Making kimchi from Chinese cabbage. Korean-style Beijing cabbage - a simple recipe for kimchi and chimchi

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish as it is served everywhere in the country. Making kimchi in Korean is easy even for an inexperienced housewife. There is a popular recipe that you can easily master at home. Let's consider it.

Korean kimchi – a classic of the genre

Chinese cabbage - 1.8-2 kg.
onions - 1 pc.
hot chili pepper - 1 pod
garlic cloves - 8 pcs.
carrots - 1 pc.
soy sauce - to your taste
ground pepper (red) - 20 gr.
granulated sugar - 20 gr.
salt - 190 gr.
greens - to taste

Chinese cabbage kimchi is traditionally prepared in a spicy form. This is the Korean dish that has gained wide popularity. The recipe spread all over the world and became a staple in the kitchen books of most families.

1. Take Chinese cabbage, free it from the upper spoiled or wrinkled leaves, they will not be needed. Cut each head of cabbage into 4 equal sections.

2. Kimchi is marinated in brine. To do this, prepare a deep saucepan in which the chopped heads of cabbage will fit. Pour salt into the container, pour water halfway. Boil for 10 minutes, turn off and cool.

3. Now dip the cabbage into the solution; it should not float freely. It would be more correct for the brine to only lightly cover the heads of cabbage. Set up the press by placing a flat plate on top of the vegetable. Record the time, and after 12 hours proceed to the next step.

4. Experienced housewives recommend leaving the cabbage to marinate overnight, since preparing Korean kimchi with this approach is much easier. At home, you just need to turn the heads of cabbage over before going to bed, and after waking up, start a new stage.

5. Continue cooking in the morning. You need to pass the peeled garlic cloves through a crush, mix with granulated sugar and ground red pepper (you can use a mixture with paprika). Pour a little soy sauce over the eye to make the mixture thick.

6. Cut the peeled onion into half rings and add to the pepper mixture. Grate the carrots using a special device to make it look Korean. Add the carrots to the previous mixture, and add chopped greenberries here.

7. Remove the pickled cabbage and put on gloves. Scoop out a good portion of the pepper mixture with onions and carrots and grate the Chinese cabbage leaves on all sides.

8. Place the heads of cabbage rubbed with hot sauce in a deep saucepan, pour in the brine to half the capacity. Place a plate and a two-liter bottle on top, and place the kimchi under pressure in the refrigerator.

9. In this form, Chinese cabbage needs to marinate for about 2-3 days. Before use, you are allowed to wash the leaves, after which you can eat kimchi, stewed or fresh. It turns out very tasty if you season the dish with olive oil.

Kimchi is one of the national dishes of Korean cuisine. In fact, Koreans use this word to describe any pickled or salted vegetables seasoned with garlic and pepper. I managed to find about two hundred recipes for making kimchi on the Internet, but I offer for the consideration of cooks my proven method of making kimchi from Chinese cabbage. I have prepared kimchi using this recipe many times already, and if you follow my recipe and look at the step-by-step photos, you are guaranteed to prepare a very tasty crispy and moderately spicy cabbage appetizer.

Products:

Beijing cabbage – 3 kg;
Vegetable oil – 30 ml;
Garlic – 100 gr;
Water – 6 liters;
Salt – 6 tbsp;
A mixture of dried paprika, hot pepper and coriander – 100 g.

To make tasty kimchu, try to choose large heads of Chinese cabbage; small cabbage often falls apart when fermented and the finished appetizer then has an unsightly appearance.

The seasoning mixture can be used either dried or fresh, depending on the season. Just in the summer or autumn, instead of dried paprika and hot pepper, we grind lettuce pepper and hot red pepper into a meat grinder.

How to make kimchi from Chinese cabbage

And so, to begin with, wash the Chinese cabbage under cold running water and cut it in half along the head.

Place the cabbage in a deep pan (enamel or stainless steel).

Next, we need to prepare the brine. This is very simple to do; add salt to regular water, or even not boiled water, and stir until the crystals are completely dissolved.

Fill the cabbage with brine and put pressure on top. We leave the Chinese cabbage in a warm room to salt for two days.

After a while, we drain the brine from the cabbage and then we need to prepare a spicy dressing for kimchi.

Pour dried paprika, hot pepper and coriander into a deep bowl, pour a glass of boiling water and leave for ten minutes for the seasonings to swell.

During this time, we need to peel and chop the garlic in a blender.

Add vegetable oil to the kimchi dressing.

Then add the garlic and mix everything well.

This is what our dressing should look like.

Now, you need to generously grease each leaf of Chinese cabbage with the spicy mixture.

Place the Chinese cabbage coated with seasoning in a bowl, trying to place the heads of cabbage as close to each other as possible. Cover the cabbage with a lid and leave at room temperature for 48 hours.

To evenly salt the Chinese cabbage twice a day, we need to turn it over and squeeze it a little with our hands so that the juice is released and the cabbage is completely covered with it.

Place the finished kimchi snack in the refrigerator and store for no more than two weeks. It is best to put it in a container with a tight-fitting lid.

Before serving, cut the Chinese cabbage kimchi into large pieces and sprinkle with a little vegetable oil.

This is how we got a bright, beautiful and very tasty Korean snack.

I usually serve kimchi as a spicy and spicy addition to or. It is very tasty to add to various spicy soups.

The easiest and most enjoyable way to experience a foreign culture is through the cuisine of that country. After some time after visiting a country, you may forget many details, for example, the names of members of the government of that country, but you will never forget your favorite dish that you tried there. And although there are accepted food stereotypes for the people of a given country - for example, Germans eat more sausage and drink more beer than others - they allow us to get to know and understand the people of a given country more than any other aspect of culture.

So, the national dish of Korea is kimchi, and you are right if you think that most Koreans eat kimchi in one form or another every day. Kimchi is the general name for pickled or pickled vegetable side dishes made from Chinese cabbage, radish, cucumber or seafood, garlic and red pepper. Culinary experts have more than 170 varieties and recipes of kimchi, but the most common is Chinese cabbage kimchi.

Kimchi is just one of the dishes that is served with rice. Since all dishes are served immediately, Korean etiquette does not provide for any special order in food. The emphasis is on the number of dishes.

Traditionally, the number of dishes displayed indicated the position in society of both the host and the guest. Only members of the Joseon royal dynasty could afford a 12-course meal. The aristocratic class could afford a 7 or 9 course meal. And ordinary people usually limited themselves to 3 or 5 dishes.

But in reality, a three-course meal usually included at least rice, broth, kimchi, three vegetable dishes, two fried dishes, and two types of pickles and preparations. Imagine then the daily diet of the royal family, and the cooks who had to cook three times a day!

Nowadays, of course, no one prepares so many dishes for themselves at once. Even President Kim Young Sam sometimes makes do with a simple bowl of noodle soup. But noodles also require additional dishes and salads, which add flavor to the main dish and are a must-have feature Korean cuisine. (Perhaps because of the frequency of eating spicy salads and snacks every day, the most common type of cancer in Korea is stomach cancer.)

Anyone who has been to a Korean restaurant knows that eating here is a common ritual. In a saucepan that stands on each table, one meat or fish dish is prepared for everyone, and then everyone helps themselves from a common saucepan and eats. Close friends drink drinks, passing their glass to each other. Unhygienic? Not at all. Koreans feel that sharing food and drinks in this way is the best way to express their affection for a person.

Kimchi

Spicy kimchi is a must-have accompaniment to rice or noodle soup in Korea. But now kimchi is used almost everywhere, even in pizza and hamburgers. Even bachelors who barely know how to cook know how to turn leftover rice and kimchi into a sautéed, delicious, sizzling dish.

The process of making kimchi is a great example for learning about Korean cooking culture. (by the way, most men never enter the kitchen, and most women after marriage only know how to cook, following the advice of their mothers-in-law).

Kimchi recipe

A handful of this, a pinch of that... ? What tools are used? Everything is cut, pounded, crumpled and rubbed with bare hands. Use your fingers to taste the sauce. Gradually add different seasonings.

The best cook kimchi, of course, older women, since cooking in the Korean tradition is strenuous physical labor, and they say that the best cooks have magic hands. No recipe book can replace the years of experience and mistakes required to develop the skill and intuition for achieving the desired flavor and adding appropriate seasonings.

Previously, when a girl got married, her mother-in-law began to teach her how to cook Chinese cabbage kimchi. And recipes for cooking in this way were passed down through generations.

Nowadays women have less opportunities and time cook kimchi in the traditional way. Families are not as large as they used to be, and city dwellers live in small apartments and often cannot gather together for kimchang, the annual cooking season. kimchi when large batches of kimchi are prepared for the whole winter. (it is during the kimchang season that prices for Chinese cabbage, garlic and radishes jump several times). Previously, kimchi was stored in a cellar or underground in jars, but now special containers are sold, and refrigerators are suitable for making kimchi in small batches several times a year.

The easiest and fastest way cook kimchi- this is mul-kimchi or kimchi on water. Tikiye kimchi has a sweet and tangy flavor and is an excellent appetizer to accompany rice and other main dishes. Unlike other methods of making kimchi, this type does not require the use of shrimp paste for the starter and is prepared over several days.

Cooking method Chinese cabbage kimchi

Take a few forks of Chinese cabbage and cut each cabbage into quarters lengthwise. Place these halves in a saucepan, sprinkle with salt, cover with a lid or plate and put under a press to salt overnight in a cool place. When the cabbage is salted, prepare a seasoning mixture of chopped garlic, red pepper, ground cilantro, sugar and vinegar (optional) and coat with this mixture, placing it under each cabbage leaf. Cover again and place under a press in the refrigerator for a day. After this, you can eat it with rice or other dishes.

Kimchi making video:

Kimchi sauce– a seasoning unique in its taste, which has the appearance of a thick paste. This sauce belongs to Korean cuisine and contains various components traditional in Korean cuisine, including soybean mass. It is very spicy because it consists of a large amount of hot pepper. In terms of its organoleptic qualities, the product resembles tomato paste, or more precisely, spicy tomato sauce.

The variety of dishes and sauces of Korean cuisine present on our tables makes the diet more varied. Therefore, an increasing number of them appear on our menu, and we do not always use them traditionally. The spiciness of kimchi goes well with meat products; it is often eaten with barbecue, using instead of traditional Caucasian sauces. A few spoons of kimchi can perfectly dilute the blandness of stews and soups or add piquancy to other dishes of our traditional cuisine.

Kimchi sauce is easy to purchase in specialty stores or online, or you can prepare it at home. The recipe is quite simple, and the reviews about the homemade product are very positive.

What is kimchi sauce made of?

What is kimchi sauce made of? This question is asked by each of those who had to try this unique product. So, we would like to note that there is no single seasoning recipe, and everything will depend only on what products you will use this sauce with in the future.

The one component that is present in all variations of the sauce is gochujang. In principle, this is the very basic component that creates the amazing, incomparable taste of the finished product. This soybean paste itself is very spicy. It is quite dense and is essentially a mass that creates a structure.

If you plan to use kimchi as a seasoning and flavor enhancer for meat and fish dishes, then increase the amount of the base component.

If, for example, housewives plan to prepare spicy and aromatic pickled Chinese cabbage, as was originally intended by the creators of kimchi sauce, then the amount of pepper can be reduced.

In addition to the base ingredient, ginger root, rice vinegar or lime juice, garlic and onion are most often used. One of the components that is unusual for our perception can be called fish sauce. Initially, kimchi sauce was a marinade for preparing Chinese cabbage, fermented during the cooking process with the juice of the main product. It had a specific fermentation smell and a rather soft consistency.

Subsequently, the name of this product became a household name, and now this is the name given to a certain group of sauces that are similar in their basic components. Mainly:
apple;
mandarin;
hot peppers;
mustard;
daikon radish;
sweet red pepper;
salt;

sugar.

Using the sauce The use of kimchi sauce has found wide application in many Asian cuisines, as well as in our country. At home, it is used in the preparation of more than one and a half hundred different dishes. It is used in the preparation of sushi, rolls and sashimi, as well as as an independent dish.

In our region, the favorite product is also used in a variety of compositions.

Some recipes suggest using this paste for marinating fatty sea fish. This allows you to achieve a delicate structure of the product and at the same time rid the fish of a specific odor.

Young vegetables, such as zucchini or eggplant, turn out surprisingly tasty with this sauce. They acquire a subtle aroma. At the same time, the zucchini gets a new taste, and the blue ones lose their natural astringent bitterness, which is replaced by a spicy aftertaste. Green beans are no less tasty. And what can we say about the cauliflower inflorescences... You'll just lick your fingers!

Product benefits

The benefits of using the product are very great. This sauce is considered dietary because its calorie content is low.

The chemical composition of this product is very diverse; it contains all the substances that initially make up the structure of its ingredients. It's safe to say that it is quite balanced. Based on the components of the seasoning, we can conclude that such a paste is rich in B vitamins, vitamins A, C, E, and also contains the entire complex of essential microelements that have a beneficial effect on the body and can support the immune system.

Just a teaspoon of this piquant and original product in all respects, eaten per day, allows you to activate the body’s protective functions, improves metabolism and speeds up the processing of food. It is believed that kimchi is able to break down fats and carbohydrates, and also has a beneficial effect on the hematopoietic system.

In Asian countries, this sauce is considered a “longevity” product, because it perfectly starts and activates the digestion process.

And it is probably difficult to find someone who, having once tried this incomparable product, would not want to eat it again and again.

Restrictions on use

There are still restrictions on the use of the product, despite its seemingly natural and completely harmless nature. People of certain categories should be wary of the issue of consuming the sauce; due to illnesses or certain conditions, they need to eat this sauce in strictly dosed quantities or avoid it altogether.

These include pregnant and lactating women and people suffering from allergies and diseases:
gastrointestinal tract;
of cardio-vascular system;
excretory system;

endocrine system. And also this seasoning should not be eaten by those who suffer from periodontal disease or frequent stomatitis, in order to avoid irritation of the mucous membrane and the formation of ulcers.

What to replace it with?

What can you substitute for kimchi sauce? This question is asked by many housewives. Essentially, the sauce is reminiscent of our raw, very spicy tomato “adzhika”. Only there are no tomatoes in its composition, and their role is played by tangerines.

It is impossible to say unequivocally that kimchi sauce can be replaced with a product that is familiar to us. This is where its desirability lies for the consumer.

Using various sauces, dishes and seasonings of Asian cuisine allows you to diversify the menu of any family, and thanks to kimchi, familiar dishes can be discovered in a new light.

This country's drinks are very spicy and piquant, stimulating the appetite. Korean chefs use familiar products for cooking, only supplemented with incredible fiery spices and fiery seasonings. This richness of food gives the dishes an unusual aroma and pleasant qualities.

One of the favorite and revered dishes in Korean cuisine is kimchi, or chimcha, the recipe for which you will learn from today’s article. Once you try it at least once, you will become a fan of this dish forever. In fact, it is pickled or salted, popular even among the Uzbek peoples. In Russia, instead of Peking cabbage, regular white cabbage is often used - the taste remains virtually unchanged.

Cabbage kimchi: recipe one

It is not difficult to prepare the national chimcha at home. The recipe requires the following ingredients:

Head of Chinese cabbage,

A whole head of garlic

Soy sauce (one hundred grams),

One red and one green chili pepper each,

Ground paprika (30 grams),

Onions (three heads),

9% vinegar (three spoons),

Grated ginger (two spoons),

Four tablespoons of salt per two liters of water.

Cooking process

We wash the forks, cut them into two parts and place them in a pan with salted water. Place a heavy weight on top so that the cabbage is completely under water. Leave for five days at room temperature.

A day before the expiration date, grind all the above spices and vegetables in a blender and let it brew for 24 hours. The cabbage should be rinsed under water. We put on gloves and generously coat each leaf with the spicy mixture. Fill with warm, slightly salted water and leave for a day. The next day, place the pickled vegetables in sterilized containers. This is such a spicy cabbage.

The chimcha recipe described above has not only amazing taste, but also beneficial properties. Korean chefs claim that the dish helps break down fat deposits due to the presence of chili pepper. In addition, the substances it contains help normalize the functioning of the intestinal tract and fight free radicals.

Korean snack chimcha: recipe two

Ingredients: Chinese cabbage, bell pepper, head of garlic, cilantro pod, black pepper and salt to taste.

Pour the vegetable cut into several pieces with a brine solution, which consists of a liter of water and two tablespoons of salt. The marinade must be boiled and poured over the cabbage - leave for three days under pressure. After the specified amount of time, wash off the salt from the vegetable.

Prepare adjika: grind all components in a blender or meat grinder. Wearing rubber gloves, carefully lubricate the leaves with the prepared mixture and put them in the refrigerator. When serving, garnish with a sprig of dill and cilantro. Delicious kimchi (chimcha) goes perfectly with any side dish.

Recipe three - with pork meat

You will need ready-made chimcha, about three hundred grams, as well as fatty pork - at least 400 g, onions - several heads, black pepper and salt.

Sauté onions in olive oil. Then add finely chopped meat to it. When it is well browned, place small pieces of Korean cabbage in a frying pan, season with spices, cover with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes. Uncooked boiled rice is ideal as a side dish for this delicious dish.

Now you know what chimcha is. The recipe is quite simple. In addition, such cabbage helps improve health and give strength, and not every dish can boast of these qualities. Enjoy the taste and recharge your batteries.