This recipe is for a sprout based kimchi. You can however leave out the chilli flakes, garlic and ginger and add some caraway or fennel seeds for a delicious sauerkraut style ferment! The most important factor when fermenting is to get the salt to ingredient balance correct. Per weight of veg, water and extra ingredients we want 2.5% salt. So if the total of the ingredients weighs 100 grams, we need 2.5 grams of salt

Ingredients

• 200g Sprouts – Chinese Cabbage and Daikon work great
• Large carrot
• 2 – 3 Cloves garlic
• Thumb sized piece of ginger
• 2 tbsp Korean chilli flakes
• 200g Water
• Salt
Directions
1. Clean and sanitise your jar, lid and hands.
2. Grate your carrot and add to your sprouts. Weight the total and multiply the weight by 0.025. This number will then give you the weight of salt you need to add.
3. Massage the salt into the carrot and sprouts for 2 minutes. You should be seeing lots of liquid being released which will become part of our brine. Set aside.
4. Add garlic, ginger, chilli flakes and 200g water to a blender and process till smooth. Weight this mixture and again multiply by 0.025 for the amount of salt you need to add.
5. Add this to your sprout and carrot mixture and mix well. (use gloves if you have sensitive skin as the chilli flakes can be HOT!)
6. Stuff your mixture into a jar ensuring there are no air pockets There should be at least 2 inches of space from the mouth of the jar. Make sure everything is submerged under the brine at all times.
7. Leave in dark place. You should start to see fermentation occur after 3 or 4 days. You can tell by the bubbles of co² forming. Leave this for another day at least or longer for a tangier end product. Once you are happy you can refrigerate your kimchi and it will be good for several weeks.