Of course, you don't have to grind this. It's up to you however you want your texture to be.

First, we'll start with two tablespoons of sugar, and next I have here about an inch of ginger. I just love ginger. It is one of my favorite ingredients. It's known to be an antiemetic or it helps with nausea, but it also has proposed benefits to help with digestion and regularity in bowel movements. Maybe an anti-inflammatory still ongoing in that regard, but we're going to toss in this whole inch. And then I have four whole garlic cloves, so I'll just skin these or remove the skins and toss these in.

Benefits of Key Paste Ingredients

Now garlic is one of those great ingredients, of course, adds a great amount of flavor, but it also contains a bioactive called allicin. And allicin particularly helps with reducing the risk of cancer. Is it antimicrobial? So there's a lot of great benefits to garlic, and it's that benefit is even greater once the garlic is masticated or chopped up.

Okay, so now I'm going to add one tablespoon or so of my red pepper. Now recipe, this is an area that can really vary for me about one tablespoon of the pepper works. I don't prefer something super spicy, and that's actually one of the reasons why I love to make my own kimchi, because I find the store ones to be almost too hot for me to tolerate. So of course, adjust to your own liking. Now I'm using fish sauce and it's a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce.

Fish sauce is anchovies and salt. So it definitely adds a umami funky little flavor, but it is really one of the key ingredients. So don't skip out on that one. So just those ingredients. And now I will go ahead and grind the paste and we'll get ready to add it to our cabbage. Some recipes also call for a riced paste to keep everything more cohesive. I omitted that, but you're welcome to add that in. So there you have it. That is our paste that we'll put over top of the cabbage.

Blending the Paste

Now, I used an immersion blender for this, and you're welcome to use whatever type of blender or food processor that you have that will get this smaller amount. Keep in mind though, that plastics will take in some of that flavor. So if you are a daily smoothie user, like me, I love my smoothies and unfortunately I have a plastic blender. I do not make this with my plastic blender because there are a lot of flavors that I would rather not have in my morning smoothie.

So we're going to set this aside and then we will add it to our cabbage leaves. Look at that already. You see these glistening a little bit, having created a little bit of moisture underneath there, some of that brine that they'll end up using to keep the leaves submerged. That's beautiful.

Packing the Kimchi

Alright, now right before we finish this off with our top, we need to keep these ingredients submerged under the brine. So what we're going to do, remember that leaf that we reserved earlier, we're just going to roll it up on itself, pack it in, and then press it down in order to push that brine on top. And you see the brine is covering the leaf, keeping all those other ingredients submerged underneath its brine. Now I'll discard this leaf before I consume. You're welcome to use other types of weights including like glass weights or clay weights. I personally love a plastic baggie filled with a little bit of brine. That's one of my go-tos.

Fermentation

You'll leave this sitting out at room temperature for two to three days. Check it, open the top up a little bit so it's burping it every day to let off some of that gas. You'll see it bubble up, and this will be super tasty in any way that you so choose to consume.

So I'm very excited about this. I hope you try this easy chopped kimchi for your gut health. And if you're looking for more videos like this, then

Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestiveclinic.com

To check out more of the titles that we've done or just general questions that you may have.

Thanks again. We'll see you next time.

Or you can just start by downloading our FREE GUIDE: 5 Tips For Faster, Gut-Healthy Meals!