Saturday, June 19, 2010

Making Kim Chee

I've tried several kim chee recipes over the years. This year's first attempts are using a new one, called quick spicy kimchee. I've used Napa cabbage, bok choy, Tatsoi, and this year, a choy called China choy. The pungent tang of bok choy stalks really adds a lot to kim chee taste.

Here are three plants, freshly harvested.

Here they are, after being washed and trimmed.

This is the salt phase. The leaves sit, soaking up 1/4 cup of Kosher salt for a couple of hours. Then they are rinsed.

The garlic gets sliced very thinly. The scallions, a bit more roughly. The ginger gets finely ground. I add two tablespoons of very hot chili paste.

The finished kim chee, in a sterilized bottle, ready for refigeration. It will be ripe enough to eat when I get back from my annual trip to Chitina.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yum. Glad to find another white person who likes kim chee. Discovered it in Hawaii and have had it many ways. I like spinach and lots of garlic and nearly any recipe with daikon radish in it. Looks so good.

Philip Munger said...

I'm growing daikon, which will be used in the next batches.