The Other Kimchi: EASY Soy Sauce Pickles

Today I'm going to show you how to make soy sauce pickles using a variety of vegetables called jangajji in Korean. Now when I make my jangajji I just use whatever leftover vegetables I have in the fridge and this soy sauce pickling liquid is so simple to make and then once it ferments with the vegetables the soy sauce pickling juice is so good that like you could drink it and then you could go swimming in it. That's how delicious it is. I'm just being honest. And we Koreans, we eat jangajji like it's kimchi. We eat it with everything. It is that delicious and once it hits the lips, sorry you can't stop. Now make sure to watch to the end because I'm going to show you how to make this simple cold noodle dish using the soy sauce pickling liquid. Oh yeah you never ever want to throw away your jangajji liquid because it is that delicious. It just tastes very very clean so that you could literally keep on drinking it. Oh wow this is delicious. Hi everyone this is Helen and welcome to Modern Pepper. The full ingredient list is available in the description box below as well as the Korean product links that you could order online. Now when it comes to making your jangajji soy sauce pickles you can use whatever vegetables you like. Here I have garlic cloves, I have celery, jalapenos, serrano chili peppers, red and white onions, carby cucumbers, carrots, and Korean radish. Even if you don't like radish put some radish in there because it will literally make your pickling juice so tasty. And if you can't get Korean radish use those round pink red radishes that you could find at your local supermarket. Now the only vegetables that I would not use are leafy greens. Those are no-no's because they will dissolve and completely ruin your soy sauce pickling juice. Now when it comes to your peppers what I want you to do is snap off the end here like that. I want you to take a bamboo skewer or any sharp tool you have in the kitchen and then I want you to stick it right here in the center just what halfway through so it creates an opening. And the same thing on this side. You want to create an opening at the tip like that. Well this is so that our delicious soy sauce pickling liquid could be going inside. Yeah it's gonna be so good. And then for our onions make sure to cut it so that the root end is still intact so it holds our layers of onion together and intact. Now for our pickling jar I'm using an 8 cup mason jar but you could also use you know kimchi container that works just as well obviously. Now if you're using a kimchi container you could just dump all the vegetables in there but if you're using a pickling jar like so we're going to start with the vegetables that will float so the lightest ones go in first. Then our peppers and then our celery. Then our carrots and then our cucumbers. I mean you just put whatever you could fit in here basically. Yeah and it looks like I only have room for two kirby cucumbers because we're gonna add our red onion then our white onion like that and our Korean radish. So you want to kind of be firm and kind of squish everything down without bruising our vegetables like that. Here I have about two dozen peppercorns and we're just gonna pour them in here. I want to cover this with another vegetable that's going to force everything down. I'm going to cut this in half our Korean radish one half slice there. Second piece we're going to wedge it in here so that it's wedged in here on this side and this side so if anything tries to kind of push the vegetables up this will prevent it. So the top piece is very important that it wedges everything down or literally you could put a piece of small rock on top. My grandma used to do that so that's another option. So we're gonna make our soy sauce pickling liquid. We need one cup of yangjo ganjang, Korean soy sauce, quarter cup of maesil cheong. This is fermented green plums with sugar. If you can't get this you could substitute brown sugar instead. And a quarter cup of hyunmi shikcho. This is brown rice vinegar but if you can't get brown rice vinegar you can use any white distilled vinegar. And then all you have to do is just mix everything up like so. And here I have three cups of cold water and folks that's it. It's easy as that. This is your pickling soy sauce liquid. Now this pickling liquid should yield you about five cups. All right so let's have a quick taste test. Oh that's delicious. Oh it's gonna be so good with our pickled vegetables. It is tangy, salty but not too salty. And then the sweetness is almost like you can't even taste it but it's very subtle in the background. So you do not want to make this like super sweet. That is a no-no. All we have to do now is just pour this into our jar. Now anytime I pickle or marinate anything I always like to put a layer of plastic wrap on top like so just to protect it because you want to make sure everything is completely submerged in our pickling juice or whatever marinade liquid that you're using. Then all you have to do is put the lid on. So you want to let this rest on your kitchen counter for about three hours. If you have a very hot kitchen maybe just for about an hour, hour and a half. And then put it in the fridge and let it hang out for about a month and then you can start enjoying it. Look I have another one that I made. This one I made about almost three months ago so let's take a look. I put plates on top of this to make sure everything stays submerged under our delicious soy sauce pickling liquid. But you could also buy the kimchi container, the larger ones that come with the presser and it presses everything down so everything's submerged fully without having to use any heavy objects on top. You know this one's been in my fridge for three months and I've been eating through it. Notice how all the peppers rise to the top. It smells so good in here. Smells peppery. So that's our white onion. Look at that. I have to share with you how delicious it smells. Oh like I said before you could go swimming in it. Seriously I'm not lying. Oh it's amazing. The liquid tastes so refreshing and then it tastes peppery. It tastes a little bit of that like garlicky essence in the background. It just tastes very very clean so that you could literally keep on drinking it. Oh wow this is delicious. Now how do you eat this? You just simply cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Then you add a little bit of our delicious soy sauce pickling juice goodness like that and then you just eat and eat it like you would eat kimchi with everything. And this is our seasoned jangajji. Oh yeah you could season it to make it taste a little bit spicy and buttery and this is how you make it. To make our seasoned jangajji we're gonna add some gochugaru. So you could add as much as you want or as little as you want but I'm gonna add one two pinches of gochugaru and then I'm gonna add a drizzle of sesame oil. Again you could add as little as you want or as much as you want and then I'm gonna add some sesame salt. Crushed sesame seed salt just a little bit like that. Then all you have to do is go in and mix everything. So the sesame oil and a little bit of the gochugaru just adds wonderful taste to this. Jangajji time! All right our non-spicy one. I was gonna blow on it and I realized it's cold. I don't know if you could hear the crunchiness. The vegetables are super crunchy. Oh and it's like perfectly seasoned with that enough salty taste. I can't even speak right now. And with our seasoned They're like my children. I don't know which one I love more. They're both so good. I'm just saying can't go wrong with either one. Okay so I'm gonna share my insider's tip with you. This is how Koreans eat jangajji typically especially when you don't want to cook and it's hot outside. You add a little bit of water to a bowl of warm Korean rice and then you kind of mix it all up. I mean if you've never had it this way oh don't knock it until you try it. Then you add your choice of your jangajji. I like to have the seasoned one like that. This is how Koreans eat our jangajji especially when it's so hot and you don't have your appetite but you need to eat a simple meal. This is it for you. And then you're supposed to the water that's been soaking in the warm rice. It tastes so good. It tastes so good. Just try it at home. Trust me. As promised here is the easy peasy noodle dish. And here I have somyeon noodles. Now if you want to learn how to cook somyeon noodles make sure to check out my bibim guksu. That's cold noodles using seasoned extra fermented kimchi. And the video will be linked in the description box below. Now to this we're going to add our delicious soy sauce pickle juice like so. Now you could add as much or as little of the pickling juice to your noodle dish. Now this is optional but I'm going to add a small pinch of miwon. That's Korean MSG. You don't have to add this if you don't want. You could also add a small amount of yeondu or beef dashida. And if you're using beef dashida make sure to melt it with one tablespoon of hot water. Then to this I'm just going to add a few pieces of the seasoned jangajji that we made just along the side like that. And maybe one more piece right there like that. And then just a little bit of cucumbers like so. And a little bit of kim crumbles on top. Then just a small sprinkling of kkaesogum on top like that. And then just a tiny drizzle of sesame oil like that. And there you have it. Your cold jangajji noodles that you can make at home until all of this liquid is gone. And then all you have to do is devour this. Like you go in from the top, you spread everything open, and then you mix everything up. So now our noodles are going to mop up our delicious jangajji broth. And look at that. Oh you know it's going to be good. I could eat this all summer. This would be my go-to quick and fast noodle dish that I would have every day. Oh wow this is so good. I just had a piece of the pepper. Oh such a lovely, mild, spicy taste in my mouth with the noodles that are drenched in our delicious soy sauce pickling liquid. You have to try this at home. That's all I'm going to say. Some of you are saying, oh my god you're slurping. So in Korean culture, slurping your noodles is perfectly, perfectly normal. Just don't be obnoxious about it. That's all. I know, I know. I hear you guys. You guys have questions. It could last as long as you keep it in the fridge. So I've kept mine past six months once before because I made so much. You just need to make sure that the vegetables are fully submerged in the pickling liquid. But in general, you should just try to finish it within three to four months. Yes you can. And if you do that, you probably only need to wait about a week before you could start eating it. But the longer you wait, whether you pre-cut it or you put it in whole pieces, it just tastes better. So I like it at month two. Some people like it at first month or fourth month. The vegetables taste better when you pickle them in whole pieces or big blocks as opposed to small bite-sized pieces. It just wilts quickly. So it's really up to you. If you want to check out more Korean side dish recipes or even kimchi recipes, and guess what? There's 200 different kinds of kimchi. So go to youtube.com slash modern pepper, click on that playlist tab and select Korean side dish banchan recipes playlist or kimchi recipe playlist. And I will see you there. I want to thank you for watching today. And if you enjoyed watching today's video, I want to kindly kindly ask you to click on that thumbs up icon and make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell. And perhaps you could share this recipe with your friends and family. Alright folks, I will see you in one of the videos you see right here.