Food
Napa Cabbage Kimchi
Lesson time 22:22 min
It’s time to get messy. You’ll need an apron for this one—preferably one with bunnies on it. Roy teaches you to blend kimchi paste and kimchi napa cabbage.
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Topics include: Everything You Need to Make Kimchi • Roy’s Kimchi Paste • Napa Cabbage Kimchification • Explainer: The Different Stages of Kimchi
Preview
ROY CHOI: Warning-- this class contains some bad language. [MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) One, two. It's kimchi time. A lot of people hear kimchi and think of the funky, fermented Napa cabbage umami bomb you can find in every Korean home, but I'm going to let you know a little secret. Kimchi is actually a verb. That's right. You can kimchi almost anything. In this chapter, I'm going to teach you how to kimchi traditional Napa cabbage. Later in this course, though, you'll learn how to make kimchi fruit and just about everything else you've got lying around in your fridge. [UPBEAT INSTRUMENTALS] If you're Korean, kimchi is a big part of your life. Kimchi played a huge role in my childhood. If you ran across my mom somewhere in the '80s, she would be selling you kimchi. As an immigrant in this country, sometimes is very hard to get a job. My mom really, really hustled. She sold kimchi out of the trunk. Could be strangers, friends, relatives. It don't matter. If you invite her to your house, she's coming with a bottle of kimchi and it ain't free. Any flat, horizontal surface in my home had a bowl of something bubbling and fermenting. My mom really wasn't great at measurements, so a lot of times these things would overflow and they would be bubbling out and they would be falling all over the place, into the carpet, into the crevices. When you're 16 years old, 17 years old, you're trying to-- you're trying to get into something, whatever it is. You're trying to make friends, you're trying to get with a girl, you're trying to get with a boy. When they come into your house and it smells like kimchi and there's bubbling pots everywhere, it's a little traumatic. But kimchi is such a beautiful thing because it's filled with umami. Not only does it have umami in the ingredients itself here, as I'm going to show you, but as it grows, kimchi can be eaten in every step of the way. It can be eaten fresh, raw, after a couple of days, after a week, after a few months, after a year. So let's get started. [UPBEAT INSTRUMENTALS] So here's what we have to make kimchi-- gochugaru, onion, a little bit of water, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, oyster sauce, fish sauce, fermented shrimp. If you can't get fermented shrimp, the fish sauce will have plenty of funk. Or to make this paste vegetarian, you can just skip those ingredients. We have salt, sugar, and Asian chives. These are a little thicker, longer, and more oniony than chives you find here in America. If you can't find these scallions will work. Oh, I had a wardrobe change. I forgot that I was wearing this. When you make kimchi, it's about channeling the spirit, you know? This is the uniform to make kimchi. You want dishwasher gloves, you want a cute apron. It can be bunnies, it can be squirrels, it can be raccoons, it can be anything you want it to be, but it has to have usually some sort of bright color. It also has to have mul...
About the Instructor
Roy Choi wasn’t trying to start a revolution when he took tacos, kimchi, and more to the Los Angeles streets with the Kogi BBQ taco truck. He just wanted to make what he loved and knew by heart: immigrant-influenced all-American food. Now he’s teaching you his recipes, sauces, and techniques. Learn how to cook with your instincts using equipment you already have—and start adding your own twist to tried-and-true favorites.
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Roy Choi
Food truck “godfather” Roy Choi teaches you his signature recipes and mother sauces—then empowers you to make them your own.
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