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Comment by hooverd | Hacker News Reader

Kimchi is easy to make at home too. The Maangchi recipes are pretty foolproof.

No it's not. I wish.

I have tried 4 times now, and I'm pretty sure it's because the only recipes I find are from Korean-american migrants, meaning that they'll use kosher salt, which we in Europe don't have. The salt/water ratio will be off, which will prevent fermentation (and lead to oversalted kimchi).

If anyone here is a Korean and knows of a somewhat traditional kimchi recipe using metric units and table salt, I'd be stoked if you would post it in a comment.

I have used maangchi’s method as well as fermented a couple dozen other sorts of things over the years. It would be hard to argue that fermentation is prevented. In my experience it is a very active ferment.

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/what-is-kosher-salt

https://www.maangchi.com/blog/using-salt

https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/tongbaechu-kimchi

> kosher salt, which we in Europe don't have

We do (whatever Europe means in this context) but no offense if you can’t even find salt then how do you manage gochugaru or fish sauce for example?

I did the the Munchies kimchi several times and it was always perfect

https://youtu.be/hM-v5nTp0J0

https://www.vice.com/en/article/nzkpj7/homemade-kimchi

Weigh your cut vegetables, then add 2-4% salt by weight. Thoroughly mix it in a glass bowl by hands and let it weep out water. Let it sit in a jar with weights to keep the vegetables below the brine water level. After a few days (depending on heat and the desired softness and fermentation) drain the excess brine and add chopped garlic, green onions, ginger and chili powder (I usually leave a bit of brine to wet the chili powder). And seafood if you're interested. Pack this into jars and let it sit in a cool place for awhile (I use the fridge if I have space, otherwise a root cellar, or in the ground works).

But yeah, 3% (non-iodized) salt by weight. You can top off the brine with filtered water if your vegetables don't weep enough, but this hasn't been a problem for me.

I've always been able to get away with 2.5% by weight - inclusive of any water of course. The two things to make sure of - which you seem to know but for others reading this - are no iodized salt and no chlorinated water.

Kosher salt and table salt of similar chemical composition (i.e. not the 60% potassium "low sodium" stuff) should be interchangeable if measured by weight?

And you have to use kosher salt by weight too, because Morton's is twice as dense as Diamond. (see https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-cha...)

Table salt has iodine and other additives. Use kosher salt or pickling salt.

Iodine doesn't matter. You do have to account for the difference in weight/volume vs table salt though.

I've read somewhere that the iodine can negatively affect the fermentation process, so that it's better to use iodine free sea salt. Cant remember the source, though.

You can also get pretty close by salting the cabbages a lot, then rinsing them once they’ve gotten seasoned enough to be pleasantly salty.

Also it’s quite hard to oversalt kimchi in my experience. You’ll need to ferment it longer but eventually the sourness will balance out the salty

Use about half the amount of table salt to kosher salt for a salt and rinse step. Then shoot for 2% by weight. Generally I avoid salting ferments by volume. I saw a recipe in the sibling comments.

Also, be sure your salt doesn't have any additives. Some "table" salts have anti-clumping ingredients added. These will prevent the ferment. I ferment a lot and use sea salt (Meeressalz) without any troubles. Good luck!

Not sure if you're unaware or don't care, but sea salt contains microplastics. You can get untreated alpine salt (Alpensalz) pretty cheap (presuming you live in or around Germany)

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry... They are are everywhere.

On the surface. Not necessarily in the caverns, where it is 'mined'.

OTOH thinking about the large trucks, tractors, and other machinery operating down there, there is probably contamination too, just by abrasion from the rubber tires, or beltways.

Pick your poison :)

tl;dr You can use table salt if you wish, but you need to use less. This article might help [1] as might this one [5]

Not Korea, but my wife is native born. Her family recipe is a little different than the ones I've seen online, but the result is still kimchi. There's also literally hundreds of different kinds of kimchi, so there's definitely flexibility built into the concept.

It's not really Kosher salt that Koreans use, but very coarse sea salt. It's usually sold in stores in Korea (or Asian food stores elsewhere) either in big bags by the kg [2][3], or often in a big bin near the produce in a grocery and you just scoop up as much as you need into a container and pay by the kg.

The problem you are having is not the ingredients in the salt, it's the coarseness of it. With sea salt, or kosher salt, the grains are very large and so you get less salt per unit volume. I'm 100% certain you can track down some kind of large grained coarse salt as it's used in all kinds of cooking settings, often as a late-in-recipe seasoning on breads and meats. It's likely to either be coarse grained sea salt, unground salt, or even a coarse grained mined salt like Himalayan pink salt. I believe there's a well known French coarse grained grey sea salt called Moulin & Cuisson or Le Guerandais or something that would be a good substitute.

Most major European cities have a large enough Asian population these days that there is probably an Asian grocery where you can also check also. (I'm only aware of this because when we travel in Europe my wife almost always seeks out a few things so we can cook at home instead of going out to save some money).

You might also be curious to know that the world's largest commercial Kimchi maker has a factory in Europe (Poland). [4]

1 - https://kimchimari.com/best-salt-kimchi-12-salts/

2 - https://www.hmart.com/natural-premium-sea-salt-for-kimchi-2-...

3 - https://www.amazon.com/Beksul-Natural-Premium-Coarse-Brining...

4 - https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/11/08/poland-to-become-euro...

5 - https://www.souschef.co.uk/blogs/the-bureau-of-taste/recipe-...

I've made kimchi a couple of times. As others suggest, the main issue with a lot of American recipes is that they use volumetric units (cups, spoons, and what not) to weigh out ingredients. The main difference between kosher salt and normal salt is density. And probably no two salts have exactly the same density. Meaning that these recipes are super imprecise.

So, the good news is that precision doesn't really matter for a lot of these recipes. But if you want to be precise, use proper weight units and get some proper tools to weigh things out. 2.5% is a good target (by weight) for a brine. I use precise weights when making bread. When making kimchi I don't weigh out anything.

Here's what I tend to do too make kimch:

1) get cabbage and use lots of salt to draw out the moisture. More is better. The goal is to draw out water. You cannot use too much salt at this stage. Use cups, buckets, whatever makes you happy. It does not matter.

2) after 40 minutes or so, wash the cabbage; most of the salt will go down the drain at this point. This is why the amount of salt doesn't matter. The remaining cabbage will taste slightly salty but not overly. That's because some of the salt will have made it into the cabbage through osmosis. Nature will get the ratio right for you.

3) prepare a paste with sugar, some salt or fish sauce (season to taste basically), some starch to thicken, mix in the chili flakes and your other ingredients. Use Korean chili flakes if you can get them but you can fall back to other chili flakes. You want mild heat, don't go too crazy here.

4) mix everything together and put it in a jar. There should be enough juice coming out of the cabbage to cover the ingredients. But if not, add some water. Obviously use water without chlorine. Or put differently; use water that tastes nice when you drink it. Don't put stuff that doesn't taste nice in your kimchi.

5) Let it ferment. You should see fermentation happen within a day. Activity will taper off after a few days. There is no right or wrong here. Some like it fresh, some like it funky. Ferment longer for more funkiness. I usually go for about a week.

I loosely follow Maanchi's recipes. But I've watched a few other ones on Kimchi. Brad Leone is highly entertaining and he ferments all sorts of stuff. The main thing you can learn from him is that fermentation is easy and that there really is no right or wrong here.

It's a natural process and all you are doing is letting nature do it's thing. It's pretty hard to mess it up actually. The main thing to understand is the optimal salt to water ratio in a brine (and a lot of other food) is about 2-3% by weight. But you can be off by 50% and it won't really matter much. Anything too high and you kill the yeast and the bacteria and they'll be less active. Anything too low and they'll be less active. You can just go by taste here. If it tastes too salty, it probably is.

Kosher salt is a US thing. But of course kosher food is a Jewish thing and Jews of course emigrated pretty much everywhere. Though probably not a lot of them ended up in Korea. All it means for salt to be kosher is to have no additives. So, get some salt without additives and weigh it out and you'll be fine. I've used with and without and honestly it doesn't make a huge difference. Use what you have.

For authenticity, use Korean ingredients and get all the good stuff. But bear in mind that this is food that was made for centuries by people without any modern tools. It's not that hard.

You are exactly correct on the use of salt, but that paste suggestion is pretty awful. Instead, blend half a yellow onion and a bunch of scallions, garlic, and ginger together. A bit of fish sauce and soy sauce for salt is good. You don't need any sugar in it. Typical ratio is:

- 2 napa cabbage

- half of a yellow onion

- 4-6 green onion/scallions

- a couple table spoons of ground garlic or garlic paste

- teaspoon of ginger paste

- 2-4 table spoons for fish sauce

- pepper flakes to desired level of spice

Recipe from a native Korean.

I got that from Maanchi actually. The main thing with the sugar and starch is probably just speeding up the fermentation. But this sounds pretty delicious too. I left out a lot of the other things I usually mix in though.

I think the main thing here is technique. The rest is picking nice ingredients and flavouring.

I’m a first time kimchi maker, used the a Baechu ( napa cabbage ) Kimchi recipe from “Fiery Ferments” ISBN-13 978-1612127286

Came out really good despite not having some of the ingredients because I’m disorganized (left out carrots, ginger, scallions). My Taiwanese neighbor suggested adding apple to sweeten it up a bit, cut the sour, and less Korean pepper flakes.. but I like mine spicy.

Working on a second batch now.

The book has a couple other kimchi recipes in addition to dozens of other fiery ferments.

seconding Maangchi's site for all things korean food. As a Sydney-sider with an ability to sample tonnes of top-shelf Korean cooking from local restaurants - maangchi will get you cooking most Korean staples just as you get them from the restaurants :)

The maangchi recipe is really good and easy. I wish I could find tiny shrimp/saeujeot though.

I've been using tiny dried shrimp (bought from a Vietnamese grocery) and a little extra fish sauce as a sort-of substitute and I've been very happy with the final product.

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