Making Homesteader Kimchi With Ann of ALONE

Rockhopper here and I'm back with Ann from the video you saw about homesteading up in northern Wisconsin and today we're going to learn how to make homesteader kimchi. Yeah, because it's the end of the season, there's going to be a big frost, so I just went out in the garden and I got about two cups of garlic that I just ground up, not from the garden, but then some onions ground up and I got some carrots and then underneath here is a whole bowl of chopped up kale, more onions, peppers, Swiss chard just for color and the majority of the kimchi will be cabbage. And I think we have some ginger growing around, so we'll have to look for some ginger. What do you got? Ginger. So you grew your own ginger? Yeah, just put some in from the store and it's going to be in here. Those are cactus next to it, so let's see, not so bad. So that's the ginger bulb. Yeah, I think there's more in here, I can feel it, I think there's a lot of it, I'm just getting little pieces here. Chopping up the ginger? Yeah, just kind of trying to get little pieces in there, smells really good. Look at that big filder kraut there, that's a good size. It's an heirloom, a German heirloom, I think filder might mean field. Field cabbage. For kraut. It's a cabbage called filderkraut, f-i-l-d-e-r, it's an heirloom cabbage from Germany, I got the seeds in it, it grew really well, I think there's a festival in Germany where they actually celebrate this cabbage, they make it into kraut. This is krautmeister Anne with the filderkraut, so you're cutting it up. I'm not cutting it up, just a few more cuts, probably good. And in the bowl it goes. It's not a real fussy thing. So what's going on here, Tom? Well, I've got a billet, or a smasher if you will, made out of hard maple. Hard maple used to be regarded by the health and the food department as food grade safe. It's a traditional thing that's used, it's very hard, and you get a pretty good wallop when you smash stuff. We usually try to bust up the tissues a little bit, and that allows better mixing of the flavors and better penetration of the salt. Anything else on that end? The bacteria will get going faster. Okay, so that speeds up the fermentation process. Yeah, oh yeah, get that juice going. And a lot of things can be fermented. We mostly just do canned cheese and stuff. I had a friend who fermented beans and all that sort of stuff. Cucumbers, rutabaga, you could ferment mushrooms, you could ferment carrots, kohlrabi, you could just do kale, whatever. We've done garlic scapes, you know, the flower stalk of the garlic. You could even do garlic, just smash it up, add some salt, and it'll ferment and be kind of tangy. And it's good for your microbiome. If you really tell, it's being smashed because the odors of the various stuff are coming up, you know? Oh yeah. And combining, it's kind of cool. And now Tom smashes the filter kraut. Okay, we smashed the kraut. Smash, smash, smash. This smasher looks like something out of the Flintstones. We just put some cabbage in, and we're just going to put a nice little bit of this, the good stuff, in. This is what makes a kimchi. Peppers, and the garlic, and all that ginger. It's best jarred. Yeah. There. And then we'll do more cabbage, and then we'll do more of this stuff, and then more cabbage. There is a salt ratio in here, but what I've been doing is I've been adding a tablespoon of salt every time, and I'm adding it up. So in the end, we're going to end up with three tablespoons of salt to one quart water, which we'll show you later, and you'll understand it more. I'm just getting the salt in as we go. Add the water later. Hey, what are we doing next? I'm making the brine for kimchi. So it's three tablespoons of salt. This is fancy salt. You don't have to use fancy salt. You probably don't want to use iodized salt. Himalayan salt. This is Himalayan salt. No plastics in it. No plastics, I guess. Whatever. Anyways, I put three tablespoons in there, and I'm going to shake it up. Probably would be better if it was warm water and not cold like this. So it goes better. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put some of this stuff in the jug to show people what you would do at home. It's really easy. It's one of the easiest things. So this is my kimchi. Okay, now I'm just going to pour this brine on there, which is three tablespoons to one quart of water. I'm going to leave about an inch headspace. So I didn't even use all my brine there. This needs to have some sort of airlock. If we put the lid on it, it would probably burst. But this is a silly airlock. But what you do is you just put this glove on there, and as the gases form, it'll just blow up. Expand. You could use a balloon. Yeah, expand. But it doesn't let stuff in. That's what you need. It's something that doesn't let stuff in. I'm just adding brine now to cover our water. So, making sure that there's three tablespoons of salt per quart. And here's the last of the water, I think. So yeah, it's kind of covered. That's good. And so, the next thing you do is... This is a water lip. This is a fancy crop. You know, like the glove that we used? Yeah. So this creates an airlock when we put that lid on there. It'll prevent stuff from going in, but it can bubble out. I'm going to put the lid on now. And I'll probably, you know, check this in a month or so. I'd probably maybe eat a little bit of it. But it takes a few months, especially since we're in our Rett cellar and it's cooler. It's kind of a temperature thing. If it was upstairs where it's warm, it wouldn't take long at all. And it gets more fermented over time. So if you get it to where you like it the best, you could refrigerate it. Does it taste different if you do different levels of fermentation? Oh yeah, for sure. It's more tangy. It's probably more bacteria the longer you let it sit. I think it's great after a week and a half or something. It's kind of salty then. It's good. It's good all along, yeah. It's kind of fun to see how it changes. So you could actually suit this for your own personal taste then. Oh yeah, for sure. However you wanted to make it tangy or more mild or whatever. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Good to know. Good stuff. It'll last all winter down here. It could last actually way into spring. As long as you keep water in that airlock there. We just made another big pot of kimchi, which we're going to put back there. And it'll ferment, so it's about a month, month and a half, right? Yeah. And you're going to have just a ton of kimchi. A lot of kimchi. So it's really not that hard to make, right? No, not really. You can make it with anything. You don't need the filter kraut cabbage. You can use any cabbage. You could use kale. You could use just regular green cabbage. You don't even need cabbage. Or you can make it in a small quantity like we did there. So you can make it with all kinds of stuff. Anything. Just the brine. Just get that salt brine in there. So that's the main thing. The main trick is getting the salt brine in there. Yep. And smashing it a little bit helps, I think. Okay. Yeah. And maybe you'll have a Flintstone smasher like that, and maybe you won't. Or you could use a baseball bat. You could use a baseball bat. You could use a rolling pin where you take the one handle off and go like this. You could use your fist. Yeah. Take out your aggressions. Yeah, exactly. Well, I hope you learned how to make Homesteader Kimchi with Ann and Tom. Don't forget to give me a like on the video, share, and subscribe. Until next time, this is Rock Hopper. I'll see ya!