I’ve made my second batch of kimchi. Here is the recipe I used, adapted from a couple from Maangchi’s site. I liked the look of the ingredients from her whole cabbage recipe (fermented shrimp rather than raw squid), but wanted to use elements from her easy kimchi one (chopped cabbage), and also the quantities were on the large size since I’m just starting out in my kimchi journey. I’m just going to provide ingredients – follow the steps on Maangchi’s site for Easy Kimchi but use these quantities.

Equipment

• 2 large mixing bowls
• Collander
• Glass jar – I have used both Korken and 365 jar with lid from IKEA, but anything holding a litre should work
• Cup measures

I spotted some special kimchi jars with pressure release valves on sale in Lakeland plastics, but they are a bit small and expensive. The IKEA ones seem fine and very cheap.

Ingredients

• 1 Chinese cabbage from my local Chinese food store
• About 2 inches of daikon radish cut into match sticks
• A medium carrot cut into match sticks
• 4 green onions
• 8 cloves of garlic or an entire small bulb
• A couple inches of fresh ginger, minced
• 8 teaspoons fish sauce
• 4 teaspoons fermented shrimps and brine (had to go to Korean store on Tottenham Court Road for this)
• ⅔ cup hot pepper flakes

Porridge ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons sweet rice flour
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar

You actually need about ½ cup porridge. You can freeze what is left over for future kimchi or practical jokes. It isn’t easy to get frozen cubes of porridge out of ice trays so I’d suggest freezing measured ½ cups in freezer bags instead.

I’m looking forward to this fermenting and will report back in a couple of days how it tastes, and if the jars exploded.

Update

After a couple of days the kimchi was nicely fermenting, making a pop when ever I opened the jar. I transferred it to the IKEA jar which fits in the fridge better.

The kimchi is absolutely delicious. Way more firey than what you might buy, but also a much more sophisticated flavour. After 18 days it is almost all gone, so I am off to the local Chinese grocery to pick up some more cabbage and daikon for the next batch. Looking forward to using cubes of frozen porridge for a much quicker assembly.

The above is now my go to recipe for Kimchi until I figure out any further tweaks!

Not sure how long the fermented squid keeps for – it defrosted on the way back from the Korean store…