Sanbiki Restaurant Blog: SJ:SoonJa;Kimchi time !

I am Soon Ja, I am Korean. For Koreans, Kimchi is the one of the most common side dishes.

It is nothing special but necessary! Even though it is nothing special, if someone asks me what my favorite food is, it's kimchi.

I like kimchi fried rice, kimchi soup, kimchi pancake..... anything made with kimchi. It is not a common side dish anymore for me now, because I am living in Canada. But I started making it for a few reasons.

The first reason was to save money. And the second reason was that I wanted to make homemade kimchi for my future husband and my children. But for now, I am making it for our customers at Sanbiki restaurant.

People keep ordering my kimchi and there are also some regular customers who order it all the time! Those customers give me confidence and also encourage me. I really appreciate it. I think having many kimchi orders means maybe now my kimchi has a good, consistent taste.

So here I want to show everybody how I make kimchi.

Chinese Cabbage

I usually use 7-10 cabbage at Sanbiki. We make a lot of Kimchi!!

But for the first time you'd better start with only 1 big cabbage.
Cut them into small pieces and sprinkle the cabbage with sea salt.

Add a 1/2 cup of water

and leave them for 3-4 hours.

Every 30min. mix them up.

Then rinse them in cold water and strain. Leave them for 1 more hour.

In a bowl, mix:

1 tbsp salted shrimp

2-3 tbsp fish sauce

3 garlic cube (ground garlic)

1 ginger cube (ground ginger)

I blend a lot of peeled garlic in a food processer and freeze it. then it is ready for Kimchi or other recipes anytime!

Then take:

10-15 tbsp chilli powder

3-5 tbsp sweet rice porridge (made with rice flour)

And mix this with sliced daikon (giant white radish), green onion and regular onion

The mixture will look something like this:

Finally, mix all the ingredients together and it should look like this.

Voila! Your own Kimchi! It will taste crunchy at first and each ingredient keeps its own distinct flavour. As the Kimchi gets older it gets sour and a complex delicious new flavour develops! you can use it as a side dish or in fried rice, soups and stir frys. Or make your own recipe!

Most ingredients you can find at Mori Mori grocery on Landsdowne street. There are some pictured below...