I was shopping in my favorite international grocery store the other day when I came across something called white kimchi. Since I am always looking for new experiences, I pulled one down off the shelf of the large refrigerator case dedicated just to various brands of kimchi. All the other brands were the usual bright red color from the massive amounts of red pepper they use in making traditional kimchi. I am not a fan of that much red pepper, so a nice white colored option looked attractive.
In case you are not familiar with kimchi, it is fermented Napa cabbage, plus bits of other veggies – a sort of Asian sauerkraut. The main difference is that they use the lighter Napa cabbage and they dump in a ton of red pepper. Also the cabbage is in larger pieces, not shredded like it is in sauerkraut. Fermented veggies is one of the best things you can put in your tummy. The bacteria that ferment veggies are the very good probiotics
that we spend so much money on in capsule form. In fact I have read in several places now that a great home remedy for sinus infections is to stuff kimchi up your nose. The good guy bacteria will fight the bad guy bugs causing your sinus infection. Up to this point this struck me as gross because of the whole tons of red pepper thing. Try not to think about it – it would be very painful. But with white kimchi – hey, who knows?
So I took my white kimchi home and gave it a try. It was actually quite good. It was not very sour. In fact they added a touch of sugar to make a sweet and sour thing happening. In addition to the Napa cabbage, they added some carrot, radish, garlic, and a tiny sliver of jalapeño. Well it was not too many days before I had eaten all of my white kimchi. Being the person that I am, my first thought was to read the ingredients and see if I could make up a batch for myself for a tiny fraction of the cost. It looked pretty doable, so off to the store I went.
Ingredients:
1 Napa cabbage head
1 fat daikon radish
2 fat carrots
3-4 garlic cloves
1 small jalapeño or Serrano pepper
1-2 Tbs. Real Salt
The reason I specifically went for fat carrots and radish was because I decided to try out my new vegetable spiralizer on them and skinny veggies just don’t fly with a spiralizer. If you haven’t tried one, spiralizers are a lot of fun. Put a big boring vegetable in one end and out comes cute curly noodles at the other end. Who doesn’t love noodles? We can pretend that we are eating fancy pasta in a fine Italian restaurant, while actually eating our veggies. This is even cooler than the cauliflower rice I have been making lately. Link to buy spiralizer.
I took the Napa cabbage and cut it in half lengthwise and cut out the core. We don’t want the nasty core. I cut each half lengthwise a couple more times then cross cut the cabbage into 1 inch pieces. This all goes in with the spiralized carrots and daikon. Lastly I sliced up the garlic cloves and added the pepper and diced it up also.
Now comes the magic of fermenting – adding the salt. I highly recommend using real salt – the pink or grey or whatever color it might be. The key is that it has all the naturally occurring minerals in it. Real salt has 60 to 70 different minerals in it in addition to the sodium chloride salt. Commercial salts wash all these minerals out to make a whiter and dryer final product. But we desperately need those minerals as co-factors for the thousands of enzymes we have in our body in order to be
healthy. We do not get those minerals from any other place in our diet. Even taking a multi-mineral product only replaces 6 to 8 of these minerals. We are all trace mineral deficient. Our soil has been depleted of trace minerals since the 1930s. That is how long ago reports were being issued about mineral depletion in our crop soils due to the use of fertilizers. So using real salt is a big must for a healthy lifestyle.
But back to the kimchi – sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the salt over the vegetables and start squeezing the heck out of them. The idea is to crush the vegetables enough to release some of the water in them. Just stick your hands into the veggies and start squeezing like you are squeezing out a wash rag. An alternative is to pound them with a something big. I used the tamper for my Vita-mix and just beat those veggies with a stabbing motion. Add another tablespoon of salt and stab some more. The salt serves a vital function; it not only releases water from the veggies, but it makes a brine solution for the veggies that keeps any bad bacteria from growing in them. Good guy bacteria don’t seem to mind the salt. That is why we don’t mind getting our hands into the veggies, because we are selecting for just the good guy bacteria by using the salt.
Usually just the bacteria in the air and from our hands is enough to start the culture growing. This is called a wild ferment. If you want you can prime the pump so to speak by adding specific bacteria cultures. Different companies sell fermenting bacteria for this purpose. I decided that since I liked the flavor of the white kimchi I bought at the market, I would use the leftover juice from the jar I had bought. That way I would be loading the batch I was making with the same bacteria. Different bacteria will add different flavors to your ferment, just like different molds give each cheese its specific flavor.
Once everything was all smashed together enough to form a small puddle of liquid in the bottom of the bowl, I had to use my kitchen shears to cut through some of the spiralized veggies as the “noodles” were too long. Then I packed all the veggies into a half gallon glass canning jar. Fortunately I had a fermenting jar airlock from previous sauerkraut making. Airlocks make the next part of the process easy. We need to keep the veggies at room temperature for 4 to 5 days to ferment. We also need to keep air away from them, as the fermentation requires an oxygen free zone. As the veggies ferment they will
release gas which can build up enough pressure to explode your fermenting jar. This is where the airlock comes in. It handles all those needs in one easy step. It fits in the lid and lets the gas out without letting any air into the jar.
Link to airlocks.
Alternatives are to use a fermenting stone or glass disc that sits on the top of the veggies to keep out air and let out gas or just fill a zip lock bag half full of water and put it on top of the veggies. It will flatten out enough to seal away the air, but still let out gasses. With that done we just stick the jar full of veggies in a dark corner of the kitchen counter and leave it alone for 4 to 5 days. The longer it sits the more sour it gets. So you can decide just how sour you like your veggies. After the 4-5 days just put a lid on your kimchi and stick it in the fridge.
When I went to Japan to visit my son, Mason, while he was in college there, one of the nice things I enjoyed was
that there were an assortment of fermented vegetables at every meal – even breakfast. This is a super healthy habit to get into. Our gut needs all the help it can get these days.
My white kimchi was a wonderful success. Ellen and I eat some every day. It is simple to make and very inexpensive, yet the health rewards are huge – especially when you use real salt in making the kimchi.