Fermented Foods

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Finally got round to making my own kimchi last week. Just needed to get my hands on some mason jars and Nesbits on Moore St are finally open again after lockdown.

Pretty easy to make, all the work is in the prep. The flavour just keeps developing, leaving the one you can buy in Asian shops very much in the shade.

I used this bbc recipe just using bog standard chilli flakes and radishes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/kimchi_69909

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Mrs. Beer has been making it for a couple of years now.
I'd highly recommend the addition of some fruit. Pineapple is my favourite but apple or pear works well too.
I notice that that recipe, like ours, has no fish sauce or anchovies or other fish stuff. We use some wakame seaweed, some ****ake mushroom and a bit of celery for that umami flavour.
By the looks of it, ours has way more chili flakes, garlic and ginger (the ****ake, wakame and celery go in the blender, too)- it is much more coated in sauce than the BBC one or yours.
I guess our house constantly smells of kimchi:eek:

Lady Haywire wrote: »

Just out of interest, what's your recipe TBR?
I've had kimchi before from Dublin & enjoyed it, though with shopping in Dublin postponed it's not looking like I'll get up for more for a while!
Also have a cousin married to a Korean girl & it'd be lovely to be able to gift them some & they both love spice.

I'll see if mrs beer has it written down and come back.

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Aldi have Chinese Cabbage in stock at the moment. Who needs Dublin?

That's why I was looking for a recipe, I've never attempted it before but have the large kilner jars sitting in the kitchen doing nothing so it's worth a shot to make my own.

Right, Mrs Beer's recipe:

As we're going off topic here, I wonder would a fermentation thread be an idea? Mods??

I asked her for her recipe and got got a series of photos of handwritten recipes which was incomplete. It's about time this recipe gets properly recorded as lots of people ask her for it.

2 Chinese cabbages (chinese leaves/napa cabbage)
1 Daikon (mooli), half a daikon if very large
1 bunch spring onions
Sea salt - about 2 heaped Tbsp, depending on size of cabbage.
(Mrs Beer insists the using grey sea salt gives a much better flavour)
Suggested additions : pineapple, unripe pear, apple, fennel bulb

Sauce:
1-2 pinches wakame
2-3 dried ****ake mushrooms, soaked in warm water
1 head of garlic
1 1/2 thumbs of ginger
1 stick of celery
2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp Korean Chilli Powder (red pepper flakes)

We've found our local Polish shop to have the best Chinese Leaves around - huge and compact. All the other bits can be found in most Asian shops.

Day 1
Wash and chop the leaves.
Place in a bowl layering with the salt.
Rub the salt into the leaves and leave for 30 mins.
Water will start to come out of the leaves.
Compress so the leaves stay just under the liquid.
Taste the liquid, it should taste like seawater.
Leave this overnight in the fridge.

Day 2
Roughly chop all the sauce ingredients and put in food processor.
Blend for about 10 minutes, adding the mushroom water and some of the brine from the cabbage to make a paste.
Drain the cabbage and combine with chopped daikon and fruit/fennel.
Mix in the sauce and put in very clean jars, pushing down so the vegetables stay under the liquid.
Don't fill the jars completely as you need to leave room for fermentation bubbling up. But lids on loosely.
Leave jars on a tray at room temperature for 4-5 days, pressing down with a slotted spoon a couple of times a day to release the fermentation gasses.
Once fermentation has slowed down, close jars and refrigerate.
Seems to keep for ages, developing flavour and becoming more sour with time.

It's really worth getting the Korean Chilli flakes they have a particular flavour. I use it in so many dishes. Brilliant if you want lots of chilli flavour with very little heat. Use enough of it and it can get quite hot, though, but if you are a heat merchant, you might want to supplement them with something hotter.

Sorry if this is a bit long winded. Any questions, please ask.

Another one is Hungarian fermented cucumbers. It involves filling an enormous glass jar with small cucumbers and covering them in salted water, along with some herbage; dill and the likes, from memory. A slice or two of bread is then placed in the mouth of the jar.

The jar is then left in the Summer sun for three days to ferment.

I remember tasting them many years ago. They were very good.

I happened to make some kimchi myself last week and just put it into the fridge today. As I will be using it in fried rice I finely shredded the cabbage while preparing it. Thought I'd save myself the trouble afterwards.

i used East End brand red chilli, but I have just found this:

https://www.asiamarket.ie/our-home-korean-red-pepper-powder-1kg.html

Is this the proper Korean stuff for kimchi? It says it's powder, not flakes.

TheKBizzle wrote: »

That’s the stuff I use for kimchi. It’s more like granules than a powder though.

Same here, that's the one we get.
Seems more like flakes, to me, though.

New Home wrote: »

Ah, that would explain it, it's obvious when you say it... I leave it open, covered by a cotton cloth or a sheet of kitchen paper. It makes sense that the bubbles would escape...

Any tricks on improving the flavour?

Yep make sure the 2nd ferment is left closed. Flavour wise your safest bet is dried flavourings like flavoured tea. I use berry tea bags. Elderflower cordial is also lovely but you can add whatever mixed fruits you want. Once you get the carbonation and level of 'vinegaryness' right you can experiment away then!

I got Mark Diancos book Sour, some nice stuff in it. I decided to make a sort of Kimchi, its not quite a kimchi and not quite a saurkraut. Ive lots of courgettes in the garden so looking for some way to preserve them. Used regular hard cabbage, carrot and the courgette and rubbed in the salt Then whizzed up garlic, ginger, chilli flakes and tomatoes and added that. Bashed it into a jar and left it for 5 days. Tasted it and my instant thought was thats too salty, then uck thats very sour and then mmm garlic ginger and chilli. Its not my favourite preserve but we will eat the 2 litres ive made and then think about it again.
Im going to try the kombucha, i have some really good green tea with peppermint.
And ive just started a sourdough and hope to have it ready to use in a week. Ive done sourdoughs before, usually only in the summer when i bake daily

Is it possible to use York Cabbage for home making Kimchi