Rachel's beginner's kimchi

Remove one or two outer leaves of your cabbage and set aside.

Finely shred the cabbage and bundle into a large bowl. Finely grate the pear (discarding the core but keep the pear skin on), ginger and garlic directly into a pestle and mortar (or you can use a food processor or just grate and muddle everything in a bowl), Add the spices. Give everything a mix and fold the spice paste through your shredded cabbage.

Set an empty bowl on a set of digital scales and turn the scales on to zero the bowl (i.e. if the bowl in on the scales when you turn it on it cancels out the weight). Tumble your veg into the empty bowl. Weight the mixture and add 2g sea salt for every 100g, round down if you don’t have an even number (i.e. if you have 512g of the mixture, round down to 500g and add 10g salt).

Mix everything together, scrunching the mixture to help create a natural brine. Pack the veg into the jar. Press each layer down as tightly as you can. Fill the jar until you have about 2cm headspace.

Use the reserved cabbage leaves to cover the compacted cabbage. Press down till there's a good layer of liquid and top with extra brine (made by mixing 4g sea salt with 100ml water) until the brine comes right to the top of the jar and secure with a lid.

Keep in a dry spot at room temperature for 2 weeks. Check daily to ensure the liquid is always covering the cabbage and that none of the cabbage is exposed to air.

After 2 weeks, it’s ready to eat straight away or you can leave at room temperature to ferment further, or pop in the fridge until you’re ready to eat it. So long as it's fully covered in the brining liquid it'll keep for months in the fridge. Any time it looks or smells off, discard it.

Makes appox. 500g

Fermentation time:

2 weeks