Here’s my own napa cabbage kimchi recipe. When I want a clean taste, I don’t put fish sauce or shrimp paste, but without those seafood ingredients, I feel it lacks the depth of the kimchi flavor.. At the end of the fermentation, you wouldn’t even know that fish sauce was one of the ingredient as it transforms into a hidden amazing kimchi flavor!
Preparing cabbage
Most people prepare the cabbage by salting it for hours to get the water out of the cabbage. I like to do it just enough to give salty flavor but not too long since I enjoy having kimchi juice. Sometimes I skip the salting part altogether.
For this recipe, I salted a little like an hour. Cut the cabbage to a nice bite size, and clean them in running water. Evenly salt the cabbage.. Here’s look for a flavor – salty enough to eat it like a snack, but not too salty.
Preparing the kimchi sauce
Here’s the sauce ingredient ratio I used for this batch. but the most important thing is.. when you mix it with the cabbage, you gotta have the flavor profile… I look for a specific flavor and saltiness — just a bit too salty, a glimpse of sweetness, a bit too fishy. Once they start fermenting, the salty and fishy flavor goes away and gives a nice depth to the kimchi.
- ginger puree 1 spoon
- garlic puree (2 heads)
- sugar 1 spoon
- salt 1 spoon
- shrimp paste puree 1 spoon
- pepper flakes 3/4 cup
- fish sauce 7 spoon
- cherry extract I made : 5 spoons (this is what I use to give awesome sweetness)
Putting it all together
After the cabbage was salted for about an hour, you mix the rest of the ingredients and put it in a pot for fermentation.
Once fermentation starts, you will see it bubbling and smell the fermentation!
Final Touch
I like to taste test once fermentation has begun as you can tell how the final fermented kimchi will taste like and I try to add more ingredients if needed.
After Thought
The kimchi is now nicely fermented after about 5 days. Next time, I will put less fish sauce and less ginger.
