Mak Kimchi or Easy Kimchi

Mak Kimchi means easy Kimchi in English and it is my all-time favourite Korean side dish! You can eat it plain with hot rice or with other Korean dishes to spice up your meal.

Directions:

1. Trim the discolored outer leaves of 10 pounds of napa cabbage.
2. Cut the cabbage lengthwise into quarters and remove the cores. Chop it up into bite size pieces.
3. Soak the pieces of cabbage in cold water and put the soaked cabbage into a large basin. Sprinkle salt.
   *tip: 1 cup of salt will be used for 10 pounds of napa cabbage
4. Every 30 minutes, turn the cabbage over to salt evenly (total salting time will be 1½ hours).
5. 1½ hours later, rinse the cabbage in cold water 3 times to clean it thoroughly.
6. Drain the cabbage and set aside.

Make porridge:

1. Put 3 cups of water and ½ cup sweet rice flour (chapssal garu) in a pot and mix it well and bring to a boil. Keep stirring until the porridge makes bubbles (about 5 minutes).
2. Add ¼ cup sugar. Stir and cook for a few more mintues until it’s translucent.
3. Cool it down.

Make kimchi paste:

1. Place the cold porridge into a large bowl. Now you will add all your ingredients one by one.
2. Add 1 cup of fish sauce,  2.5 cups of hot pepper flakes (depending on your taste), 1 cup of crushed garlic, 1-2 tbs of minced ginger, 1 cup amount of minced onion.
   *tip: much easier to use a food processor.
3. Add 10 diagonally-sliced green onions, 2 cups  amount of chopped leek, 2 cups of  julienned Korean radish, and ¼ cup of julienned carrot.
4. Mix all ingredients well and your kimchi paste is done.

Mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste!

1. Put the kimchi paste in a large basin and add all the cabbage. Mix it by hand.
2. *tip: If your basin is not large enough to mix all the ingredients at once, do it bit by bit.
3. Put the kimchi into an air- tight sealed plastic container or glass jar.

Special thanks to maangchi.com for the delicious kimchi recipe.