Rachel’s Pak Choi Kimchi

Ingredients

– 300g pak choi
– 150g carrots
– 11g salt (if scaling up, you will need 2.5% of the weight of the veg in salt)
– 1 inch piece of ginger, grated
– 4 garlic cloves, grated
– Korean red pepper flakes to taste
– A pinch of sugar (optional)
– A little water
Optional additional vegetables: spring onions, mooli, radish, kohlrabi, coriander
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Instructions

  1. Wash the pak choi thoroughly, and chop it up. Peel the carrots, and cut them into matchsticks. Add the carrots to the pak choi
  2. Weigh all the veg ingredients together and add 2.5% of that weight in salt (in this recipe, 450g total weight of veg + 11g salt)
  3. Bash and squish the veg mixture until lots of liquid has been released and it has reduced in size. You can use a pestle, rolling pin, or anything that is up to task and won’t break
  4. Blend the garlic, ginger, Korean red pepper flakes, a pinch of sugar and a little water to make a paste, and add the paste to the veg, mixing thoroughly
  5. Transfer the mixture into a sterilised glass jar and make sure to press down the veg so that all of it is submerged in the liquid. Make sure to leave at least a 4cm gap at the top of the jar for the kimchi to expand.
  6. Leave at room temperature for three days – with the lid only resting on (not closed tight)
  7. After three days, taste it and it leave out for another day if you’d like it to be more fermented
  8. Once fermented to the taste you like, put on the lid firmly and refrigerate – it will keep well for months!

We love eating kimchi on toast, kimchi and cheese toasties, kimchi pancakes, with rice, noodles, tofu or eggs.