ginger scrap kimchi

In an effort to incorporate more “waste” into my diet, I find myself scrutinizing the scraps, trimmings and ugly produce that I throw in the compost bucket at work. Some of the items are still good on some level, with enough trimming and patience, like a shriveled piece of ginger with moldy tips or a piece of daikon in similar disarray. These two produce bits passed from my hands to the compost bucket today. I salvaged them a few minutes later, mainly because I wanted to try to make kimchi, a spicy fermentation using ginger, radish, hot peppers, onions and garlic.

The radish and ginger are two items currently out of the 100 mile range, the ginger being something that I may only find as scraps and never locally grown except by a hobbyist. So I grabbed several little pieces, stuck them in my backpack and brought them home.

In addition to saving the ginger and daikon, I bought a small cabbage (45 miles), brought it home and added it to a couple carrots from a bag that Gary – my Albert’s Organics representative – gave me out of his weekly food box, a few heads of elephant garlic (45 miles), leeks (45 miles) and jalapeno peppers (35 miles) that I already had at the house.

The process of making kimchi seems pretty straight forward, a bit like sauerkraut, but without the wait. This recipe is adapted from Wild Fermentation.

1 – Make a strong brine using 4 cups filtered water and 4 tablespoons of salt. Dissolve the salt fully in the water.

2 – Chop carrots, cabbage and radish/daikon into the brine.

3 – Weight down the vegetables with a plate to keep everything submerged in the brine.

4 – Leave the mixture for a few hours as the vegetables soften up.

5 – Make a mixture of a finger of grated ginger, a few cloves of chopped garlic, a couple hot peppers with seeds, and an onion or several small leeks. Mix and smash the ingredients, bringing out the juices.

6 – Drain the brined vegetables, saving the brine in another container. If the veggies taste gaggingly salty, give them a quick rinse with fresh water.

7 – Mix the spicy paste into the vegetables.

8 – Pack everything into a wide mouth quart jar, packing until brine comes above the top of the mixture. If the level of brine isn’t high enough to cover everything, add some of the saved brine.

9 – Insert a smaller jar into the mouth of the quart jar and press down until brine rises above mixture. Hold down with rubber bands.

10 – Cover with a cloth and rubber band the cloth to the jar. Set aside in a warm place to ferment.

11 – Check the kimchi every day. After about a week, move the kimchi to the fridge to slow fermentation and enjoy.