How to Make Kimchi at Home in One Afternoon (Baechu Kimchi)

The first kimchi I made on my own was in a tiny one-room near Seongsu station, on a Saturday in October when the air finally turned cold enough that the window stayed open all afternoon. My mother had written the steps on the back of a calendar page, in the same blue pen she used for grocery lists. I salted the cabbage at one in the afternoon. By eight that evening I was tasting the first leaf, sweet and faintly fizzy, standing at the counter in my socks.

That is the kimchi I am teaching here: 배추김치, baechu kimchi, napa cabbage kimchi, the everyday one a Korean kitchen leans on for a week of banchan.

This is the home version, not the kimjang version. Kimjang is the late-November ritual with a hundred heads of cabbage and three generations sharing one kitchen. What follows is one head, one afternoon, one jar. It rests on the three foundations every kimchi needs: salt, gochugaru, and a fermented seafood note (here, saeujeot, salted shrimp), bound together with a thin sweet rice porridge that lets the paste cling to every leaf.

Ingredients

For the cabbage and brine

• 1 medium napa cabbage, about 1.4 kg (배추)
• 80 g coarse sea salt (not iodised; iodine slows fermentation)
• 1 litre cold water

For the sweet rice porridge (찹쌀풀)

• 2 tablespoons sweet rice flour (찹쌀가루), also sold as glutinous rice flour
• 250 ml water
• 1 teaspoon sugar

For the seasoning paste (양념)

• 1 small Korean radish or daikon, about 200 g, cut into matchsticks
• 4 spring onions, cut into 4 cm lengths
• 6 garlic cloves, finely grated
• 15 g fresh ginger, finely grated
• 60 g gochugaru (coarse Korean chile flakes; do not substitute cayenne)
• 2 tablespoons saeujeot (salted shrimp), chopped fine, or 2 tablespoons fish sauce if you cannot find it
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce (myeolchi aekjeot if you have it)
• 1 small Asian pear or apple, grated, about 80 g

Equipment

• A wide bowl or clean plastic basin large enough to hold the cabbage in brine
• Disposable kitchen gloves. Gochugaru will stain your hands red for two days.
• A 1.5 litre glass jar with a loose-fitting lid (a fido-style jar or a clean kimchi container)

Tearing, salting, and the bend test

1. Quarter the cabbage lengthwise. Cut from the stem about 5 cm up the centre, then pull the halves apart with your hands so the leaves tear rather than slice. Do the same to make quarters. Tearing keeps the inner leaves attached at the root so they hold together while you coat them.

   

2. Salt the cabbage. Dissolve 50 g of the salt in the litre of cold water. Dip each quarter so every leaf is wet, then sprinkle the remaining 30 g of salt directly between the thick white ribs at the base. That is where the cabbage is densest and slowest to soften. Lay the quarters cut-side up in the bowl and pour any leftover brine over them.

   

3. Wait, and flip. Leave the cabbage for 2 to 2.5 hours, flipping the quarters every 30 minutes. You are looking for the bend test: take a thick white rib and bend it 90 degrees. If it bends without snapping, the cabbage is done. If it snaps, give it another 20 to 30 minutes. Under-salted cabbage turns to mush in the jar. Over-salted cabbage tastes like the sea and refuses to ferment. The bend is the signal.

The porridge that holds it all together

1. While the cabbage salts, make the porridge. Whisk the 2 tablespoons of sweet rice flour into 250 ml of cold water in a small saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, for 4 to 6 minutes until it thickens to the texture of loose yoghurt. Stir in the sugar and take it off the heat. Cool to room temperature. The porridge feeds the lactobacillus that does the souring, and gives the chile paste something to cling to.

   

2. Mix the seasoning paste. In a large bowl combine the cooled porridge, gochugaru, grated garlic and ginger, saeujeot, fish sauce, and grated pear. Let it sit 10 minutes; the gochugaru needs to bloom into a deep red paste, not a dry sprinkle. Fold in the radish matchsticks and spring onions last so they keep their bite.

Coating the leaves and packing the jar

1. Rinse and drain the cabbage. Run each quarter under cold water three times, pressing gently to flush out salt from between the ribs. Drain cut-side down in a colander for 15 minutes. Skip this rinse and the kimchi will be brutally salty by day three.

2. Coat the cabbage, leaf by leaf. Put on gloves. Hold a quarter by the root and lift each leaf, smearing a small spoonful of paste across the rib and into the leaf. Work outside to inside. When all four quarters are coated, fold each one in half so the leaves wrap around themselves into a tight bundle.

   

3. Pack the jar. Press the bundles into the jar one at a time, root-end down, pushing out air pockets with your knuckles. Leave 3 cm of headspace at the top; the cabbage will release liquid and bubble up during the first 48 hours. Wipe the rim and close the lid loosely so gas can escape.

4. Start the ferment. Leave the jar on the counter at 18–22°C (65–72°F) for 24 to 36 hours. Open it once a day to press the cabbage back under its own brine with a clean spoon. When you see small bubbles rising along the sides and the brine tastes faintly tangy, like the start of a pickle, move it to the fridge. In the fridge at 3–4°C (37–39°F) it keeps fermenting slowly. Day 4 is fresh and bright. Day 10 is sour and complex. Day 21 is the kimchi for stew.

When something goes sideways

Too salty after a day. Your cabbage was over-salted or under-rinsed. Slice it thin and use it in kimchi jjigae or kimchi fried rice, where the salt disperses into rice and broth.

Not sour enough after a week. Your kitchen runs cold, or the lid was too tight and the gas escaped without souring. Leave it another 24 hours at room temperature.

Mushy texture. The cabbage was under-salted in step 2 (it never lost enough water), or you used iodised salt. The bend test is the single best insurance.

White film on the surface. This is kahm yeast, harmless but off-tasting. Skim it off, press the cabbage firmly back under the brine, and keep the jar colder.

No saeujeot. 2 tablespoons of fish sauce plus a teaspoon of miso gives you the same fermented depth, though the bite is gentler.

How it lives in the fridge all week

A bowl of short-grain rice, a soft-boiled egg, and a small dish of this kimchi is dinner on a Tuesday. With pork belly grilled in a pan and a leaf of lettuce, it is Saturday lunch. The jar keeps four to six weeks in the fridge and only gets better through the second week. By then it is ready for jjigae, fried rice, or a quick pancake with the chopped leaves and a splash of the brine. Eat from the same jar all week. That is how the refrigerator drawer of a Korean kitchen actually works.