kkakdugi (깍두기)

Hello everyone!

One of the first things that come to mind when you hear Korean food,

is probably Kimchi.

Oh, we love our Kimchi.

There are probably 100 different kinds of Kimchi,

and so far we've just been buying them at H Mart whenever we wanted to eat them.

But when the 'whenever we wanted to eat them' became almost every day,

we decided to try our hand at making it ourselves!

We picked the simplest of the Kimchi (I think),

which is Kkakdugi (깍두기).

It's Kimchi made of Korean radish.

We've made it twice now, and we absolutely love it!

and I think it tastes much better than the store-bought kind  ;)  haha

So here is the smaller recipe (because there are only two of us eating)

adapted from this recipe.

What you need

2 pounds of Korean radish (different from Daikon radish)

1 Tbs salt

1/2 Tbs sugar

1/3 cup red pepper flakes

1/8 cup fish sauce

2 stalks of green onions

1 Tbs minced garlic

2 ts minced ginger

Now if you are wondering what on earth is fish sauce and which one should you get,

(because I sure did)

Mommy says that the 3 Crabs brand tastes the best.

I was worried that it would be really difficult to spot,

but honestly, it wasn't.  

It literally has 3 green crabs on the bottle and looks like this.

Now to make Kkakdugi!

1. Peal and wash your radish, then chop it into bite sized cubes.

We really like our food to be bite sized, so ours was pretty small 1/2 inch cubes?  

but it can be bigger, depending on your preference.

2. put the chopped radish into a big bowl, add 1Tbs of salt and 1/2 Tbs of sugar and mix well.

Let it sit for 30 minutes.

3. After 30 minutes, drain your radish (there should be a lot of water) 

but make sure to leave some of the radish water remaining in the bowl--about 1/4 cup.

4.  Add rest of the ingredients into the bowl.

5. and MIX!!!

David got the mixing duty  haha  =p

And then voila!

we put them into glass jars

--I think they were spaghetti sauce and peanut butter jars,, yay for recycling!  ;)--

and it made the perfect amount for the two of us to enjoy for the next couple of weeks!

Oh, and even my roomy Amulet, who is usually so wary of my 'mystery Asian foods', liked it  haha

Let the jars sit outside on the counter for a day before putting them in the fridge.

Mommy says that this helps them taste better...

I guess it probably has something to do with the fermentation process...?

haha  either way, it tastes great afterwards, so I'll stick to letting them sit outside for a day  ;)

I hope you enjoy!

--Janny