By Eric Kim
- Total Time
- 4 ¼ hours, plus at least 2 days’ fermenting
- Rating
- 4(289)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This tongbaechu kimchi, made with whole napa cabbage, is a wonderful way to witness firsthand the magic of preservation by salting. Though the first step — salting quartered cabbages to drain excess liquid — may require an afternoon, that time is entirely inactive. The bundles of sauced cabbage are jarred and left at room temperature for the first couple of days to jump-start the fermentation process, then refrigerated to continue souring slowly for weeks and even months. Fermenting bundled quarters — versus chopped pieces — results in a crisper, more flavorful cabbage kimchi. This recipe is pared down to its essentials, though you could supplement the funky, savory-sweet flavors here with traditional additions like a sprinkle of raw pine nuts, a palmful of Korean radish cut in matchsticks or a spoonful of saeujeot, salted fermented shrimp.
Featured in: Eric Kim’s Essential Korean Recipes
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Ingredients
Yield:1 (2-liter) jar (about 4 pounds kimchi)
- 1large napa cabbage (2½ to 3 pounds), quartered lengthwise
- ⅓cup coarse kosher salt or ⅔ cup kosher salt, such as Diamond Crystal
- 2medium red apples (such as Fuji, Gala or Honeycrisp)
- 1small yellow onion, peeled and chopped
- 10garlic cloves, peeled
- 1(2-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled
- ½cup fish sauce
- ½cup gochugaru
- 1tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1bunch scallions, chopped into ½-inch pieces
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (6 servings)
92 calories; 1 gram fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 20 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 12 grams sugars; 5 grams protein; 2008 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
Step
1
Dry-brine the cabbage: Rinse the cabbage quarters under cold running water and place on a large rimmed sheet pan. Generously salt the cabbage all over, making sure to season between the leaves as well as the outsides. (Don’t worry about being too precise; since the cabbages leak water, the salt will distribute evenly into the brine.) Set aside to brine at room temperature, cut sides up, until the hard leaves become limp and soggy, about 4 hours, flipping once or twice halfway through. During this brining time, the cabbage quarters should release plenty of water into the sheet pan.
Step
2
Make the sauce: Quarter one of the apples, leaving it unpeeled. Core it, coarsely chop it, then add it to a food processor. Add the onion, garlic and ginger, and process until finely chopped. Add the mixture to a large bowl and stir in the fish sauce, gochugaru and sugar. Peel the remaining apple, quarter it, core it, then thinly slice it crosswise. Fold the chopped scallions and thinly sliced apple into the sauce.
Step
3
Rinse the salted cabbage quarters under cold running water, squeezing them of their excess liquid. Place one cabbage quarter into the bowl with the sauce. With clean hands, smear ¼ of the sauce all over the outsides and between each leaf, tucking in the larger pieces of scallions and apple as well. Fold the cabbage quarter in half crosswise, gathering the leafy tail ends together and bringing them up and over the root end, to create a compact bundle. Place the bundle in the jar and repeat with the remaining three cabbage quarters until you have used up most of the sauce and the jar is filled with sauced cabbage, leaving about an inch of room on top. (A few air gaps are fine; they’ll fill with liquid over time.) Top the jar with any remaining sauce left behind in the bowl. Loosely close with a lid (see Tip). You can wash your hands at this stage.
Step
4
Let the jar of kimchi begin fermenting on the kitchen counter at room temperature for 2 to 3 days. After this, the cabbage should have released even more of its liquid; it’s OK if the liquid doesn’t completely cover the cabbage at this point, though it may. (This is a very juicy recipe.) Refrigerate the kimchi to finish fermenting until it’s sour, 2 to 3 weeks and up to 6 months, at which point it will be very, very sour and should be eaten or turned into jjigae. Check (and taste!) the kimchi every 2 to 3 days both to familiarize yourself with the fermentation process but also to allow gas to escape, which you can do by opening the lid every so often. As you go through the jar over time, take out one cabbage quarter at a time and chop it into bite-size pieces to serve. You can eat the core or toss it.
Tip
- One of the best containers for kimchi is a glass jar with a plastic lid. Stainless steel containers with metal lids (the kind that lock into place) are also traditionally used. Both types can be found online or at Korean supermarkets and work well for kimchi since the lids aren’t airtight. Avoid using Mason jars with airtight lids since they can explode as gas builds up during the fermentation process.
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4
out of 5
289
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Cooking Notes
S
A vegan hack instead of fish sauce, as recommended by Kenji Lopez Alt of Serious Eats:Substitute with a mix of white miso paste and soy sauce. The former adds umami and the latter adds the saltiness. I have tried it and it works really well.
Nik
plain white plastic lids for wide mouth mason jar: loosely hand tightenfound in bulk on amzn
cesaera
Try maangchi on thé internet I’ve made hers a ton. 5 stars. You can definitely make hers without the fish sauce. Read comments to know how. Also. It is the mak kimchi that I make it’s quicker AND delicious. We make it for our restaurant
Jessie
We are a week in after a tiny kimjang with my sister in law and brother in law. We made all 3 of Eric Kim’s kimchis. Red apples in this one, Asian pears in the other two. Ran low on spice/puree when putting these pieces into jar, and I have to say that I think I like sparse gochugaru better (I’m a little bit of a spice wimp). Either way, we are flying through our kimchi faster than we anticipated. It’s delicious!
Sonia Lo
There isn’t any garlic in the recipe. Our kitchen is always redolent with garlic during Kimjang…and we don’t put any fruit in our seasoning…
Kirsten
This is one of my favorite recipes. It was fun, and the kimchi was so good. It filled two quart mason jars. The veg hack--miso + soy--was delicious. Loved the apples. It took me about 3 months to consumer it all (mostly solo) and it's time to make more. A treasure.
BarNotKitchen
Can I use two One Quart plastic containers instead of one Two Quart container?
nvony
Delicious recipe. It takes about 3 days on the counter and *4 weeks in the fridge* to be fermented enough to develop the level of acidity we like, and will only get better from there … but we finished most of the batch rather quickly. The second time, I made a double batch so there’s a chance for Kimchi Chigae fown the road!Notes: we used Honeycrisp apples (sweet & tart!) and Korean scallions, which are flat, dark green and a bit sturdier than typical scallions you get in the U.S.
nvony
The first time, I didn’t rinse the dry brining salt off thoroughly enough for our taste. I recommend dunking the brined cabbage quarters in a large bowl of water to dislodge excess salt between the leaves. THEN rinse off under running water and squeeze out excess moisture according to recipe.
Durk
BTW if your cabbage isn't juicy, supermarket cabbages are often not fresh. Cabbage stores pretty well, but this is a symptom of being near the end of its storage life (my partner used to farm raise acres of cabbage for their local kraut factory in the 50s and 60s; they've taught me a lot)
Durk
I use half gallon glass jars with integrated wire-hinged lids and rubber seals, or I use wide mouth mason jars with a fermentation lid: a silicon top with a pierced "nipple" held on by a regular ring. Sounds kinky, but it vents fermentation gases. Both work well. Also, regular white or red cabbage is great, too, a different "kind" of kimchi; cut in smaller pieces because it's more firm. I've made my own kimchi for years. This is a good basic recipe.
kevin owen
Loved this recipe and want to make it again. Can I use the leftover sauce, or should I dispose of it and start over? Btw, I found a wonderful clay kimchi pot and lid at a Korean market. The clerk advised me to drape plastic wrap under the loose fitting lid.
Mela
Yes you can use he leftover sauce.
Vicki
what is the measurement for the white miso and soy sauce substituting for fish sauce?
Darragh Brady
I had to leave the cabbage salting overnight to get any appreciable amount of water out of it and when i put it all together it was NOT juicy- liquid only came up to a quarter of the way up my one gallon glass jar. I made up some more sauce with gochuchang, soy sauce, fish sauce and one TBSP sugar and added that - hopefully over the next few days I’ll see more liquid come out of the cabbage..
Running Bunny
I don’t think regular cabbage would work because it doesn’t have the soft, lettuce-like leaves that Napa cabbage does. You could certainly try it. Surprisingly, Walmart always has Napa. One head of cabbage made, for me, more than one quart jar, and it was gone FAST, so I invested in a kimchi box from Amazon that has a vented plastic inner lid. I make three heads at a time and the box I got is small enough for my fridge. I use Maangchi’s recipe too, though I will try this next time.
Barbara
There are a lot of companies making “fermentation lids” for canning jars. Fairly easy to find and not to expensive.
Lisa
My question: there's no mention of either disposing of or using the water released by the Napa cabbage during the dry brining process. What are we supposed to do with that? I think we're supposed to dispose of it, but....the recipe doesn't say.
Lisa
I disposed of the water. The kimchi was FANTASTIC, will make again.
Elliott R.
For those concerned about sterile containers—pickling is not canning. The salting keeps the bacteria in check while fermentation occurs. Sterility would actually defeat the curing process. For rinse water I use well water instead of city water, as treated water has disinfectants that could attenuate the fermentation. Clean, of course. Sterile, no.
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