Kimchi Recipe by Amy Choi

Kimchi Recipe

Around every summer and winter, my family gathers around to make our favorite side dish that goes well with every dish that has been shared from generation to generation. Our extended family has always helped with ingredients and my mom always added extra ingredients of her own to add a personalized touch. My mom would always buy huge boxes of napa cabbages which always smelled fresh out of the box. My mom would then grab a bunch of the cabbages to rinse before putting them into a huge metal bowl. My sister and I would then sprinkle handfuls of course salt evenly over the cabbages and mix them with the cabbages evenly to allow them to sit and get all of the moisture out for around an hour. 

For the paste of the kimchi, I cut up some onions that would always cause my eyes to water. My mom would start cutting up some garlic and onion for the paste and it starts to have a fragrant smell from all the rich, various spices utilized for the recipe. A splash of some sauce was added to the mixture to help balance the freshness. Due to us making the dish so often, we didn’t need to use any measurements when adding the sauce because of muscle memory and being able to tell the sauce is right just by the taste.

As we stirred the mixture, my mom and I would often talk about our day and the mood in the kitchen was always so nostalgic. After stirring the mixture into a paste, we added some Korean red pepper flakes. We used different pepper flakes depending on the occasion. My mom and I often get sent different types of Korean pepper flakes from family and due to them living in many regions of Korea, the taste and flavor of the kimchi are wildly different depending on what we use. The different flavors always taste so appetizing and having that time with my extended family by creating and eating kimchi together has always been a memorable childhood memory.

We often tasted a bit of the mixture with our fingers to taste and when I was little, my mom would often purposely get it on my nose making me laugh. When we mixed the cabbage with the kimchi paste, we used some plastic gloves so we wouldn’t get the smell of the kimchi paste on our hands making sure that the kimchi paste was evenly spread out throughout the cabbages. As we mixed the cabbage, I could smell the acidity and how the cabbage was already pickling, it gave off a strange vinegar-like smell. In the end, we tasted the kimchi to test and put it in a kimchi container for future meals. It then ferments for two to three weeks to ripen. It requires a lot of communication and teamwork and makes you wait long times between steps. In the end, the memories that are made with your family during the time making this side dish is worth it and I can’t wait to share this recipe with future generations.