My revised recipe for Kaleva Kimchi
This isn't Kimchi but what I make with readily available ingredients and is fermented in a repurposed 1 gallon glass pickle jar. My wife and I really like this. Especially over Ramen noodles.
Ingredients
5 lb. cabbage
1 lb carrots
1 large yellow onion (approx. 1 lb.)
salt (kosher, pickling or sea salt)
Kimchi paste
1/3 cup crushed red pepper flakes
1 tbs. sugar
1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup minced garlic
Directions
Core cabbage (dispose of core). Peels carrots and cut of ends ( dispose of ends) Remove skin of onion. Weigh cabbage, carrots and onion to determine amount of salt you'll need which is 2% of total weight of cabbage, carrots and onion.
Cut cabbage into thin strips about 2-3 inches long and 1/4 inc wide. Place in large mixing bowl. Add salt and work it in like you are making sauerkraut. Chop carrots and onion in a food processor and set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together ingredients to make the paste and set aside.
Over the next 30-45 minutes, work the cabbage about every 5 to 10 minutes by squeezing and mixing it with your hands. Add the finely chopped carrots and onion and mix in well. Then add the paste and mix that in well.
Transfer the ingredients to a clean 1 gallon glass container while packing it down with what ever device you have that'll work. I use a meat chopper. 5 lbs of cabbage, 1 lb of carrots and 1 lb of onion along with the paste and liquid will pretty much fill the 1 gallon container. To keep the kimchi below the brine level, I'll take a 1 quart ziploc bag and fill it partly with water and remove as much air as possible from the bag before closing. I then place the bag in the bottle to force down the kimchi below the brine. I loosely screw on the cap and place the bottle in a large enough plastic bowl to catch the runoff as there will be some as the kimchi ferments.
Keep the kimchi in a dark place where the temp is somewhere between 60 and 70 degrees. The warmer the place is, the faster the kimchi will ferment and the cooler, the slower it will. I keep mine on a shelf in the basement for about 2 to 3 weeks, checking every so often to make sure the brine is covering the kimchi, before transferring it to the refrigerator.
Basically, my kimchi is glorified (spicy!) sauerkraut. If you already make your own sauerkraut, you can easily make this.
