Geotjeori-style kimchi recipe: A quick and easy way to make kimchi at home

Kimchi in Korean cuisine

Kimchi is an essential part of Korean cuisine: You can eat it as a side dish, but you can also make countless other dishes with it: For example, kimchi stew (김치찌개), kimchi pancakes (김치전) or kimchi dumplings (김치만두) are very popular in Korea.

Variations and comparison with sauerkraut

There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi, which differ mainly in the vegetables used: cabbage is usually used, but sometimes radish, leek, spring onions and other vegetables are also used. In many variants, the vegetables are fermented together with chili, so many types of kimchi are very spicy. German sauerkraut is actually quite similar to kimchi, as it is also made by fermenting cabbage.

Traditional storage and modern methods

By the way, kimchi was originally stored in clay jars buried underground: in winter it was protected from the cold, and in summer the underground storage is cool enough to slow down the fermentation process of kimchi. Nowadays, however, kimchi refrigerators are commonly used for storage. So if you visit a Korean household, you will find that they usually have 2 refrigerators: one for regular food and one for kimchi!

Easy Kimchi Recipe: Geotjeori Style

We have developed a recipe for you that allows you to make kimchi in a very simple way: You only need about two hours instead of almost 20 hours as with the more complex version. Koreans call this the geotjeori style. Kimchi made in this way cannot be fermented for quite as long as normal kimchi (geotjeori simply means "surface fermented" in Korean) and therefore tastes crisper, and it cannot be stored quite as long. But it is still real kimchi, which is also popular in Korea.

Ingredients and materials

Preparation steps

1) Halve the celery cabbage lengthwise, then halve the halves again (to form quarters).
2) Cut the celery cabbage quarters lengthwise and slightly diagonally into strips about 4cm wide.

3) Place the celery stalks in the bowl and sprinkle the salt over them. Then add the water and mix well.
4) Close the bowl and shake everything well. Let it rest for 30 minutes, then shake everything again. Repeat this two more times (so a total of 1 hour 30 minutes resting time).

5) During the resting time, continue with the sauce:
Put the garlic, ginger, onion, fish sauce and sugar in the mixing bowl and puree everything finely. Only then can you add the chili flake powder and mix everything well again.
If you want to make vegan kimchi, replace the fish sauce with soy sauce and doenjang.

6) Halve the spring onions lengthways and then cut them into pieces about 5cm long. Cut the carrot using a medium-thickness vegetable grater or into thin sticks.

7) After the soaking time, wash the celery thoroughly with water and remove as much water as possible. It is best to use a salad spinner for this.

8) Add the spring onions, carrots and sauce to the celery kale and mix well.

9) You can now enjoy the kimchi. Decorate it with some sesame seeds. This will make the kimchi taste very fresh!
10) Alternatively, you can put it in a mason jar and store it in the fridge. Follow our fermentation instructions below.

11) After a month of waiting, the time has come: your kimchi is fermented and can either be eaten raw as a side dish or used as a basis for other dishes such as kimchi pancakes or kimchi stew. You should not let this type of kimchi ferment for longer than two months: otherwise, the relatively high water content in the cabbage will make it very watery and no longer taste as good.

Jiha

Hello, I'm Dschihä, co-founder of Viamundi. I come from Korea and have been married to my German husband Philipp for over 5 years. We have a 3-year-old daughter together. We love cultural exchange and that's where the idea for our surprise food boxes from foreign countries came from!