This spicy kimchi ramen is comforting, filling and slightly spicy, made with instant noodles. This is a great weeknight dinner.
Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made of seasoned vegetables and salt. Koreans eat it at nearly every meal. It can be fresh, like a salad, or it can be fermented. While the most popular variety is spicy kimchi made of cabbage, there are hundreds of different types of kimchi made of different vegetables, and not all of them are spicy.
Korean Kimchi
Ingredients
- Napa cabbage
- Spring onion
- Carrot
- Radish
- Sugar
- All purpose flour
- Salt
- Water
- Ginger, garlic, onion paste
- Fish oil
- Chill flakes/powder
Instructions
- If the cabbage cores stick out too much, trim them off.
- To split a cabbage in half without shredding the densely packed leaves inside, first cut a short slit in the base of the cabbage, enough to get a grip on either half, and then gently pull the halves apart so the cabbage splits open.
- Dunk the halves in a large basin of water to get them wet. Sprinkle the salt between the leaves by lifting up every leaf and getting salt in there.
- Let the cabbages rest for 2 hours. Turn over every 30 minutes, so they get well salted.
- Combine the water and the sweet rice flour in a small pot. Mix well with a wooden spoon and let it cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes until it starts to bubble. Add the sugar and cook for 1 more minute, stirring. Remove from the heat and let it cool off completely.
- Pour cooled porridge into a large mixing bowl. Add garlic, ginger, onion, fish sauce, fermented salted shrimp, and hot pepper flakes. Mix well with the wooden spoon until the mixture turns into a thin paste.
- Add the radish, carrot, and green onion, plus the Asian chives (or more green onions) and the water dropwort if you’re using them. Mix well.
- Spread some kimchi paste on each cabbage leaf. When every leaf in a quarter is covered with paste.
- Eat right away, or let it sit for a few days to ferment.
