kimchi family tree

In an ambitious mood right before a road trip, I purchased vegetables for the next round of kimchi.

I’d decided to branch out, so I bought a tremendous amount of daikon, mei choy, leeks, and carrots. I also found some bird’s eye chilis and a precious jar of genuine wasabi powder.

(Items labeled ”wasabi” are often plain old horseradish colored green and mixed with hot mustard. I had originally planned on using fresh horseradish as the wasabi component of my kimchi, but there was no fresh horseradish, so I was delighted to find genuine wasabi.)

I ran low on time before the road trip. I was in a quandary. The vegetables would be worse for wear after a week in the fridge. During the early stages of fermentation, vegetables require a lot of care. If I jarred them up and left them for a week, they might bubble up, and overflow the brine, leaving the top vegetables dry and susceptible to mold. I needed to start the vegetables in a big container and include enough brine to protect them no matter how vigorously they fermented.

The day before I left, I set the vegetables up to self-brine in a 2-gallon mixing bowl. I sliced the vegetables and mixed them with salt to draw water out of the vegetables and make the brine. I stirred them every few hours to disperse the salt evenly. That evening, I added leftover brine from an earlier batch of kimchi and stirred some more.

Right before I left town, I put a plate on the veggies to weigh them down and topped with a generous quantity of salt water. Ordinarily, I try to self-brine as much as possible and keep the salt water to a minimum. In this case, I wanted to make sure that the vegetables would be okay on their own for a week. I covered the bowl and went on my trip.

I returned home to the smell of fermentation. I peeked in the bowl and saw nice bubbly brine without any signs of undesirable growth. I went to bed untroubled and slept the sleep of the just plain tired.

The next morning, I got out my half-gallon jars, canning funnel, pickle weights, and air gaps. I went to work.

I sliced a couple apples and a big ginger root and layered them in the first jar with the fermenting vegetables.

The second jar got spoonfuls of vegetables interspersed with handfuls of bird’s eye peppers (about half an ounce of dried peppers).

The third jar got lots of vegetables and occasional careful sprinkling (less than a teaspoon total) of wasabi powder.

I had only a hazy idea of proper quantities of any of these seasonings.

I’m excited to see what happens.