Kimchi is a typical side dish served in typical Korean households it comprised using winter vegetables such as napa cabbage and daikon radish.
Kimchi as a term refers to preparation method to foment vegetables
This is my adoption of traditional kimchi.
Ingredients
5 Garlic cloves
2 tbsp Fish sauce
1 Whole apple
1 Whole mooli
2 tbsp Korean chilli powder
Half onion
1 tbsp Salt
2 tsp Sugar
3 Spring onion
Method
To get started, you will prepare your mooli by washing it, cut in half so it is easier to handle, top and tail it, and then peel it. Peel your mooli 2 time if it has hard skin.
Now we are going to dice our mooli into 1cm cubes, place your mooli aside into a bowl add your salt, and leave for half an hour.
After half an hour has passed your mooli should have produced a little bit of water
This process is done by the salt extracting the natural water of the mooli.
Now we are going to taste our mooli and see if there is too much salt or too little. If too much salt wash the mooli out using cold water to get rid of some of the salt.
Make sure you save some of that salty water as you will need it when you make the kimchi paste.
Moving swiftly on to our kimchi paste. Take your apple peel the skin, remove the core and cut into manageable pieces, place this to one side with the garlic for the onion cut the top off also remove the skin, cut into half.
Remove the root of the onion and rough chop them and place with the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and processer them very well. While the food pressor is doing its job add a touch of your salty water from earlier. It should now become a paste place to one side.
Top and tail your spring onion and rough chop it and place to one side.
Now back to our mooli we going to add the paste from our food processor and mix the rest of the ingredients in with the mooli and bind tougher (Make sure when you do this step wear some gloves as the Korean chili powder will stain your hands or even worse if you have a cut and you’re not wearing a plaster it will hurt.)
Now we are going to place our kimchi into a clean glass jar (make sure it, not an air-tight container as it could explode and the good bacteria would die) Now you can leave the mix for a day this call fermentation.
Please note it will become sourer the longer you leave it. During the 1st or 2nd day, you will see some air bubbles developing this is typically normal.
Bon Appétit!
