Jarring, fermenting, and burping the jar
Okay. Last lesson we mixed the paste — gochugaru, garlic, ginger, fish sauce or fish sauce alternative, the works — and got it into the cabbage. If your hands are stained a little orange right now, that's normal. It fades in a day or two, or wear gloves next time. I don't, but that's me.
Today we jar it, we wait, and we burp it. That last part sounds like a joke. It is not. Write this down.
Getting it into the jar
You want a wide-mouth quart jar or something similar. Glass, not plastic — plastic holds smell forever and you will smell kimchi in your yogurt container until the end of time.
Pack the cabbage in tight. Really press it down as you go, a handful at a time, so you're squeezing out air pockets. Air pockets are where mold starts. You're not just filling the jar, you're compacting it.
Leave about an inch and a half of headspace at the top. Not because I said so arbitrarily — because it's going to bubble and expand as it ferments, and if you fill the jar to the rim it will push liquid out over your counter, your fridge shelf, and possibly your patience. Ask me how I know.
Once it's packed, press down on top with the back of a spoon until brine comes up over the cabbage. If you don't have quite enough brine, that's fine, mix a little water with a pinch of salt and top it off. The cabbage needs to stay submerged. Anything poking up above the liquid line is exposed to air and that's where you get funky mold instead of good ferment.
Screw the lid on, but don't crank it down like you're sealing a jam jar for the pantry. Snug, not tight.
The fermenting part
Leave the jar on your counter, out of direct sun, for one to five days. I know that's a wide window. It depends on your kitchen — a warmer house ferments faster, and up here with our dry air and swingy indoor temps in the winter, it can go slower than you'd think. Taste it starting on day two. You're looking for tang. When it tastes like kimchi and not like salty raw cabbage, it's ready to move to the fridge, where it'll keep fermenting, just much more slowly.
Here's the thing — this is exactly where I torched my first batch. I did not burp the jar. I set it in the back of the fridge, closed the lid tight, and went about my week feeling very accomplished. Fermentation doesn't stop just because it's cold, it just slows way down, and it was still producing gas with nowhere to go. When I finally opened that jar, the smell hit Scott from the hallway before I'd even gotten the lid all the way off. He didn't say anything. That was worse than if he had.
Burping the jar
"Burping" just means loosening the lid for a second to let built-up gas escape, then closing it back up. Do this once a day while it's fermenting on the counter, and every few days once it's in the fridge, especially in the first week or two.
You'll hear a little hiss. That's carbon dioxide, it's supposed to happen, it means the fermentation is working. If you don't burp it, pressure builds and either the lid pops on its own — usually at a bad time, usually in the fridge, usually not while you're standing there — or you get what I got. Don't skip this. It costs you fifteen seconds.
Some people use fermentation lids with a built-in valve so you never have to think about it. That's fine, and honestly a smart forty-dollar problem-solver if you're going to make kimchi regularly. I still burp mine by hand because I like knowing exactly what's going on in there. That's a preference, not a rule.
An opinion, since we're here
Store-bought kimchi is fine. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. Making it yourself is satisfying, it's cheaper over time, and there's something almost meditative about the whole process — the salting, the paste, watching the jar do its thing on the counter. But if a jar off the shelf is what gets Korean food onto your table on a Tuesday, buy the jar. This lesson is for the people who want the process, not a test anyone has to pass.
I still remember the first time I set out a full spread — rice, bulgogi, three banchan, a pot of soup, my own kimchi in a bowl in the middle — the way my mom used to do it. I stood back and looked at that table and thought, I finally got it right. Then Bronson wandered in and asked if there were chicken nuggets. That's parenting. You do the thing, and somebody asks about nuggets.
Before next time
Get your jar going this week if you haven't already, and set a daily reminder to burp it — actually put it on your phone, don't trust yourself to remember. Next lesson we'll talk about how to tell when it's actually done and how long it keeps.