Rachel’s Pak Choi Kimchi

Serves

12 People

Cooking Time

30 minutes

Season

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Dietary

Dairy Free

Gluten Free

Vegan

Vegetarian

We love making pak choi kimchi when our farm fields are full of this gorgeous vegetable! Easy to make, healthy and superbly delicious! It can be enjoyed on toast, by the forkful, with eggs, noodles, or tofu.

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

Instructions

Wash the pak choi thoroughly, and chop it up. Peel the carrots, and cut them into matchsticks. Add the carrots to the pak choi
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)
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
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
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.
Leave at room temperature for three days – with the lid only resting on (not closed tight)
After three days, taste it and it leave out for another day if you’d like it to be more fermented
Once fermented to the taste you like, put on the lid firmly and refrigerate – it will keep well for months!