Simple Kimchi Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is rice flour necessary for kimchi? ›

This sweet rice porridge isn't crucial, though it's recommended by many — it just helps to spread the flavor better, and helps the cabbage to better absorb it. If you don't have mochiko flour handy, just use water instead, with a few added tablespoons of sugar to make up for the sweetness. Nice tasty, indeed.

Kimchi ferments at room temperature in only 1-2 days or more slowly in the refrigerator. For safety, kimchi should be stored refrigerated and is best eaten within 1 week, as the quality of kimchi deteriorates with longer fermentation.

Pickling in 15% salt solution is the traditional standard for Kimchi cabbages. A recent trend is to make it less salty and many Koreans now pickle at 10~12 % salt solution. e.g. If you want to make a 10 cup brine solution, you can mix 8 1/2 C of water and 1 1/2 C salt.

The use of bold seasonings like gochugaru and, in some regions, salted seafood, offer additional layers of complexity to the overall taste of the kimchi.

The chilli pepper is the most important ingredient of kimchi, giving it its typical red colour and spicy taste. It contains a substance called capsaicin. Capsaicin is present in higher concentrations in the white stalk of red chilli pepper, where the seeds are attached, and prevents the growth of pathogenic bacteria.

Along with fiber, vitamins, and minerals, kimchi contains natural probiotic bacteria. If you eat them regularly, the probiotics in fermented foods can be beneficial to your gut microbiome. Studies suggest that eating kimchi on a daily basis could help to improve some digestive problems.

However, there were a couple of downsides to eating too much kimchi, her team added. First, the popular side dish contains a lot of salt, which is never great for health. Secondly, beyond the one-to-three servings per day that did show a benefit, eating more kimchi was linked with obesity overall, the study found.

Opening the Jar During Fermentation

In lacto-fermentation, air is the enemy! Although it is tempting, you should not open the jar during the fermentation of your vegetables. If you do, you expose your vegetables to all sorts of moulds, yeast, and other microorganisms.

Let the cabbages rest for 2 hours. Turn over every 30 minutes, so they get well salted. From time to time you can ladle some of the salty water from the bottom of the basin over top of the cabbages if you want to. After 2 hours, wash the cabbage halves a few times under cold running water.

Why soak cabbage in salt water for kimchi? ›

Once the cabbage is all quartered, you have to season it and remove most of its water content, which will help to concentrate the kimchi seasoning and make the vegetable more pliable; simply salting the cabbage accomplishes both of these goals.

My kimchi is mushy, not crunchy like it should be, what went wrong? It's possible your kimchi fermented in a room that was too hot. Higher temperatures can lead to the bacteria becoming a bit overactive, breaking down the structure of the vegetables.

Kimchi spoilage and over-fermentation

It will continue to ferment at a cool temperature. If kimchi over-ferments, it will have a very vinegary odor and taste. It is not pleasant to eat raw, so it is often used for soups and stews. If any fermentation gets soft and slimy, then it is a sign of spoilage.

It is perfectly normal for some jars of kimchi to bubble and pop profusely and for others to not. No pop or overflow when opening a jar does not mean that the kimchi does not contain legions of gut-health-boosting bacteria - trust us it does!

Rice flour is higher in fiber than traditional all purpose flour, but aside from that the nutritional profile is very similar. The major difference is that rice flour is gluten free, which makes it friendly to those suffering from celiac disease, non-celiac gluten-intolerance, and living a gluten-free life.

All-purpose flour will provide a delightful crunchy texture when used for frying. In baking, it will produce baked goods that are lighter and less dense than those made with rice flour.

In my recipe, I used sodium alginate because it does not leave a slimy texture. Gum arabic, guar gum, xanthan gum can also be used, but the texture might be noticeable. // Sodium alginate is my go-to ingredient to replace cornstarch and rice flour.

Rice flour (ssalgaru) is flour made from finely milled rice. Koreans usually use one of two kinds of ssalgaru for making rice cakes: chapssalgaru (sweet rice flour) and maepssalgaru. Maepssalgaru is made with short grain rice and usually sold frozen to keep it moist.