Hi everyone! This summer, my family traveled to Korea and made many good memories there. Among them, personally, I really enjoyed making kimchi with my mom and I finally got her kimchi recipe to share with you. In my opinion, she makes the best kimchi ever. I wrote down her recipe with an exact amount of each ingredient, which made my mom a little frustrated because Korean mothers do not usually cook with a recipe, instead, they cook with their instinct. So, it is often hard to get the same result as them without careful measurements. Anyway, today I feel happy that I can share this treasure with you. So let’s get started.
Yield: 1 Gallon
Short Korean Lesson
- UmMa (엄마) = Mom
- EoMeoNi (어머니) = Mother (more respected word for Mom)
Video Instructions
Main Ingredients:
- 2 Large Napa Cabbages (5 Lb)
- 1½ Cups Coarse Sea Salt
- 1 Cup Green Onions
- 1 Cup Garlic Chives
Kimchi Paste Ingredients:
- 2 Cups Water, 8 Dried Kelp Pieces (1×1 Inch)
- 1½ Cups Hot Pepper Powder
- ½ Cup Fuji Apple
- ½ Cup Asian Pear
- ½ Cup Onion
- 6 Garlic Cloves
- 2 Tbsp Sweet Rice or Short Grain Rice
- 2 Tbsp Salted Shrimp
- 2 Tbsp Sesame Seeds
- ½ Tbsp Fish Sauce
- 1 tsp Ginger Syrup
Directions
The most important thing for delicious kimchi is to salt the cabbage with the proper amount of salt. Here’s how my mom did it: cut the bottom of 2 Napa cabbage heads (5 lbs) with a knife like this. Then peel the cabbage one leaf at a time like this.
Lightly wash the cabbage leaves in cold water and leave a little bit of water on the leaves. The extra water will help in the salting process.
I put the washed cabbage in a colander. Prepare a large stainless steel bowl big enough to mix together all of the ingredients with the two heads of cabbage. I bought this for about $26 at a Korean mart. If you make kimchi frequently, it would be nice to have a large bowl like this.
This is coarse salt, which is mainly used for salting cabbage and radishes when making kimchi. You see, the size of the salt is very big. For this recipe, we need about 1½ cups of coarse salt.
Put the cabbage leaves in one layer across the bottom of the bowl. Grab a handful of salt and sprinkle it evenly over the cabbage. Then, put another layer of cabbage leaves across those and sprinkle the salt on them in the same way. Repeat this process for all the cabbage leaves. If you have leftover salt, sprinkle it all over the top.
I’m going to let the cabbage sit for about 2 hours. Turn the cabbage gently at intervals of 30 minutes. By doing this, your cabbage will get salted more evenly. (30 minutes later…) Let’s check the cabbage now. I can see that the water has already come out of the cabbage. I’ll mix up the cabbage a few times and continue to let it sit.
After an hour, you can make the kimchi paste. First, my mom uses kelp broth instead of water to add savory flavor to her Kimchi. Put 2 cups of water and 8 pieces of kelp into a small pot. When the water starts to boil, boil it for about 5 minutes on medium-high.
After 5 minutes, turn off the heat and discard the kelp. The color of the broth will be slightly brown and greenish.
Get 2 Tbsp of glutinous rice (which is used to make rice porridge). This is another important ingredient for good kimchi. I have already washed the rice and drained out the water. You can use short grain rice, glutinous rice flour, rice flour, or wheat flour instead of glutinous rice.
Put 1 cup of the kelp broth and washed rice in a blender and blend it for a few minutes until the rice gets very fine.
Then, pour the ground glutinous rice water into a pot and boil it on high. Occasionally stir it, to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Let’s prepare other ingredients while the porridge is boiling.
This is an Asian pear and this is a Fuji apple. This is salted shrimp, which you can find in the refrigerator section of a Korean grocery store. Chop ½ cup of a pear, ½ cup of an apple, and ½ cup of an onion into chunks.
Cut 1 cup worth of green onions into 1 inch pieces and 1 cup worth of garlic chives into 2 inch pieces. If you don’t have garlic chive, you can replace them with green onions, in which case you would cut up 2 cups worth of green onions.
Now add the chopped pear, apple, onion, 6 cloves of garlic, 2 Tbsp of salted shrimp, and 2 Tbsp of kelp broth into a blender. Blend it for about 1 minute or until everything gets blended well.
After the ground rice water starts to boil, boil it for 3 more minutes. The consistency of the porridge should be like this. It’s done now.
When the porridge is still warm, pour it into a large bowl and add 1 ½ cups of hot pepper powder, the fruit-veggie mixture, ½ Tbsp of fish sauce, and 1 teaspoon of ginger syrup. The ginger syrup is another secret ingredient in my mom’s delicious kimchi.
Mix all the ingredients together. Leave it set for a while so that all the flavors are well blended.
At first, the cabbage is crunchy, but after 2 hours, I can see that the leaves can be folded without breaking them. This is how you know that the cabbage is well salted.
At this time, the salt on the outside of the cabbage should be washed away. Rinse the salted cabbage twice in cold water.
Place the cabbage in a colander and let the leftover water drip off of the cabbage for about 30 minutes.
Then put the cabbage into the kimchi paste. I do not like to get the paste on my hands so I wear vinyl gloves on my hands like this. If you can do this with your bare hands, I give you my thumbs up. 👍 👏 Anyway, mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste. ^^
After you’ve mixed the cabbage with the kimchi paste, add the green onion and the garlic chives.
Finally, sprinkle 2 Tbsp of sesame seeds on top. Now your delicious kimchi is ready to serve if you want to eat fresh kimchi.
Otherwise, put the kimchi in a glass container and leave it at room temperature for a day. Then, keep it in the refrigerator. In a week or two, the kimchi will be well fermented.
Make this delicious and easy kimchi at home and tell us what you think. Thanks go out to my mom who taught me how to make her awesome kimchi.
Today’s cooking tip is making ginger syrup.
When I made kimchi today, you saw that I put some ginger syrup in the kimchi paste. Ginger syrup can be used as a seasoning for a variety of Korean foods such as kimchi, fish dishes, vegetable sides, stews, and so on. It is also good to drink as a tea when you have a cold or sore throat. Once you’ve made it, it’s easy to use for a long time, so I wanted to teach you how to make it. Do not be surprised if it seems too simple. Hehe
First, prepare as much ginger as you want.
Use a small knife or spoon to gently peel off the skin by gently scraping it. Wash it once with water and cut them into chunks.
Put the prepared ginger in a blender and add a little water if necessary. Grind your ginger until it is completely ground.
Mix ginger and sugar in a 1: 1 ratio. I prepared 2 ½ cups of ginger paste, so I will mix the same amount of sugar into it.
Place the ginger syrup in a glass bottle that has been sterilized once in hot water. Then store it in your refrigerator. It will last for several months.
If you do not have ginger syrup to use in your kimchi, you can put a thumbnail size of fresh ginger in your blender when you blend the garlic and other ingredients. Then, add some sugar into your kimchi paste according to your tastes.
Did you enjoy my mom’s kimchi recipe and my cooking tip? If you did, please give me a thumbs up. We are getting closer to 200k subscribers.
Hi Aeri,
Can I substitute the salted shrimp with rehydrated chinese style dried shrimp? Will that work?
hi Meldy,
I don’t know how strong it tastes for your chinese style dried shrimp~~~ so I hesitate to say yes for it.. To be safe, I can recommend you to use more fish sauce for salt for the saltiness for your kimchi paste instead ~~~~
It’s been three days since I jarred the kimchi. It tastes so wonderful, already! After a few weeks I will present the kimchi to my Imo. Her son says I should let it ferment much longer. I can’t believe I made something so delicious on my first try! How much better will it get?
I made one mistake — I blended garlic leaves and onion leaves with the paste — so the paste became green. I added extra, extra red pepper to change the color back to red. After tasting, I don’t think it was a bad mistake.
I ran out of fish sauce so I used extra shrimp paste. I’m Filipino so I used Philippine shrimp paste (‘bagoong’). I ran out of shrimp paste, too, so I used oyster sauce as well. I didn’t have any sesame oil so I left it out, along with the seeds. With the extra umami I added I don’t think it was needed.
That’s also because I used freshly shucked oysters and their juice instead of kelp. I went to an ocean-town to buy the oysters.
I didn’t make ginger syrup. Instead I just ground the ginger (and skins) with the paste and added a little coconut sugar. Also, I used Hawaiian red salt to soften the cabbage. I used the fruit your Oma recommended. I didn’t measure anything, either, Asian-style.
The kimchi is incredible after only three days!
It got me thinking. I could make a Philippine style kimchi.
The sweet rice porridge I can substitute with banana porridge. I’m very fond of bananas that we call ‘saba’. In the Asian market they call them Thai banana. They taste nice when heated — not too sweet and with a nice texture.
I can use mango instead of apple and pear. In the Philippines (and also Trinidad Tobago) we pickle unripe mangoes. I think unripe mangoes would be nice, along with ripe mangoes.
To top it off, virgin coconut oil would be good. It has a light flavor. Sesame would be too strong.
There is beautiful fish sauce from the Philippines made of mackerel. It’s the best I ever had.
When I go back home I will attempt this recipe. The mangoes and bananas in the US aren’t good.
hi Tim,
Wow, seriously.. this was the longest comment I’ve ever got since I started Aeriskitchen. Thank you so much for your time. I’m glad to hear that you got success for your first kimchi.. great job !!! Although.. it seems like.. you created your own recipe by changing here and there.. you must be very good at cooking too..hehe Thanks a lot. Hope to hear from you more often.
hi aeri..
thank you for the recipe..i Will try to make it..but I have a question..i hope you can answer for me.. if I don’t have salted shrimp, what can I replace it with? Thank you
Hi,
Salted shrimp is one of the key ingredients for my mom’s taste kimchi but.. if you don’t have.. replace it with fish sauce.. You need to adjust the saltiness for your taste.. Hope your kimchi is delicious. Thanks 🙂
Hi Aeri,
Thank you for your mom’s recipe.
I will try to make it. I have a question. Hope you can answer me.
1.) Kimchi paste ingredients – 2 cups water 8pieces kelp pcs. Under the direction you put 1 cup water and 8pcs kelp to boil. Then you add 2 tbsp. kelp broth into the chopped fruits & onion & garlic and blend until fine. What happens to the balance kelp broth?
Looking forward to your early reply.
Thank you.
hi Margaret,
When you boil the broth, you will lose some.. so even you start to cook the broth with 2 cups of water, at the end you will lose some.. that’s why you want to make plenty for using later… among the broth you made.. you will use 1 cup of the broth for the rice porridge (paste) and 2 Tbsp for grinding the vegetable and fruit ingredients.. 🙂 I hope it’s more clear now ~~~ I’m excited to hear how you made it.. This kimchi paste can make good amount of kimchi.. sometimes 2-3 heads of napa cabbage depends on the size of the cabbage.. so make sure that you got enough napa cabbage for this recipe.. thanks
Hello, I want to ask I can use any type of pear because it’s hard to find Asian pear here in Middle East. Thank you.
hi Beverly,
Asian pear is very different from other pears in flavor and texture.. so in that case, just sweet apple can be better option to replace. Thanks
Thank you so much. I made some of your recipe like the Gyochon Chicken and the Easy Napa Cabbage Kimchi and my friends like it very much.
hi Beverly,
Wow, I’m very happy to hear that. Thanks 🙂
Hi Aeri,
This is a great post. It’s very informative. But did you really mean to suggest a toilet to use in place of the large bowl mentioned at the beginning? Did you perhaps mean a sink or bucket?
Hi Helen,
Oh no~~ I’m very embarrassed right now. Thank you so much for reminding me about it. I will explain what happened. Every time, I creat my post, I write down my recipes here and my husbands help my English. He checks if I make any major mistakes.. and if he finds mistakes, he corrects them for me. Then… for this recipe.. he added that part as a joke… Later, I saw it and laughed it because I know it was just his joke.. but nothing serious or offending anybody..then I deleted his joke because it was just for me to laugh but not for posting ..anyway..that was for my voice over.. then I forgot to delete it here. oops.. I’m so glad you mentioned it today. (My husband is in trouble now.. ) lol I’m glad to find out somebody is still paying attention to my post though ..because I think more and more, people don’t use blog these days.. most people use other social media sites like facebook, youtube, instagram.. anyway, have a great day. 🙂