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Maangchi's traditional recipe sans Asian chives and water dropwort. Extra green onions though. Much excite!!!!

Reason: unknown. Explanation: none. Confidence level: 100%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimjang

One of my favorite memories is making Kimchi with my In-Laws during our Kimjang. Thought you folks might enjoy the photo!

Update: 2 days and 4 hours (52 hours) later - Fermentation has started! 🎉 I forgot to check and burp it this morning, and just did now - there was gas release! No visible bubbles as yet, but so thrilled it's started! I should probably move it to the fridge ...

I'm so excited! I sometimes grab a jar of kimchi when I'm at the Asian Supermarket, but paying around €6 for 400g is a bit steep, considering how fast everyone devours it!

So I made my own today. Didn't make the rice flour 'porridge', but I may try that next time, if I feel this needs more even distribution of flavour!

It's in a closed jar for now, but planning on burping it before bed (perhaps), or in the morning.

Any tips?

I based my recipe loosely on Marion's Easy Kimchi , but tweaked the ingredients, as I had carrot instead of daikon.

This is what I did, so I can tweak it (maybe) for next time.

KIMCHI 24/09/26 1.2kg napa/chinese cabbage 2 medium sized carrots, peeled and julienned 3 thick spring onions, sliced into 4cm sections, and halved, so they're thinner

1/3 cup coarse sea salt (to extract water)

turn cabbage every 30 or so minutes. was done in 1.5hrs

1/4 cup fish sauce 1/3 cup Gochugaru 1tbsp sugar 4 cloves garlic (big ones) thumb sized piece of ginger 1 medium sized apple. peeled

Short Story: Harvested and made a ridiculous amount of kimchi out of my SoCal garden. We’ve had lots of heatwaves and everyone told me my cabbage was going to bolt and growing it here was a fools errand. And it came out great and organic! Last time I grew it never formed heads. This took every giant container I had, wheel barrow included and after salting and draining the cabbages alone weighed 85 lbs with 50 lbs more in radishes. Grateful for friends to help out.

Long story: My Ex was from Korea. When we went to Korea together I could tell how homesick she was and how much Kimchi was a staple not just food, but cultural/ family thing. I brought a bunch of seeds back and planted a kimchi garden, with some favorite veggies that are hard/ impossible to get here including ktown.

I got all the big bowls and strainers, I even got a dedicated kimchi fridge from some Ajumma. First run turned out great but the relationship ended as I planted this years kimchi. The garden kept failing before it would start due to bugs and I nearly gave up. But with all the investment in this stuff, and the knowledge it seemed a waste to stop. So now I’m just some big white guy with an ungodly amount of kimchi trying to figure out my relationship to Korean culture and where to go from here. But at the very least I whole assed it and got the full family making kimchi experience (complete with Bossam to celebrate) even if it didn’t work out the way I thought it would.

I like it really oniony so don’t mind my slicing and dicing job 😂 I know there’s actual cucumber kimchi, but this doesn’t ferment and for me personally I only like this the day it’s made after it sits for a couple hours. For my tastes the cucumber is just too mushy the day after and I’m not a fan. I love me some kimchi but I like this stuff even better 😍

Made my first batch of Kimchi a few days ago! Waiting for it to ferment and hoping for the best 🤞🏼

I used to be able to make a batch every 3 months or so. But lately the batches have gone up in size, both more and bigger jars.. and the frequentie has gone up as well, maybe once every 6 weeks nowadays. I love it, my wife loves it, wonder when my 3 year old will start to love it..

Hope you guys also enjoy the pictures I took today of the process.

For a recipe, I started off with the Korean vegan's recipe 3 years ago. But have since then changed to a non-vegan version.

Made a big batch again and somehow made more than 200 dumplings too. Needless to say that my hands were quite sore after the whole day but my friends and neighbors were more than happy to get some! Two containers are missing from the photos as I gave them away :) My dumpling wrapping skills still need some work but they came out really tasty 😭

So I made 10 jars of kimchi for Christmas gifts. It was my first time making it and I followed Maamgchi's recipe. I gave some to people directly and I send one to my family in Minnesota, they got it but unlike any of the others, a day after they had it int heir fridge it exploded and looked like this

Can anyone explain? Is it still safe to eat?

I invited my friend over to catch up and make kimchi. We each contributed veggies/fruit and then split the batches, which meant we made out like bandits: 10 different kimchi 😍

The night before, I made a 3x batch for the paste and kept it in the fridge. The day of, we washed, chopped, brined, dried, and then massaged with the paste. All in all, it took about 4 hours at a pretty casual pace. No stress, lots of catching up, and productive all at once.

The photo shows:
Ramps (that were harvested responsibly)
Korean radish
Lotus root
Green onion

Other kimchi we made that isn’t pictured:
Napa cabbage
Collard greens
Chayote
Green garlic
Green apple
Celery

Would recommend having a kimchi party with your friends!

(Edited because I listed the lotus roots twice and miscounted)

Made kimchi for the first time ever. It tastes nothing like kimchi… The color is also off.

I used Alyssa Nguyen’s kimchi recipe, except pureed 1/2 an apple.

Rice paste mixture, gochugaru, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, and onion.

I also only used table salt for the napa cabbage

Made a breakfast plate to share. Broccolini up top. I feel like pics don’t do it justice. Sloppy little leggy bois. Tasty tho. I want to make mustard greens too. I need to make another batch of radish. My regular kimchi in the bottom left. Eggs I fried in the cast iron and avocado. I wish I had some tofu bites made but I was out. Omg I should have defrosted some smoked salmon.

Last year I made 8 pounds of kimchi and it only lasted 5 months for my family. H Mart had a sale on boxes of Napa cabbage for $12.89 so I bought one and 9 hours later, 32 pounds of deliciousness 😂

I made my first ever batch on Super Bowl Sunday and it’s been about three to four weeks now (I’m not about to do the math) and holy cow, it’s so good. Carbonated, tangy, flavorful. I’m guessing this is now a life long quest, I’m not allowed to stop at one, right? Figured I would look for a kimchi Reddit. Was not disappointed.

My mum has had this home made kimchi at the back of the fridge for four years. It hasn’t been opened ever and I’m scared of it being explosive. What do you think I should do? It’s in a 5L mason jar

2 napa cabbages (totalling ~2.4kg)

2 bunches of green onions (~12 total)

90g fine gochugaru

100g garlic, blended

20g ginger, blended

1 onion, blended

60g fish sauce

15g sugar

1tsp cornstarch dissolved in 110g water

Two cabbages fills the 3.7L e-jen more or less perfectly.

First I appreciate and wholly support everyone who makes great kimchi here (or even bad kimchi! It’s awesome to try). BUT ALSO please do not leave out your kimchi at room temperature for a week!!

Kimchi is not a pickle. Kimchi is not a science experiment that is supposed to explode. Kimchi is also not an “aged like wine” type food (this is true in specific controlled fermentation, but never at room temperature). That sort of advice being so common here is possibly why I see so many pictures or rotten or moldy kimchi, many of them in conditions that I’ve literally never seen in my 30+ years of life eating kimchi.

Kimchi and the tradition of gimjang is also something that Koreans take a lot of pride in. When Koreans are screaming in the comments saying 5+ days at room temperature is excessive and literally no one in Korea does that, please believe us. Please leave out a batch for a day (or MAX two in the winter—I personally just leave out overnight and no more) and slow ferment in the fridge. If you like mushy brown rotten kimchi personally then I can’t stop you, but please don’t advise others to do the same or suggest that that’s an equally valid, authentic process of making kimchi.

EDIT: I did not expect this to blow up like this and I debated deleting this, but I’m keeping it for now (might delete later). Any criticisms I’m trying to understand as people being invested in their kimchi making process and feeling proud, and then feeling attacked when that method is discredited. This isn’t something I’d necessarily be unhappy about. As someone who loves Korean food and has had a few lunchbox moments myself growing up, I’m appreciative of subs like this and people’s interest/passion in kimchi. Here are a few sources that recommend 1-2 day room temperature fermentation and advise against something longer (~week). (I know people love maangchi here, as I do, and her recipe is also 1-2 days). Ultimately it’s everyone’s individual choices and I’m not saying anything beyond a few days always leads to kimchi going bad. But these are useful guidelines that are faithful to how people locally enjoy kimchi.

https://www.wikim.re.kr/gallery.es?act=view&bid=0013&list_no=2423&mid=a50201010000 (a Korean institution dedicated to kimchi, says deterioration-related surface yeast found to develop in about 6 days at ~70f, not toxic but at this point the yeast has to be removed and the kimchi is not recommended to be eaten fresh)

https://m.kin.naver.com/qna/dirs/8020112/docs/486262557 (a commercial manufacturer of kimchi, says beyond 3-4 days the kimchi tastes off and beyond 7 days it grows moldy)

https://news.kbs.co.kr/news/mobile/view/view.do?ncd=8566851 (school lunch vendors held criminally liable for keeping kimchi at room temperature)

https://kimchi.pusan.ac.kr/kimchi/43688/subview.do (a Korean university’s research—refrigerate after a day for best results)

https://m.kin.naver.com/qna/dirs/50502/docs/467192386 (another commercial kimchi producer, advising against prolonged room temp (recommends a day), “can rot and lead to unsafe microbes”)