How to make Kimchi recipe

It’s easy to homemade your own kimchi when you have the correct korean ingredients such as fish sauce and hot pepper flakes or gochu garu in korean language.

Buying korean products in supermarket is not easy because it’s all written in korean. You wouldn’t know which product is gochu garu or which is the fish sauce. There is one place selling all korean products at Lotte Mart in Jalan Ampang – One Ampang Avenue. There are many Korean supermarkets and Korean restaurants within this area. (Recommended Korean restaurant around this area: Han Woo Ri Garden for it’s kimchi set for only RM17.00 which is much cheaper than KLCC. No idea about it’s BBQ coz i don’t really eat meat 😀

How to go to Lotte Mart Supermarket at One Ampang Avenue by bus

By public transportation:

1. Take LRT to Ampang Park and then from Ampang Park entrance take any bus to Ampang Point Shopping Centre.
2. Cross an overhead bridge from Ampang Point Shopping Centre to the opposite road.
3. You’ll see a bill board right infront of One Ampang Avenue.

• Lotte Mart supermarket (Telephone No: 03- 4257 7788 / FK Lee 016 223 4651 / 1 utama Lotte mart 7729 2379)  is located at the 2nd row of shop houses.

Photo: Korean Anchovy Sauce and Gochu garu (Red Pepper Flakes)

 

Now you have everything ready to make your own homemade Kimchi. Let’s see what’s the ingredients

Ingredients

• 2 big chinese cabbage
• Fine Sea salt
• 1/2 cup of Glutinous Rice Flour
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• Water
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Holland Onion (Holland onion – golden color type more suitable to make kimchi and more fragrant compare to Thailand shallots which is more spicy or the bigger ones India shallots)
• Korean fish sauce
• Hot Pepper Flakes (Gochu garu)
• Leek
• Green Onion (Spring Onions / Chung in Cantonese)
• Carrot
• Radish

Method

1. Wash cabbage then cut into half  4-6 parts. Soaked into water and dried it.
2. Cut cabbage into bite size, and add salt (1 cup of salt for 10 pound of cabbage) – mix it and let it sit for 2-3 hours (turning cabbage every 30 mins)

Blend together

• 1 cup of garlic
• 2 tbsp of ginger
• 1 cup chop onion
• 1 cup of fish sauce
• 1 anchovies cube stocks dissolved with little bit of water (without cube stocks it wouldn’t taste good..)

Paste (porridge)

 

1. 3 cups of water with 1/2 cup of glutinous rice
2. Boil over fire, stir and cook for 5 mins
3. Lower heat and when you see bubble form add 1/4 cup of sugar
4. Wait a few minutes till translucent.

Mix together

• Pour porridge to blended ingredients, stir
• Add 2.5 cups of hot pepper flakes (Gochu garu)

Rinse your salty cabbage

1. Rinse your cabbage now, remove water and let water drip for 30 minutes.
2. After that, add your mixture paste portion by portion into your cabbage.
3. Mix it all up and keep your kimchi into glass container (note: Do not use plastic container if you don’t want to leave a stain to your plastic container).
4. ***Note: Remember to leave about 2 inch gap at the top when you place your kimchi into a glass jar because fermentation will release pressure. It will also prevent kimchi from spilling during fermentation process.
5. Lastly, cover lid and let it ferment for 2 days outside and each day remove lid to release pressure from your fermented kimchi.
6. After 2 days, keep into your refrigerator and consume it for months (according to a korean sales person, max storage is 3 months and not more than a year!)

Here’s my homemade Kimchi fermentation – Day 1

 

Update: Today is my 3rd day kimchi in room temperature, still smell fresh and look good. You just have to make sure cabbage is submerge into the kimchi juice or water.

Here’s a video step by step by Maangchi