Fermentation Atlas · Side
Baechu Kimchi
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, ferment tang with real depth behind it, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 1 napa cabbage, about 1.2kg, quartered lengthwise
- 90g coarse sea salt, not iodised
- 40g gochugaru, coarse Korean chilli flake
- 30g garlic, about 8 cloves, grated
- 15g ginger, grated
- 30g salted shrimp (saeujeot), minced
- 20g fish sauce
- 15g glutinous rice flour cooked to a paste with 150ml water
- 100g Korean radish, julienned
- 3 spring onions, in 4cm lengths
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Brining & curingFermentationSalting to draw the water outKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · fish · shellfish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Salt the cabbage between every leaf, heaviest at the stem, and leave 2 hours turning once. It is ready when a stem folds double without cracking. 120 min
- Rinse three times and drain cut side down 30 min. Water left in the leaf dilutes the brine and slows the ferment. 30 min
- Cool the rice paste, then beat in gochugaru, garlic, ginger, shrimp and fish sauce. Fold through radish and spring onion.
- Wearing gloves, paint the paste over every leaf. Pack into a jar, press until brine rises over the top, and leave 2cm of headroom.
- Ferment at 18 to 20C for 2 to 4 days until it tastes sour and fizzes against the tongue, then refrigerate.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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